I.
The thing about delivering pizza is that every day, you must resist the urge to scream.
When I started the job, I was in dire straits and needed easy money. Domino’s Pizza delivered. For a while, I like it. Hourly wage, cash tips in my pocket every night, no one hanging over my shoulder.[nl2] If I have a long drive, I can quickly drag a few hits off my weed pen for "extra motivation." And if it bothers you that I drive while high, well, suck a lemon. I drive better stoned than sober. In fact, I stop for every light, even Green.
Having said all that, the honeymoon waxes over before long and it turns red with blood. It’s the long nights that get to you. You spend eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, even fourteen hours driving across town. From 5pm all the way to 3am the following morning. These are the winding twilights of the soul, where often I gazed within and asked, Is this what I went to college for?
These tedious shifts spent on the road wreak havoc on your car, but that barely holds a candle to how it corrodes your mind. All work and no sleep make Jack an asshole. Anger is a regular passenger in my car.
Here’s a story: a telemarketer calls and instead of hanging up like I should, I pick up and rage at the other guy so hard I make him cry.
Once, I punch my steering wheel so hard I break the horn. Now I press the button and instead of a honk, my car wheezes. It sounds like a cat passing a hair ball.
Rage. It ruins your life and breaks your shit, yet you never feel so ALIVE. The minute I destroyed my car horn, I did feel foolish, but also quite powerful. Like I just karate chopped a brick. I broke it in one hit, and I’m just a little guy. There’s a fever that boils your head and heightens every sense, except for decency. Never mind weed, the best high is Rage. You feel like the Hulk. Powerful, fearsome, and possessed of one singular belief: Hulk strongest there is.
For a little while. Until the come down. All that’s left is the real me, puny Bruce Banner, aghast at what I’ve done.
I miss peace. I miss sleep. But no rest for the wicked; I must work. Because of work, I must rage.
Fury, how I lean on thee; how I dread thee.
For 2 years, I work in the Domino’s by the University of Connecticut. I can say with no guilt that college kids are the worst tippers. Nice people, but I want to slap every drunk nineteen-year-old who had to have forty buffalo wings delivered at 1:58 AM.
If you’re one of those people who does this, this is what it’s like to drive a mile in my shoes:
Imagine it’s a cold night in Fall and your car heater is broken. It’s way past everyone’s bedtime and your eyelids droop, but someone wanted a large Brooklyn cheese, so here we are. You stand outside to let the nippy air shock you awake. The pizza is in the car, secured in its hot bag, though who knows how long the food itself will stay warm. You check your phone and see it’s been ten minutes since you called the customer. Despite the guy’s promise that he’ll be right out, he continues to drag ass.
There’s a party and the music is bumping so loud your ears hurt. You don’t know how the cops haven’t been called yet. You call the customer a second and third time, where he finally picks up. It’s near impossible to hear him over the mumble rap they’re blasting inside, but you can vaguely glean him saying he’s on his way out. Five minutes passes, you call a fourth time. The guy goes, “Ohh, sorry I forgot. Hold on.”
Another ten minutes later, a six foot tall frat dude opens the door. He’s wearing no shirt, pajama bottoms for pants, and a viking-style helmet, with two Coors cans duct-taped to the plastic horns with feeding tubes running from can-to-mouth. He staggers over and it becomes clear that this guy is so hammered, he’s drank himself cross-eyed.
“Uh, hey,” Erik the Drunk slurs. “Are you the… the pizza guy?”
You look him dead in his glazed eyes and say, “No.”
“Oh, okay.” The drunk turns, but stops and says, “Hey, are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m the pizza guy. That’s why I’m holding your pizza and I have a top sign on my car that says, ‘Domino’s Pizza.’ That’ll be twenty-two-fifty.”
He hands you a debit card.
“Sir, I need cash.”
“Uh, I don’t have any. Can you, like, call the store and have them take my card number?”
So you sigh. Not mad yet, but getting there. You call the store, but then the guy’s card declines. Back to square one.
“Sir, I need cash, or you’re not getting this pizza.”
“Hey man that’s not fair.”
Fire crawls up the back of your neck and you clench your teeth. “Sir, I’ve been waiting out here for thirty minutes because you can’t figure out how to leave your own house. Don’t tell what you think is fair.”
“Hey man, I’m sorry. Here.” The Drunk tries to give you his card again and you shake your head.
“No, no, no. Do you know anyone inside who has twenty-two dollars and fifty cents?”
