#wait til we get affinity going and you get to be cheesy with him!!

[galoogamelady]

i downloaded the buttons mod and i’m so in love with him

[thingsilearnedfrommyuberdri-blog]

09/20/2018: Marlon

It was time to leave work today and I told myself I wasn’t gonna grab a beer after. I was wrong. I left with a friend and caught a cab back to his place so I could be a little closer to the bridge that’d get me back to Brooklyn easiest. 

Marlon picked me up. He was a lot of fun. 

He asked if I’d just gotten out of work and I proceeded to overshare, as I have a tendency to do. He cracked some jokes about how the second he’s off work he’s basically cartwheeling straight home.

Marlon told me about the time he took a short Baja Mexican cruise, explaining that his family all took too goddamn long to book what was supposed to be a 7-day extravaganza through the eastern caribbean... by the time they finally got around to it, the cruise they were meant to go on was sold out and he had no choice but to appease the family and switch to a hellish 4-day cruise on a stinky, old beater of a ship that will not be named. I’m not here to shit on a cruise line. He said in the end he’d had a good time, that the entertainment on the ship was that corny shit the white people loved and how he wouldn’t take that away from them so he just drank enough to have fun and probably ate more than he needed to. 

It’s been a while since he went on the cruise and he feels like he’s still paying a lot of it off, his birthday is on November 12th and he hopes he can take his family to Trinidad to kick it with some extended family members.

 He asked me about myself in terms of what I do for work and I explained what my day looks like and why it’s hard to feel like anything I do matters. I asked him what mattered to him and took some notes. This is what he said: 

“You don’t have to be rich. It’s just that... whatever I’m doing to bring income in, I can have the flexibility to go anywhere I want, my family is comfortable: me, my wife and kids are ok, my mom is good. My immediate family. Everybody else is goddamn grown-- we grew up in the same home, so we had the same opportunities. My brother is doing good. My sister is a hot mess, but she’ll be alright.. she’s home with my mom. I’m the only one still in the struggle trying to get to that comfortable zone.. but I don’t know, I just can’t catch a break! I should be a goddamn life story. Always something going on with me that pulls me back-- well, slows me down, I wouldn’t say pulls me back. You just gotta keep going at it til you have it made. Determination and motivation to keep going.. don’t stop. I’m like Puff Daddy.. can’t stop, won’t stop. I know that break is gonna come-- you just need that one break to hit that next level.” 

Marlon talked a lot about how he’s waiting for his come-up, how his opportunities are dependent upon the perfect “right-time-right-place” scenario. He stressed the importance of job security and setting yourself up for success by surrounding yourself with people who are doing things that matter to you. 

Marlon: “Shit, goddamn I am tired, thank god it’s Friday”

Me: “It’s Thursday!” 

Marlon: “Fuck, well, tomorrow is Friday” 

Down the street from my apartment, he received a phone call from Vitamin World and answered it while I was in the car. The representative asked how he was doing and he didn’t miss a beat before he said “horrible!” I was quietly losing my shit in the backseat as the poor guy on the other end tried powering through his script. Marlon ended the call and said “you should know this, it’s your department, too!” 

At the end of the day, I guess nobody really knows what they’re doing. What ends up being most important is what you assign importance to: whether you book your cruise on time, have an affinity for cheesy maritime theatre, or take a quiet, mindful seat and patiently await your big come-up.