Broke Fat White People

Last night I was minding my own business at my man Q’s house in the Pearl District when I get drunk-dialed by Sammy’s ass. He came to pick me up in the broken down Daewoo that he be driving these days, half in the bag, and demanded I take him to several seedy, dark, smelly strip bars around town while he accused me of being a half-ass friend and tried to get me to commit all 20USD I have to a “certain idea.” Out of that trip came yesterday’s stripper post …

but the real fantastic discovery was Sizzler’s. Years and years ago my family would stop by Sizzler’s on some road trip across the nation and for me it always meant massive well stocked salad bars and shrimp platters I could never finish. Steaks I had to share with my punk ass little brother.

But this time around I was sober as a judge and 31 and I got a good glimpse of the Sizzler clientele. Holy Jesus. Sad looking overweight white people living a few blocks from Portland’s “infamous” 82nd street sat dejectedly shoving food into their mouths and rising cumbersomely up for another stab at the appetizers and boiled egg salad. A table of old women, combined weight 1200lbs (6 ladies), sat chomping away and chatting about who knows what. Three of the ladies scooted around the salad bar in those motorized wheelchairs for the obese and arthritic.

The waitress … she gave me the impression of a young tittering girl wearing a fake skin stolen from a tanning salon addict. She was nervous and anxious and brought us three servings of cheese bread (oh God) and giggled way too long at every drunken slobbering piece of bullshit Sammy spat out onto the table.

I sunk into depressed, resigned silence. Reflecting on the kids I aint got, the job I just lost, the wife that used to be fine and my gut that keeps growing.

Irvine, CA and ShadySecond Street Portland. I suppose Obama being elected tells us that these slices of our society are not the majority, but I think they are. It makes me feel like a well dressed man standing on the tip of an ice berg shouting for champagne while the rest of the ship’s passengers slowly freeze to death a few feet below.