Q: Okay, let’s get started.
A: Are you recording this?
Q: No.
A: Dude. I can see the microphone app running on your iPhone.
Q: Okay, maybe I am. But it’s just to make sure I get what you say down correctly.
A: Whatever. Just get this nonsense over with.
Q: Let’s just start with the basics. You work nights.
A: Well, yeah.
Q: You’re a bartender at Miguel’s Cantina, down in Perth Amboy.
A: No.
Q: Yeah, you are. I saw you in there just last week.
A: No. I got promoted. I’m assistant night manager.
Q: You still tend bar, though.
A: I supervise the other bartenders. I only tend bar when somebody’s out sick or on break or something.
Q: Okay, whatever. My point is, you’re up all night, and you sleep all day.
A: I go home about four, and I sleep until about ten. That’s not sleeping all day. I get up, I go out and do errands, then I go home and play X-Box and watch videos and stuff. I don’t lie in bed all day and do nothing.
Q: Are you sure it’s a bed, though?
A: Yeah. Bought it at Sleepy’s. It’s got one of those foam mattresses, very nice.
Q: Not a coffin.
A: Bullshit. No, I don’t have a coffin.
Q: You can see why I ask.
A: No. I don’t have the first clue.
Q: You dress in black. All the time.
A: I have a black jacket, and I wear it a lot. I get cold. And it looks better with a black T-shirt under it. Otherwise, I’d look like Arthur Fonzarelli or something.
Q: Very pale skin.
A: Hey, what do you want me to do, go around looking like one of those Jersey Shore morons? I don’t spend all my time in a tanning bed; that would suck. Plus you get skin cancer that way.
Q: Very sharp canine teeth. Almost like… fangs.
A: I had a cruddy orthodontist. That doesn’t prove anything. Next, you’re going to want to check my iPod to see if I have any Vampire Weekend songs on there.
Q: Do you?
A: No. They suck. Not literally, I mean, their music sucks.
Q: I know you saw the Twilight movies.
A: So did twenty million other people. Big deal. I only went because that girl Marita I was dating at the time wanted to go.
Q: So you’re not hundreds of years old.
A: No.
Q: And when you go outside, you’re not all sparkly and stuff.
A: No. Know a guy who tried that once. He was doing the Mystery Method – that thing losers do to try to pick up chicks? It says to dress a little weird, and use it as, like, a conversation piece. So he got all this glitter, put it on his hair, a little bit on his face. He thought he could hook up with some Goth babes.
Q: How’d that work?
A: Not good. He tried it down the Shore, went to the wrong bar, and got his face kicked in.
Q: So how do you spend your weekends?
A: Well, you know, I’m working most of the time. But once a month, when there’s a full moon, I transform into a wolf and go out and terrorize the countryside.
Q: Oh. Well, okay, I guess that explains…
A: I’m pulling your chain. I’m not a werewolf, either. God, are you pathetic.
