God Of Thunder

I got a phone call the other day from one of my favorite people. Thor was pretty much the first person I became friends with in Seattle when I moved there after college. He lives in L.A. now, and I in New York, after detours through Chicago and the much reviled Boston of course. But in 1994 we were both new arrivals to the Emerald City, he came from Indiana that autumn and I got there a couple of months earlier fresh out of college in Illinois. Both of us picked a place as far as we could get from where we were from (and our families) and both ended up with jobs at a local pizza chain called Pagliacci, where 40th Street crosses Stone Way. I was a cook, he was a driver.

Owing to probably both our personalities, we naturally hated each other.

Eventually we came to see each other as kindred spirits. We both love music, though not always the same thing (I'll never understand his defense of Guns & Roses), but we hated a lot of the same stuff that we couldn't believe was popular. We discovered we had a pretty similar view of the world and that we both love Noam Chomsky and hated Ronald Reagan. We became known for calling each other bitch, or beeotch, as the vernacular of the 1990s white kids who think they're hip would have us saying it.

But what really bonded us was our general disdain for most other people.

Being two people in their twenties who were trying to make it in artistic professions (music and theatre, respectively), we naturally had a lot of crappy jobs, and they often involved the service industry or some kind of thing that would force us to deal with annoying people. We basically responded with some kind of abuse or smart-assiness. And we were really good at it. People really deserved it, too. When a guy comes to the coffee stand I worked at and asks for a double tall non-fat latte with THREE-QUARTERS OF A PACKET of sugar, how I supposed to not be rude to him? Really the big struggle is not to punch the elitist, yuppie, Seattle-passive-aggressive snot in the face. And that's exactly the type that won't leave a tip anyway.

Thor always understood exactly how I felt. His reaction would be exactly the same, and his annoyance level would match mine, which was, you know, the right level.

My favorite Thor story came when we were working at Pagliacci, our first Seattle oppressor. A really crappy job all the way around, except for one thing. Spinning dough was a lot of fun, a zen-like experience. But everything else about that place sucked. They had an "incentive" program among the drivers there. Drivers basically lived on tips, and they also got a commission per order which was mostly to cover their gas. The general commission was something like a quarter, but "top drivers" got 50 cents. These were comprised of the ass-kissers who gave a shit for some reason. When Thor was getting his review, the manager told him he was doing his job well (fast with the deliveries is the basic goal) but that he could be one of the "top drivers" if he had a better attitude. And Thor's answer pretty much defines why I love him so much. He said something along the line of, "How about you keep your quarter and I'll keep my attitude."

It was a great moment in the history of labor relations.

There was the time that we went to a party and decided as we were walking in that we should, as we phrased it, be bad. It mostly involved us getting drunk and challenging the beliefs and attitudes of the weird backward cap frat-boy types that were there. Thor was trying to explain to one of the morons that Disney cartoons were there to teach women that they were supposed to be obedient servants. The argument worked in to a fever pitch, due mostly to the frat-boy's inability to see the overlying messages in movies like Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, until the guy said that when he would gladly show those movies to his daughter when he had one and Thor replied, "And she'll grow up to be as stupid as you."

And thought the guy's head was going to implode on itself. He probably spent days trying to shake off the newly formed in his head idea that maybe Disney cartoons aren't good for children after all.

It was a classic night. When we tore in there it was a hopping party , and when we left a couple hours later it was a stunned silent group of people with their heads hurting. It was magnificent. They never knew what hit them. People need the things they believe to be challenged more often, and Thor and I were always willing to answer the call.

When you are surrounded by the moron masses you need a comrade in arms. And Thor was always mine.

Of all my friends that live far away from me now, I miss Thor the most. This isn't to say that my other wonderful friends aren't missed, they are. But a lot of people find the way I am, I don't know, I guess quirky or edgy. I'm really not at all though. I just kind of say what I'm thinking. And the people that like me find it entertaining and maybe even think I'm witty. But Thor understands exactly where it comes from, and a lot of the time is thinking the exact same thing.

Like when I say that Katie Couric makes me want to jam an ice pick in my eye, others might giggle a little, but Thor will say, "No doubt."

I miss the little bitch.