I was bartending
at a golf club,
which is like cooking
at a laundromat,
and the customers
weren’t there for alcohol
and they weren’t there
for golf
either,
but were there
to get away
from jobs
that were as boring
as middle school
study hall
and they’d walk in
with their neat-shirted
bodies
that hadn’t seen running shoes
in years
but they could ride
a cart
and have someone else
carry their clubs
with such grace,
such agility,
where they rarely
crashed the carts
or dropped the clubs
they weren’t carrying,
and one day
one of the guys
came in
and he told me he was a millionaire
and told me he just bought
a 3-D TV,
that it made the 3-D better
than film,
that films
made 3-D look like shit
and he said the TV
was the size of an outhouse
or something like that
and he said that
he was the first person he knew
to ever buy one,
pointing around the room
saying
I guarantee none of these schmucks
can go home tonight
and watch House of Wax
like you’ve never seen House of Wax
in your life
and I said something that I forget,
and he sipped a couple drinks
and walked away,
out into the Vincent-Price dusk
and I looked at his bill
and his money
and the professor
or whatever he was
stiffed me on the tip.
Gave me nothing.
Not a penny.
Just enough for the drinks
and that’s it.
And I wanted to punch him
right in his Blu-ray
and I wanted to shatter his
3-D glasses,
but he was gone,
probably watching the crappy 2005 version
with Paris Hilton
failing at acting
in such vivid
detail.
Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki's listening to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross' "Technically, Missing" from the Gone Girl film score.
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