“Uh… hold on.”
The drunk leaves for another fifteen minutes. You get a call from homebase. It’s your manager.
“Hey, where are you?” She asks. You explain the situation and ask if you can just leave. Your boss sighs and says, “No, I wish. Call me when you’re on the way back so I know when to start rolling the blunt.” You hang up, at once furious at your predicament but at least relieved that your boss is cool enough to smoke you up.
Eventually the Drunk Viking returns with this fat girl in tow. She walks lopsided and you notice she has a broken high-heel.
“Okay, Stef,” the Drunk says and gestures your way. “Show him the money!”
She lifts her shirt and you’ve never been more horrified to see a pair of titties in your life. Most plus size women have the luxury of an impressive rack, but not this one. Stef has one medium sized breast that sits high and firm, perfectly normal, and the other sags down in a straight line, looking like a deflated balloon. The nipple touches her belly button and the breeze sways the whole boob in a pendulum arc, the flesh lightly tapping against her stomach.
Stef lowers her shirt and the Drunk smiles. “Eh? Are we square?”
“…Okay, now it’s thirty-two dollars and fifty cents. Cash.”
That’s UConn students for you.
Then there’s the locals. Bunch of right-wing hideouts hidden in the woods behind the school. They’re like the mutants in The Hills Have Eyes, with brown teeth, yellow eyes, and a bad attitude. I don’t think they rape, though. That’s just the Sigma Phi dudes.
True story, much quicker than the last – I run an order that totals $38.90. Customer hands me $39 and asks for change. I tell the customer that I don’t have ten cents to give, and the customer calls me a Jew. Then he spits on my shoes, snatches the three gluten-free pizzas out of my hands, and slams the door in my face. I stand there for a long time, blinking. There’s a little green under my collar and my face feels hot as the Hulk shifts his weight. Then I notice that the anti-Semite has a garden gnome on his lawn, immediately beside the front porch. I look around, checking for witnesses, cameras, family dogs in the yard. Nothing. I grab the gnome and keep it for my tip. It’s sitting on my night stand as I type this. I call him Shalom. Shalom the Gnome.
After a while, I need a hobby. You know how I spend my days off? It’s silly, but I whittle. I get quite good at it, too. Among my works of art, I carve a spoon out of a stick, a bird from a plank, and a life sized smiling face from a dead tree stump. That last thing is my crowning achievement, for I put my entire soul into it. I give the stump wide eyes and raised eyebrows, a funny pointed nose, and a cavernous, gap-toothed grin that infects all who see it with laughter. Proud of my creation, I mount it on the mailbox for the world to behold. When I sit on my porch to chisel a new piece of wood, I see my neighbors walk by and they can’t help but stop and gander with glee. Even the ones that neber moved on from Pandemic can’t help but pull down their masks and try to mimic that smile, laughing all the while. Some take pictures, some don’t, but everyone shows their love nonetheless.
I love that happy face, too, but more than the final product, the act of making it is what stole my heart. When my knife sank into the stump, I forgot my troubles. The Hulk was quiet, memories of Domino’s faded to black, and my ceased to be an old man. Instead, he became the model for the face I would conceive. I didn’t plan it, didn’t even realize that was the direction I was going. But as I blew off the dust from the finished project, I saw the resemblance. The dimples in its mouth, the space in its front teeth, the lines in its forehead. Father to my own father, I kissed him on the forehead and baptized him in varnish. If he lives to be a grandfather or he dies tomorrow, he will remain as a joy to the world.
One day I step outside and it’s gone. Someone stole my head. I search high and low, asking every neighbor I see if they’ve found it. To no avail. I remember sitting on my porch, armed with a knife and a block of wood. My hands are shaking. With a barbaric yawp, I chuck the wood into some bushes and flush out a pair of mice that scurry into the grass. I throw my knife and hear a squeal. Speared by my blade, the mouse lays bleeding on the ground, eyes dead, mouth gaping. It looks like it’s smiling. Pulling the knife out its tiny limp body, I watch it twitch once before lying completely still.
Love is all powerful until threatened – then the Hulk comes out to play and shows you who’s boss.
Eventually, I have to leave the UCONN Domino’s. Too many complaints about pilfered lawn ornaments. There is another store in the franchise that is close to where I live, in the town of Willimantic. The tips there are bigger and more consistent, meaning I make at least eighty dollars a night in tips at the new location. Not bad.
