wine and cheap perfume

This weekend I went to a youth poetry slam. My friend Mike runs an organization called Urban Word, and he helped organize the event. I figured it would be a bunch of annoying, self-important teenagers wearing headscarves and clogs reciting trite poetry with Saul-Williams' corny cadence and intonations. Instead, I found a group of suave, funny, self-aware kids reciting poems so good they made me cry. Granted, I also cried watching the movie Coach Carter, but I really wailed at the slam. Their poems were clever and devastating and honest and just crushed and uplifted and enlightened me over and over.
The event was sponsored by the New York Knicks (giving me a reason, after an eleven-year hiatus, to bring love for my favorite basketball team out of hibernation). The whole time this weird white woman in a misfitting purple dress suit stood on the side of the stage, nodding her head knowingly as poets such as 17-yr. old Roger proclaimed, "It is not easy for me to admit that I am bi!" and as 16-yr. old Sherad announced, "My girlfriend says she loves me like Whitney loves Bobby, and I'm not sure I like that reference...", and it turned out that she's the Vice-President of the Knicks.
This one girl did a poem about how it felt to give birth to a dead baby, and it was so hard to listen to I could barely breathe.
I gave my notice at the bar on Sunday. I just can't take it anymore. I despise smalltalk, and I don't care about Josh's "sweet" new rims or Jeff's new washer and drier set. I don't care that Che is planning a trip to Costa Rica for the fall or that Jay has a new rock band that might play at his aunt's bar on Long Island. Working at a neighborhood dive bar is like hanging out at home for nine-hour stretches where all of your worst acquaintences have license to drop by, bore you to tears, and make you wish you were dead. Unless you feign a copius amount of interest in their dull stories, you won't make rent that month, cause they won't give you a dollar. It sucks.
Which is why I quit and have applied for a job at a bar where the staff has been described as "coke-skinny model types." It was one of those postings that roared, "PHOTO A MUST!!" and it took me a solid week to hear back from them. But I did hear back from them, and I have an interview on Friday night. In preparation, I've been sleeping till 3, eating large bowls of cereal, crying, and drinking gross amounts of beer. If I actually get this job, I'll be dealing with a bunch of bridge-and-tunnel types who spend money like it's going out of style. They'll call me sweetheart and suck air through their teeth as they stare at my medium-sized rack. Then they'll rufie their dates, load them into flashy sports cars, and be on their way. In and out. No smalltalk, no bullshiting, just cold, hard cash.
I need to do something with myself as I gear up to hear from grad schools, and as a staunch feminist and relentless masochist, I can think of nothing more lucrative or demeaning than working at an attitude-laden nightclub where hungry teenage girls are bought by charmless men with bald heads and bad breath.