The PZO

How could I not derive comfort from remembering the pizza joint which I dedicated three years of my life to.

For that matter I have difficulty remembering my life before Piezano's. Classes, future plans, grades, girls, drugs, and college came and went but Piezano's stayed with me. From the day I turned on my application (written on a piece of scratch paper) to pilfering the picture of Pizza Mannnn which hung in the store for two decades I have seen just about everything a driver can.

So hard to believe that I will not drive a car for the next ten months.

I can say with great confidence (no hay dudo que) I left it better than I found it. I didn't do it alone. I didn't do it all. I did make a contribution that lasted.

The week I left the dining room was in disarray. I walked down the stair I'd walked down a thousand times before. The dead leaves and spiderwebs exactly where I left them. The carpet still bunching up by the door and the handrail pulling away from the wall as I used it to stabilize my flight. Everything seemed muted. Quieter. The ringing of the freezers and refrigerators dulled by the news. In five days I'd be off to a foreign land to learn a professional trade without anyone familiar.

First to find me, which meant first to know, was Kylie. The little blonde girl with aspirations of superstardom. She reacted with a mixture of excitement and loss. "What will we do without you?" she said. Half out of congratulatory teasing, half as an eleventh hour attempt to convince me otherwise.

The news spread like Jenna Haze from there. Some reacted with sarcasm, such a classic defense mechanism. Telling me I'd be back before my contract ended or I'd be caned within hours of my arrival or (my personal favorite) I'd be deported for saying "something stupid about Communism." The year is young.

A group of young 'uns were chatting by the destroyed dining room before they found out. I walked up to them to give the news, which they already knew. Drop clothes on the floor, a drill on the table, a paint roller running over the exposed walls which once held an odd paneled mirrors which reflected me in so many mindsets and moods. The plans on the way, new paint, new art, new ceiling tiles, new chairs, new tables.

I remember the rickety chair that collapsed under my weight two years ago. I remember the day the "Weasel Jungle Gym" (a lattice octagon reaching from floor to ceiling completed by the vines of a long dead house plant creeping up the side before expiring) was thrown in the garbage. The ancient wood cracked and flaking at the screws which barely held it together. The checkered table clothes stained with the oil of a decade's use. The New carpet to be installed after my departure was the most crippling part.

"When do you leave?"
"Five days."

Perhaps the real Piezano's came to me that day. This was really happening. This was the end of an old life. The florescent lights did no reflect well off the dried pizza sauce and drain cover oozing the orange grease I identified with so many late nights and freshly awake afternoons. But it was never about the job. It was about the people.

Driver's Wanted:
Local restaurant is looking for car owners to stand in raw sewage for five to nine hours a day for minimum wage. Must have middle school education or equivalency degree. Pot smoker preferred. Benefits include gas compensation, free uniform, unrestricted smoking on deliveries, and all the refuse of the elite you can eat.

What will become of you, my first occupational love?

Fog

What happened to my homeland? It seemed so clear yesterday.
It seemed so eternal. It seemed so mine. Where is my homeland? It must be here, somewhere.
The art of losing isn't hard to master, I'm told. My homeland, my native soil is dimmer and dimmer. The maze of memory dead ends for you for now, my country of origin.
Where is Able Hall and Air Park's gossamer twilight, oh nation of mine?
Those landscapes and portraits that once belonged to me in such vibrant colors and compelling hues. First they turn sepia, then grey before fading to black. My sweet, sweet homeland.
I left you on such natural terms. We'd seen so much. You're five dollar packs of cigarettes and one dollar coffees couldn't keep me for long. A year of aimless degree went so fast, my homeland. And then I knew I had to go.

I had a friend named Levi. He hung around the gas station. A good guy and a quiet guy. He liked car. No shame in that. He joined the marines, to defend my homeland, where is he now? I had a friend named Travis who I called Lurch. He went off to Boston, is he still there, my homeland? You have a new President soon, my homeland, how will you handle this change, can I believe in you now, my homeland?

I left you behind weary and unpopular. Too powerful for your own good, I suppose. Wishing for something new, but perhaps to blindly. But I love you, my homeland. You'll always be beautiful to me and will always perform my duty to you. Do what you will.

I walked into the dining room for the hundredth, thousandths, millionth time. The restaurant I loved. The Mexican gentlemen carting carpet out the door. The faded, bunched up red and blue rolled up and hauled off. The dining room closed for the day as new paint and ceiling tiles took the place of the mirrored panels and yellowed skylight which stood there for twenty years without shame or repair. I didn't get to say good bye. My little pizza joint grew up. The time went too fast.

My homeland, my pizza you're on your own now, but you always were. I watched you change these years with only minimal impact. An impact none the less which I can take pride in.

"What will I come home to?" is the question hanging over 2009. Who will still be there? Where will the others go? Who will be in school? Who will drop out, vomit, smoke or die? As I sit halfway around the world I hope I did the right thing and I know I didn't do the wrong thing.

The Food Here

Some time ago I decided it was a good idea to gain some weight before Peace Corps.
My goal was to gain twenty pounds before being shipped off to Russia based on the assumption I would be in mortal peril if my current frame became any leaner. So I ate and I ate. Even when I didn't want to. When stressed or lethargic I crammed something down my throat.

Slowly but surely over the course of a month I added an extra five pounds. I was quite elated by this. I was on the road to filling out six years after puberty. I kept on eating until the Avalon offer came on the table.

Within a week of my arrival I lost those five pounds.

Things were leaking out of me for days. If I can expel a liquid I have done it in this nation. First it was the cold. Snot coming out of my nose, snorted up and spit out. On my bed, on my floor, on my clothes. Then it was the diarrhea. The food initially reacted poorly with my Americanized digestive track. Every time I took a shit there was some bizarre concoction in the toilet. More a kin to fireworks than human waste. I still have yet to make a completely solid deposit over here.

But my favorite was the food poisoning. Some subway green peppers incapacitated me for a day. After a night of drinking and drunk food I expelled the contents of my stomach in too desperate bursts. The pink slime of the former Southwest Sauce burns. More than the vodka, the sandwich sauce expulsion was pure, unadulterated agony. When it was all said and done I think I threw up about seven thousand calories.

My precious bodily fluids have been affected profoundly by the food even in this very westernized country. Me, the man who ate four packages of pesticide-coated morning glory seeds and didn't vomit.

I leave you with the words of the prophet:

"If we have learned anything in this life it's that the more drugs you do, the better time you have."
-The Hon. Matt Moore