The Bass Player's Existential Crisis

A couple days ago, a few days ago, I don’t know, not too long ago, I wrote about The Critic And The Crow. And I mentioned in that entry that I worked at Kinko’s. That’s not true. I worked at a copy shop but it wasn’t Kinko’s. But I couldn’t remember the name of the place, so I just said Kinko’s, I figured what difference does it make?

Then, like yesterday, or maybe the day before, I was watching some porn and, BOOM, right while I was watching a couple of grannies eat each other, for some reason the name of the copy shop POPPED right into my mind! Crazy, right?

Albert’s.

Albert’s Copying.

I worked at Albert’s.

Right down there on Liberty Street in Ann Arbor. Right down the street from the Michigan Theater. Late 1980s, maybe 1990 or 1991. Who the fuck knows? Don’t worry about it.

Like I said in The Critic And The Crow, I worked at the copy shop with The Critic, four members of a rock ‘n’ roll band, and one of the band’s girlfriends.

So when it came to me, when I was watching two old broads lick each other, when that Albert’s name popped into my mind, I stopped and thought for a minute. I thought, you know, Albert’s wasn’t a bad place to work. It really wasn’t. And as I thought about Albert’s a little bit more, certain moments were recalled. More than memories.  Fragments of various moments that tell a story. Almost a re-living. A re-experiencing. Episodic events centered on the rock band’s bass player.


THE STORY:
Minna was a fat girl with a fat crush on The Bass Player. She would come into Albert’s on an almost daily basis, using the self-serve machines to print two or three copies. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was just copying a blank page. Then she would linger around hoping to gain The Bass Player’s attention. Mostly The Bass Player ignored her. But he would say ‘hey, what’s up?’ just often enough to string her along and *borrow* ten bucks from her every now and then.

Everybody who worked at Albert’s teased The Bass Player about Minna the fat girl. Minnabago, we called her. But The Bass Player put up with it, a small price to pay, I assumed, for ten dollars here and ten dollars there.

The Bass Player insisted several times he never saw Minnabago outside the copy shop, or that he had any type of relationship with her other than as a customer at Albert's.

One day I went to Briarwood Mall. They had a Radio Shack.  I wanted to buy a shortwave radio so I could listen to Bobby Fischer‘s broadcasts from the Philippines.  After concluding my purchase, I headed out.  To exit the mall you had to walk through the food court and as I was walking through the clusters of tables of slobs eating Sbarro pizza and Olga's gyros, what do I see?

There were The Bass Player and Minnabago sharing an Orange Julius.  Through the same straw.  A truly grotesque sight.  I'm sure a look of disgust crossed my face.  I saw them, and they saw me.  I didn't say hello, or nod, and neither did they.  I kept walking, and they kept slurping.

At my next shift at Albert's, there was The Bass Player.  The Bass Player who had always acted so cool and aloof, as if nothing could ever perturb his disaffected being.  I hadn't even punched my card in the time clock before he started frantically begging:

"Man, please, please, DON'T tell anyone about me and Minna!  PLEASE!  You're not gonna tell, are ya?  Are you gonna tell?  PLEASE don't tell!"

I just laughed.  

"Relax, dude.  Why would I want to tell anyone you have a fat girlfriend?  Why would I go out of my way to tell some people I barely know that a person I barely know is in love with a fat girl?"

"I'm NOT in LOVE with her!"

"All right!  Relax already!"

"So you're not gonna tell?"  

The arrogance of others.  The arrogance of so many others.  They think their lives mean so much to the other people they pass by in life.  And as if their fabricated selves were so valuable.  It's all nothing.  Everything is nothing.

Well, anyway, as far as I know, this is the first time it has been made public The Bass Player had a fat girlfriend.