A Best Man, a Drunk, and a Ghostwriter Walk into a Bar...

The Bestest Man

People love stories, but when you say this is a “Florida Story” you can see their eyes light up. This is because they know it’s going to be special.

When I was 17 years old, I worked at a grocery store called Kash n' Karry as a bag boy. The job amounted to bagging groceries, taking the groceries to people’s cars, pretending to say no to tips until the old ladies shoved the money into my pocket, and bringing the carts from the parking lot back into the store.

The break room was located near the seafood section which was run by Katie. She was enormously sweet, but she was someone who did not have an easy life. Create a checklist of the worst things you can imagine happening in your life, and I’m sure Katie could check off every item. She had the worst luck I had ever seen.

I knew all this because she told me about her life every time I went on my break. She'd wave me over and start talking. And because I was too polite to simply run away like most of the other employees, I spent 30 minutes listening to her problems. This was something that went on for months.

And then one day, she's crazy happy. She met a man. His name was Ray. 

She said I had to meet him. And I could, as soon as he got out of jail for his DUI, which wasn't his fault (of course). 

A week later, I did get to meet Ray. He was hanging out with Katie in the seafood section. He was short with a big mustache and smelled of cigarettes. 

I said hello. We shook hands. 

In the 15-minute conversation, he barely talked, but I made him laugh once.

Eventually, I had to go back to work. We shook hands again. 

Katie was really happy that we met. 

The next time I saw her, she showed me the engagement ring. They were getting married next month.

"Christian, you were so nice to Ray. He wouldn't stop talking about it," Katie told me.

“Oh,” I said.

"He wants you to be his best man." 

Even though alarm bells were going off, I was too polite to run away, and I accepted.

The wedding was on a beach in July.

I arrived in a suit, because it was, you know, a wedding.

I was the only one wearing a suit. 

I convinced a friend to come as my date and she was overdressed as well. I would spend the rest of the summer apologizing for making her come with me.

Ray was wearing shorts, an unbuttoned shirt, and a new cap that he had bought for the occasion. He had more clothes on than the preacher doing the ceremony. 

Katie was over the moon. This was clearly the best day of her life.

During the ceremony, as I stood next to Ray, I noticed that one shirtless man was sitting in the front row with his arms crossed. He was staring at me like he wanted to kill me.

I found out later that he was Ray's only child.

After the ceremony, Ray shook my hand and thanked me for being there for him. 

He never said another word to me again. 

The wedding party was at a country dive bar. My date and I were too young to drink. We sat in a booth drinking soda and tried to figure out how we could escape.

I stood up at one point to give a toast, which was basically, "I'll never forget the one time I met Ray in the seafood section. We shook hands and he laughed at one of my jokes."

Ray hugged me while his son looked on in horror.

There was one highlight.

There was a jukebox. It only had all country songs, except for one: Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" (Spanish version). 

I put in $5 and had it play 25 times.

I won’t go into the slow descent into madness as people in the bar slowly realize what was happening. I remember how everyone eventually converged around the jukebox, just shaking their heads and screaming. I also remember that you could see the jukebox plugged into the wall socket right next to the jukebox. All you had to do was unplug it. 

But no one did.

Everyone shouted. Got angry. I think someone even cried. But still, no one did anything. Which goes to show you that Americans will tolerate a lot of insanity and bullshit, even when the solution is right in front of them.

Anyway, Katie quit her job a couple of weeks later and I never saw her again.

I heard the marriage didn’t last. I’m guessing Ray turned to her one day and said, “Soy un sexy singular, un sexy regional. Soy maxi, soy ideal. Soy tan sexy que mi amor. Tan sexy que mi amor va a abandonarme.” And then left before she could.

“A lotta people won't get no justice tonight”

Here’s an excerpt from a story I wrote in 1998:

I’ve been going deep into my archives and reading my old work. Some of these stories, like this one (“On Being Velma-less”) have been unlocking a lot of memories. And the fact that I can practically smell the alcohol from the paragraphs reminds me of the writer I used to be.

What kind of writer? Well, here’s a photo of me passed out on a couch at the James Joyce Irish Pub in Ybor City (this side room at the pub was affectionately called “Christian’s room” for a while). This is the early morning.

I can remember waking up a few times on that couch and then helping myself to some beers while I waited for the owner to come and unlock the doors.

“I've got to lose this skin I'm imprisoned in.”

I've ghostwritten more books than I'd like to admit.

When the books are published, your ego is tested in different ways. If the book does well, you must live with the fact that no one will ever know it was you doing the heavy lifting. And if the book does poorly, even with a recognizable name on the cover, you end up wallowing in a lot of doubt about your writing. So there's no winning.

It's a thankless task either way, even when the money is good, so you have to figure out ways to keep it fresh and interesting, or you'll go insane in the process.

In some of the books I ghostwrote, I managed to squeeze in a few easter eggs or jokes, both to make it fun and to put my stamp on the work.

Here's part of a glossary for a self-help book I wrote for a client. There are two visible jokes here: One is under F, and I'll see if you can find the other.

Hint: there is no page 154.

“Can you really cough it up loud and strong?”

Ever finished something thinking it's a masterpiece, only to realize it's more like a dumpster fire? I wrote my first novel when I was in college. A METAPHOR OF OCTOBER was meant to become an American literary classic. Instead, it was a stack of papers I passed around to my friends and family to read. Their post-read expressions spoke volumes—I had seen soldiers return from war looking less haunted and damaged. When they regained the power to speak, their reviews were “interesting,” “wow, that’s something,” and “well, that’s a story all right.”If the title didn’t give it away, AMOO was a pretentious 200-page novel about a college student (suspiciously very much like me) struggling to find love in an uncertain world. Look, I’ve done questionable things in my life— terrible even. But there’s a good chance that this book might be the worst thing I’ve ever done. Yet, here's the upsetting twist: I was absolutely in love with this book when I was writing it. I believed it would alter the course of literary history. Even when I saw the broken remains of my friends and family, I was convinced that they just didn’t get it. So what’s the lesson here?○ Just because you think it’s good doesn’t mean it is.○ You can take or leave any criticism that comes your way. But if you hear the same thing more than once, start paying attention.○ Sometimes the best thing you can do when you finish a project (especially when no deadlines are involved) is to shelve it for a week or a month. You can see the work for what it is with distance. ○ The sequel, THE GRAIL OF JANUARY, will never be written. I mean, really, what was wrong with me?

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Be safe and be good to yourself.