The Obvious Nature of Violent Acts (featured in FIELDING. (2021 print, written around 2016).

1. Intercourse & Composure or;

Wherein The Pangs of Alcohol & Stress Do What They May.

They were both quite fresh from their collegiate pursuits, she from the South and he from the heartland. Upon arrival in Rhode Island the chemistry was evident to every other insurance trainee, though the two were far from aware of the attention their interactions were drawing down upon them from both the more aware trainees of the eastern seaboard and, as likely, the most aware facilitators of the three month training programs. He would be following protocol in the pursuit of a position adjusting insurance claims while her training track was oriented for those trainees who would become the regional salespeople for the overall insurance firm.

In the first few weeks of the program, each of the younger, fresh-out-of-college trainees had reached a point of stress inherent to collegiate students; who is planning to party this weekend because this shit is intense. It set in firstly for those in the sales path, as they realized the commission requirements for sales persons with such healthy salaries and enhanced benefit packages. Secondly, the claims trainees all found their breaking points separately but were inherently more secretive about their intentions on the matters of weekend warrioring. Understand that the two separate but intertwined training groups had been able to survey the landscape for some time, finding the visual queues to determine who may indeed be down to party. Predominantly young as the group of thirty was, it was clear the ten senior members of the trainees, in perhaps their 30’s and 40’s, could likely be counted on to participate in Party as well. The opportunity for a young party person to learn some old school methods in return for the atmosphere for Party craved by the veterans of the field had possibly been built into the program. 

In Jersey Shore terms, Springfield, R.I. could be considered the holiest Guido land. No false or intended offense in this statement. However, for a young man from the midwest or a young girl of the deep south, the realization of this now most evident fact can do a number on one’s perceptions of the Jersey Shore Stereotypes. If the kids of the T.V. show are an indication of the nature of the stereotype, those kids are clearly understood as the weakest, perhaps even self-degrading, when the realest Springfield Guido merely involves themselves in an honest conversation. And if the more domesticated regional personalities from places beyond the eastern seaboard spend but a moment conversing with these salt of the earth folk, said personalities understand this about the Guido culture immediately. Before you could even ask a Springfield Guido what their opinion of that show is, they already embody their disdain for that sort of loud, bombastic disgrace of the Guido heritage. 

2. The Cheesecake Factor;

This Compromise Was a Mistake But How Did You Enjoy Your Meal?

The decision to find themselves on a Sunday, at the only Cheesecake Factory at which either had ever dined, immediately proved to be an incredibly poor decision on both of their parts, as in the hungover light of a Sunday you are provided an open opportunity to assess your interests in another individual. Hungover or not, Cheesecake Factory decisions are most generally expensive and inherently over bloated. While he knew the logical Sunday meal for either of the two was some local dive of a diner or even just a Dunkin’ Donuts on the East Coast, she was clearly of the debutant order, and accordingly her emotional and interpersonal background required more effort in a new place and with new people. Neither he nor she would observe the bizarre nature of the tryst until a time much further from where they were sitting, eating an assortment of overpriced appetizers, entrees, and actually very little cheesecake.

The two had walked through the elaborate entrance, him holding open the door inebriated, and then up to the receptionist behind the counter within the most ornate fake candy store in history, up to that date in time. Quickly finding seating at 2pm on a Sunday, the conversation could not exactly take each other anywhere as their minds were entirely too clouded by the booze and sexual exhaustion of the night prior, the former being too strong and the latter being far too weak in the moment. Few words were spoken and thus are not necessary to address at any point of the limited romance. When she asked about an appetizer he replied that his primary concern was with the standard of the cheesecake which was allegedly available. She did not want his doubt to present itself, however sardonic it may have been at a factory for cakes, and thus she froze up verbally for the remainder of the meal and the issue of cheesecake would surely thereafter be at the minimum a sad story about another horrible date gone awry at the expense of a few hours of lies and another man not good enough for her status.

When the bill came to the table, he recalls not even attempting to ask her to split the bill but simply unfolded his wallet and placed money on the check. While staring at the empty table on which the check sat, post-meal and after the plates had been removed, her sad and miserable hangover face bore glazed-over scowls for the symbols on the carbon printed paper called the check. She stared through the paper until he placed his green paper bills over the top, making some late and off hand comment about how she was still too drunk to realize the check had arrived she guessed. It was no big deal to him, so long as they could leave this factory of lies with an appropriate cash tip and never look back at such a horrible human interaction as had occurred in that cheap, sanitized booth with a high top table, as provided for the children at a holiday gathering.

3. Ruin Your Career For Me;

Look We Just Met Girl Please Leave My Bed &/or The Training Program.

Their rearview assessments aside, in the moment, having been the two odd ducks in the thirty-person training program, they individually handled the following days in a manner which they each had been engrained with throughout their very separate but modestly comparable upbringings. Perhaps she was overwhelmed by the nature of such a training program and he certainly was too, which did not aide in the disastrous manner with which the fling, for lack of a more passive word, burnt down quickly. Attempting to remain in solitude due to a hangover, he was coerced into allowing her a bit of time Sunday evening to sit in the double room, which he had fortunately attained solo, as her female roommates in the training program were too obnoxious by her standards, or so she had said.

Stretched across the bed where he was generally asleep, she was laying behind him on her bulbous chest while he sat at the side of the bed wondering what to say next. She was somewhat blathering through the depressive part of a Sunday hangover and so he blathered reassuringly through his own pain and doubt to be supportive of their superficiality. Neither of them wanted to lose their jobs over a fling, but this is part of the gig so maybe we should leave the emotions in the hangover. His logic and likely hers as well. Would there be any way for them to finish the remaining ten weeks of the program keeping up this drunk routine? He knew he could but he also knew he could never spend Cheesecake Factory money every week before he brought the cash he had left from an alcoholic college career.

Her deal was apparently requiring a strong male figure in her life for sexual, emotional, and financial support, as many of those women of the South are told to be. His deal was not really being able to afford to give a shit. Little has likely changed between the genders in thousands of years when you really get down to it at that level. However, Monday would bring the inevitable sideways glances and passive aggressive jabs built to fail and so he needed some sleep and she needed to walk across the apartment complex alone to her place, as she had been determined to walk to his room alone and unannounced. By afternoon of the next day, the door to the training room in which the newest adjusters had been starting a class opened suddenly and unexpectedly, even for the insurance instructor. A trainer from sales had walked in with a female sales trainee who wanted to let the adjusters know this would be her last day and she was returning South immediately. He got up from his desk, like what little of a gentleman he was, and hugged the other trainee around her go away box and they never spoke again.