…I mean like adventure. Yeah. Action. The Renaissance man and I’m really a handsome rascal yeah people’ve been telling me that all my life, and women really do go for me. It sounds awful I know but I can’t help it and I get real vain sometimes, like I just look in the mirror and I’m done for, and I hate it when I get like that, but I do it I do it and then before I know it I love it! God I love it! And sometimes I think if I get too vain, something’ll happen, like I’ll get cancer of the nose and they’ll have to lob it off, or some car’ll run over the face and leave the treadmarks all over and it’s not easy having a good face and I mean who are you and you start acting like the people you’re with even or even the people you’re thinking about or even reading about, like when I see a Brando movie I mumble a lot afterwards or when I read someone like Twain for example I get real folksy or when I start thinking about old Holden, I get slangy, and I mean even slangier than usual and call everybody old somebody and when I read Osborne, I get angry.. because it’s a man of action. Yeah that’s it. Adventure. That’s why I decided to leave.
Because you see, to sum it up for you – in the least confusing way possible – all that happened before this cop thing this morning, after taking up Rikker’s offer was I been getting stoned – interrupted briefly by these part-time jobs: working in a small zoo, feeding reptiles and going from there to this job at the Left Bank Restaurant, where I worked as a roll boy, because of the chances of getting free food, except the appetite suffered a little from after thoughts of the other job, and anyway after a while, the restaurant crew began to annoy me just about as much anyway: a Pierre Short who didn’t fit his name and continually remind us of it by a means of a few very terrible puns; then a few nondescript waiter types, all name Pierre; plus a few who had obviously been “called,” usually quite intolerant of fledglings like me, and also named Pierre; and last, the Pierres that are often too friendly, but fit the name and as you can also see are too helpful because as you can also see there is a real sense of “belonging” in the restaurant business, and a sense of one’s place is expected. In my case a little groveling or some variation, and so I’ve stayed stoned actually. Except I was reminded of it all, by my rank insignia, a cook’s hat – of all things – the custom in the world of pots and pans – you see for the head Pierre to wear his at the highest possible elevation, while all those under him in order of rank wear theirs at a corresponding level. I’m not sure which look worse: Pierre number one’s, which looked as though it were being held up by some kinda “Denny Dimwit” parietal lobe, or the pizza pie they flopped on top of mine, but hell I didn’t care, just pop another and the kitchen was one world and the dining room another, like the frying pan and the fire they told me (like they made it up), because I was to serve rolls that I didn’t cook, to customers who thought I was “the cook.. eh? Well, when’d you cook it Pierre haha, last week?” “Yeah Pierre, hey, all you have are pecan rolls? What happened to all those popovers?” “Yeah pair, har har – wha’ habben’ do all dose gooey peacocks all you’s ga’ is pob odors?” (how this type got in the door, or even found the door I don’t know, unless those other Pierres had something to do with it), and anyway you pop another and anyway, I was fired for some reason, so Smedley and I were on the road after this run-in with the police, looking for the simple life, which reminds me I’m supposed to tell you something about the simple life.. yeah you see it was after the jobs the days started really dragging and Smedley’s inertia began to try my patience and I began to consider going out West…