The Evening Shift

Someone at the restaurant suggested I try to busk in the evening, just in time to catch all the men going home to their wives. And maybe to catch some drunk customers who wouldn't mind shelling out a few euros for a poem.

I think I arrived at Ravintola Tori too late to catch all the loving hubbies, because I didn't get there until 6 pm, despite my best attempt to get there earlier. It was great: my first customer approached me before I even sat down! He asked me to write him a poem about a straw hat and handed me the exact amount of money. (He was wearing a straw hat and it looked like it might have been a central part of his image.) I wrote the poem and, man, I'm actually kind of proud of it. It's a silly little poem about a man who buys a straw hat, wears it everyday, loses it on a train, cannot find it at all and then, one day, he sees it in a magazine. It was a simple AA BB CC rhyme scheme, which seemed to work with the subject matter. The guy came to pick up his poem, which I churned out in a good seven minutes and went back to his seat. His table was audibly pleased, and the man came back and said, "We liked your poem so much, we thought we'd give you this." He handed me more money!

Then, this amazing man, this great customer asked to write a poem for me! He told me he would recite a poem from the top of his head, and then I would type it up. So we did it. And he signed it. I tried to take a picture of it but, just in case the print isn't clear, I re-typed it below:


"A Poem for the typewriter girl"

Dear typewriter girl
Sitting on the sidewalk
Please save the world
And make your machine talk

About peace and love
And about the God above
Dear typewriter girl
Please save the world!

(By the way, in the photo, the paper behind the poem is actually Ravintola Tori's menu haha, which I just so happen to have conveniently by my side in my apartment.)

A lady who had been sitting with that man came up and ordered a poem about anything. I had a little sliver of paper left from another sheet, one I didn't want to waste. But it wouldn't go into my typewriter properly, unless I put it in vertically. The paper I was typing on was about eight inches long (normal width of a sheet of paper), but only about two, or two and a half inches wide. Since I could write about anything, I wrote a poem called "The vertical Poem" which outlined why I chose to write on the paper in such a way. She tipped me well and went back to her seat. The man who had purchased the first poem turned around in his seat and applauded me from across the terrace.

But the rest of the evening busking didn't go so well. I went nearly an hour without a customer at all (which is the reason I'm bringing a book along with me today). Finally, when I did get another customer, it was a drunk fellow from a group of – how shall I say? – douchebags. They were loud, overtaking the terrace with their antics and laughter. The drunk guy told me to write a nice story, so I wrote one about a man named Michael whose girlfriend just broke up with him. Not very nice yet, but he goes out with friends and has a great one-night stand with a waitress in short pink shorts. I went to their table to hand them the story and they hooted and tried to convince me to join them. They also continued my story, narrating that Michael's best friend Kip does a dimebag of cocaine and steals the gal from my man. Then my main character commits suicide, according to them.

I offered to continue the story (for a tip), but the dude said no. I so badly wanted to write, "Unfortunately, the cocaine that Kip had purchased contained arsenic and Kip later died a horribly painful death." (Isn't it strange that my form of subtle revenge in this case is to kill off my other character?)

They were rude and drunk. But it was also 8 pm. I'm not sure I'll be doing much more evening busking, as my afternoons seem to be more effective. But maybe it was just a bad night? I'll give The Evening Shift another chance someday in the future.