But extra tips mean I have to put in a lot more work. UConn was busy, but I still found moments to breathe. In this brave new store, I don’t shut my engine off once. Easily drop half my tips on gas before, during, or after every shift. Money down the drain. Even the cash I actually take home just goes to my student loans. Really grinds my gears.
At least the majority of the customers I deliver to in Willimantic are kind hearted people. Much more so than the drunk kids at UConn or the yokels that haunt the forest. I depend on these folks; their kindness lifts my spirits enough to keep the Hulk at bay. But as with every restaurant since the dawn of time, there waits the shitty patrons. They hide in the tall grass, in the trees, under the floorboards, awaiting their chance to ruin your day. Their mission is to make you forget how nice everyone else is.
Scum of the earth. Always rude, inconsiderate, and even dangerous. Quick to anger (even quicker than I), some of the locals would come close to blows with my coworkers over minor disagreements. Things like pricing, mixed up orders, or other perceived sleights. On such nights, I pray for any excuse, any opening, to step in and really tell the customer how I feel. But I can’t do that, not here. Customers aren’t drunk enough to forget what I look like. And so the Other Guy sleeps while I, puny Banner, meekly bow my head and offer my dearest condolences for the sins of the customer.
Until one Friday night. I already put in my two weeks, as I found a job with normal hours and higher pay with benefits. For those final two weeks, I serve my penance at Domino's from 5PM to 3AM, closing time.
An hour into my shift, a guy gives me the wrong address 4 different times. Takes me forty minutes to find him and he’s literally five minutes down the road. It’s dark by the time I find his apartment. The man is pissed. He shorts me a dollar, which I don't notice until after he slams the door in my face. Like I'm to blame for him not knowing where he lives. Asshole.
Another passerby, an old man, immediately ambushes me after the fact. He’s inside a jet black cadillac with the lights off – I don’t see him until he honks his horn at me. I jump out of my skin and realize this dude is parked a foot away with the engine off. He’s been waiting. The driver sticks his head out the window and yells.
“The fuck you doing in my spot?”
I look around. There’s no reserved parking signs. There’s multiple open spots nearby. But apparently I took his and there’s nothing this old man can do. I shake my head and blurt out, “Sir, I don’t give a shit.”
“You don’t give a shit?” He repeats, a little confused. He seems surprised a lowly pizza driver has the balls to talk back.
“Yeah, watch,” the Other Guy replies. I walk slowly to my car, fumble the keys, pretend to drop them. He’s honking at me the entire time, lights are coming on in the other apartments. People stick their heads out, including the guy I delivered to. It gets worse when I back out. I pump the brakes like a new driver every two inches with the emergency lights on. Then I wheeze my dying horn and I peel out. My face feels the familiar heat. Knuckles tighten, going white. Vision red. I pass a green light and for a moment, my face is washed emerald in the reflection of my rearview mirror. I notice my teeth are bared and clenched, like an animal.
Two hours later, a cyclist in all black with no reflectors on his bike blows through a stop sign, when I have the right of way. Soon as he crosses the beam of my headlights, I brake to a screeching halt. The Toyota groans in pain, but everyone is safe. Regardless, the cyclist yells at me like I'm the bad guy. I don’t hear every word, but if I have to guess it sounds something like, “Watch it, dumbass!”
This deserves retaliation. I roll down the window and shout, “There’s a stop sign you fucking retard!”
He turns his head and says something I can’t hear, before disappearing into the shadows of an unlit street. It’s quiet. My radio’s off because I’m sick of the same songs. There’s no cars, no animals, no crickets. Only me and the low rumble of my Toyota. Sighing, I carry onward to my next delivery.
The evening has yet to reach its crescendo. Another two hours later, I return from a delivery. I’m about to pull into my store's lot when I see there's a car blocking the very narrow driveway, which is the only way to get in. There’s no street parking left, because there’s already a line of delivery cars parked on the curb with their E-lights on.
Every driver is shouting through their windows for the blocking car to move. The driver of that car, while sitting beside his girlfriend, throws the middle finger at us. Then he lights a blunt and waves a dismissive hand as if to say, I don’t need to listen to you. I’m better.
I hear a low growl from within. Hulk strongest there is…
Pulling over a half-block down, I run inside the store and check if I have anymore deliveries to make. None yet. I step back out, hands in my pockets. I almost lost it earlier a few times already, but I was protected by the hard shell of my Toyota. Dismounted, I feel naked, vulnerable. Talking shit with nothing between me and the customer can be hazardous. So out of necessity, I remind myself to be casual and to put on my best customer service voice.
