Leroy's Before 4:55 a.m.

I left the house after trying to sleep. Not trying very hard, but laid out in long johns and a West Coast Choppers shirt I stole from someone somewhere, under stretchy purple sheets and my mother's old wool blankets. Wasn't happening, so I picked up the copy of "The Broom of the System" by David Foster Wallace that I checked out from the Z.J. Lousac Public Library on 36th and read three (3) pages. I decided to go to Leroy's.

At Leroy's I did not see Jen (the waitress that I went to the Bear's Tooth with) or her friend Mary (who I went to the Bear's Tooth with) so I sat down at the the far end of the counter and pulled out my Highway 9 notebook and started in with chapter 5, "Church in the Country." I've been working on that chapter for a long time now, and tonight, I finally finished it. Yes! I said YES!

Over the course of nearly 5 hours, I drank a ton of coffee, ate eggs and pancakes, and talked to Natalie, tonight's waitress, a helluva lot. She's cool too. Young, got a kid, single. Same old song and dance, I guess. She's AlAskAn, alright. She's got herself surrounded by druggies and babies and has it all rationalized out somehow. So I say she's cool, but only because I'm trying really hard not to be as critical of people these days, and she's fun to talk to. Except I hate explaining to people what I'm doing when I surround myself with several notebooks and pens and scraps of paper. It's not that I think it's obvious and that people are stupid for asking, but I'm embarrassed by my writing in a diner in the middle of the night. It is all very common place and artsy and starving and all that. Maybe not starving, which is worse, because it should be, and if it was I'd be better at it, supposedly, and I could be in private because they don't serve the penniless and then I could shock -- --

The cook, Joe, was wearing a homemade tee-shirt tonight. On the front was a printed on picture of him and his 2-year old daughter. In hand written letters, Joe's shirt read:

FRONT
"Preventative Detension. Civil Liberty. Political freedom. I am fighting for my daughter, Amanda. What would you do?"

BACK
"Crystal, I am fighting for you too." and there was a drawn picture of a hot blonde with a black dress on, showing off her cleavage.

I was far too confused to ask him about it. So strange a thing. Fitting, though, I expect, for a man with big sunken cheeks and a tattoo on his neck, above his collar bone. Miller Light racing hat. Pin stripped black and white pants, and his daughter's birthday tattooed on his inner right forearm.

Jeano was there tonight. Natalie had to scold him for taking up the coffee pot and delivering coffee to the people he knew (including me) around our half of the 'straunt. "Get out from behind the counter, Jeano."

"I've been coming here for 30 years!"
"So what, get!"
"Owners change, but still I'm here."
"Doesn't mean you work here!"
"Don't tell me what I can and can't do in this place!"
"And don't tell me how to do my job!"
"I've been coming here for 30 years!"
"Give that pot to me!"
"I know how to put it back!"
"So do I, like I said-"
...and so on. it's a lot of fun.

Well, now with chapter 5 finished, I can look forward to the next chapter. It's already written in short hand, down in a black notebook I have on a shelf somewhere. That shouldn't be too hard to reproduce. It's a funny one, too, I think. To me it is anyway. I get to talk about my life in High School... which I lie about terribly, but hey, it's finally my chance to be cool.

DO YOU HEAR THAT WORLD?!

Peace and Love,
Mungo

Song of the day: "Bowl of Oranges" - Bright Eyes
(seriously, an uplifting tune that got me through today. I was late for work and this made me happy. It's off the album "Lifted or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground")