What a fucking waste

I've wracked my poor brain for an amusing story that didn't involve drugs or alcohol, and have come up woefully short. This is very, very sad.

So sad, in fact, that I no longer wish to tell an amusing story. So I'll tell this one.

When I was younger, I worked as a server in an Italian restaurant.

I had been there for several years, and I was often called upon to train the new servers. One of the servers that I trained was particularly interesting. He had a degree from Princeton - if I remember correctly, it was in psychology. And he was not above dropping that degree like it was a phone-line to God.

We got on well enough, but it always seemed that he was a bit... odd. He had a strange smile, a strange manner of speech, a strange way of holding himself. He was pretty good at what he did, but became the object of some ridicule within the restaurant for his behavior.

I saw him outside of work occasionally. I would be drinking a cup of coffee and writing in my journal, like a good 90's poseur, when he would appear out of nowhere and join me. Or I would be at a bar, laughing my ass off at some vulgar display, and he would slide in almost undetected and queer the mood with his mannerisms.

It got to the point where I actively ignored him. If I knew he was coming, I would leave. If I suspected that he was looking for me, I would make any excuse. From my persepective, it seemed like he was stalking me. One time, while I was being arrested for god's sake, he happened to be walking down the same street and saw the whole thing. He even pushed his face against the cruiser window and asked me what was going on.

Several months later, the authorities cut his body down from a tree-limb. He left no suicide note, but the word on the street was that he may have been gay, may have been abused, may have been plain fucked-up. The one consistent aspect of the story was that his father was a devout catholic, and somehow his son never could live up to the ideal.

I was the first to tell my cook about the situation, and his response was both astute and arms-length revealing.

"What a fucking waste," he said.