The Heavy Wait Diaries: Chapter 4

I thunder, slamming the Heavyweight office door behind me. Worse than the meeting where HR called you out for stealing people's lunches from the fridge and you claimed you thought they were provided by Gimlet, asks Heavyweight producer Stevie Lane. I could have sworn that happened at my old job, I say, and yes, worse worse than the meeting where the marketing team informed you that you'd mistaken Twitter for Google and we're accidentally tweeting out your search queries, asks

Heavyweight producer Khalila Holt. In my defense, the diarrhea hair loss can't stop sneezing. Am I dying? Tweet performed very well, I say, and yes, worse worse than the meeting where the Gimblet concierge team walked you through a thirty slide power point about what can and cannot be flushed and a commode after monogrammed socks in your style and size were found clogging three toilets, asks heavyweight producer Stevie Lane. That was never proven. I say, and I'll ask the

questions around here. Why aren't the two of you doing any work? Neither producer makes a peep. I want ten heavyweight pitches on my desk by Monday morning. I bark as a walk out the door, but it's Friday afternoon. Both producers whimper and unison indeed it is, and it won't help to whimper. I whimper as the door slams behind me. The weekend is spent in a terrible funk. Where, oh where would I find a juicy, nourishing heavyweight for

me to pluck and savor. I decide to spend Saturday wandering with microphone down the rickety boardwalks of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn's senior citizenist and Eastern European immigrantiist neighborhood. Care to share a regret? I ask passers by. I spend the day being showed away by shop keeps and told my mothers to stop poking my microphone into their baby carriages. Babies have regrets too, I say. As night begins to fall, I count the number of languages I've been sworn at

in by my count two possibly three. Growing desperate, I wander out to the beach, flinging myself onto the sands, discarded diapers and needles. I beg the ocean's waves to drag me down to my watery grave. But when the waves creep too close to my penny loafers, I yip, squeal, and prance backwards to safety. Has there ever lived a more piteous creature? I howl at the heavens. I howl so loudly that a diminutive woman selling minced meat dumplings from a wooden cart sets down her ladle and asks

if I'm okay, Have you any regrets? I snivel, mucus and tears streaming down my face as I clutch the cuff of her thick woolen pant leg. Some small moment from the past you wish to revisit with me on my hands and knees, and with both hands trembling, I raise my sand and cigarette butt covered microphone towards her face. You must, I say, turning her cart around. She wheels

creakily back towards the boardwalk. I rise early the next morning, and, after a hearty breakfast of breadsticks and untainted yogurt, set off to the public library. The problem I've realized is that my search hasn't been random enough. There's no element of surprise. I'd like to check out a phone book, I exclaim loudly to the librarian. She shushes me down and tells me that phone books are now available online. Ah, the Internet, I herrumph, it's got at all, hasn't it?

Everything from computer viruses to squared space? But no, What I require is an actual book I could smell and hold within my grasp that has actual pages I can actually flip through. The librarian quietly leads me into a boiler type room that looks as though it's not been visited since nineteen oh three, that monumental year when Miller High Life was born. The ceiling is leaking and oily water is pooling on the floor. Pushed up against a concrete wall is a card table stacked with phone books.

I get to work immediately. I flip open one of the gargantuine volumes. May the fates guide my fingertip to the one name and number that will preserve me and my show. As I dial the number chosen at random, my hand shakes violently. I hold my breath as the phone rings. The first number is a mortuary. The second number is someone who doesn't speak English, the third number

another mortuary. Finally, a man who sounds naked from the waist down tells me to drop dead, leave the library, and spend the rest of the day lying prone on the couch, reading an old soap opera digest and flipping Miller High Life bottle caps into an old timey hat. Two more days had passed and all I had to show for it was a half completed soap opera, digest, crossroad puzzle, and an old timey hat filled with Miller High Life bottle caps. Boy, all this bottle cap flipping

sure was making me thirsty for Miller High Life. This has been Chapter four of the Heavyweight Diaries. The next season of Heavyweight will begin in five weeks on September twenty sixth. And remember, if you don't listen to Heavyweight on Spotify, Alex tells me, I'll be deemed superfluous and escorted out of the office. By Security. Heavyweight is Me Jonathan Goldstein along with Jorge just Vy Lane, Khalila Holt,

and b A. Parker. This episode was mixed by Emamonger, music by Bobby lord our ad music is Vivaldi Spring performed by the Wichita State University Chamber Players. Will have a new chapter of the Heavyweight Diaries next week