"Hello!” I say. “I'm sorry, but could you move your car please? We—"
Driver cuts me off. "Jose. Ortiz. Breadbowl. Vamanos." The hairs on my neck stand up. He doesn't look at me when he talks, only barks his reply at the windshield while passing the blunt off to his ugly girlfriend. So I say a bit more firmly.
"Yeah, I can do that, but you still need to move. You're blocking..." I pause to headcount. "...Literally six cars from entering. And 2 cars from leaving." As if to prove my point, an SUV from behind wails on the horn. This awakens the Puerto Rican Karen in the passenger seat. She crawls over her boyfriend, blunt clenched between her yellow teeth, and shouts:
"Where we 'sposed to park? You niggas ain't got no room back there. You niggas wan' us ta leaf? Get our food, faggot."
OK then. I stick my head around the corner of the building and aside from the two cars waiting to leave, I see a mostly empty parking lot. We have no room? We have no room? Oh no, oh jeez. I can’t stop it. Hulk strongest there is and I’m too weak to resist. And I don’t want to. These people aren’t worth the sperm that made them, much less my mercy. A fire burns inside. Every bad tip, rude remark, and missed hour of sleep bubbles to the surface. Bruce Banner ceases to be. There is only Hulk.
I have a mask on that the manager forces me to wear. I take it off as I lower myself to their level so they can really hear me.
I grunt back at them, "Listen to me you fucking dog people. Two things: one, I fucked both your mothers yesterday without a condom. I’m not gay, I’m your daddy. Second, turn around and look. You see all those empty spaces back there? If you weren’t dropped on your head as a kid, you would’ve realized that you could’ve parked your fat asses back there and no one would’ve bothered you. I advise you to move the car and if you don’t like it? Suck my cock… Anyway, I’ll be right back.” I run inside, grab Ortiz' order, but as I exit Domino’s, Senior Ortiz is already leaving.
"Shove it up your ass!" He screams, burning out with a wailing screech of his tires. Speeding off into the night, Jose Ortiz's escape is soon cut short. A passing cop car turns on its lights and pulls a quick U-turn, rushing ahead to pull him over. Both vehicles round the corner, out of sight, sadly, but I can almost hear Ortiz and the witch riding shotgun as they rage at the police for doing their jobs. I quietly applaud the lawmen. I guess blue lives do matter.
As if to punctuate the evening, business dies down soon after. Though we're still an hour and a hour from close, the only customers we get are the ones that were waiting for Ortiz to leave the driveway. I pass the last hour of my shift doing light chores around the store, replaying that moment in my head, still grinding my teeth. How good it feels, for but a second, before triumph passes into despair. I know it’s been the theme of my whole night, but I waited for that one moment for years. The moment every food server, pizza guy, retail worker, and anyone else in customer service craves: to finally tell a shitty customer off and get away with it. I’ve clapped back before, but this is the first time I openly insulted a patron, and then possibly gotten them arrested.
But my small victory is hollow; I still have three more shifts until I can kiss this gig goodbye. It leaves a bad feeling in my stomach. Not anger, but fear. Something tells me that Friday night is only the start of an awful series of events, of which I'd be smack in the middle somehow, with little compensation for my troubles. I would Hulk out again. The Other Guy, having tasted blood on the job, already has an appetite for it. Confirming it, I flip off a few idiots who park sideways in the lot behind the store. They see it and immediately fix their park, which they apologize for, but I'm horrified after the fact. This isn’t me. Is it?
It occurs to me why it’s a bad idea to tell off a customer. It's not that they don't deserve it. They have it coming every time. And it feels good. Great. Like ecstasy. But unless you're a sociopath, hating on the hateful only serves to turn you into one of them. It's more than a toxic cycle, it's radioactive. For years, the Hulk grew on my soul. Like a cancer. Reminds me of this line from the original Hulk movie from 2003, the one that nobody liked despite it actually being a good film. Nick Nolte is the villain, who happens to play Bruce Banner’s father. Nolte whispers to the Hulk in their final battle: "The more you fight, the more of you I take." Stupid, right? I shrugged the line off at the time, I was 9 when I watched the movie, far too innocent for it to click. It haunts me now. The more I fight, the more I lose, even when I win. How much of myself have I lost in these years of driving? Worse, how many more until I lose myself to rage completely?
I talk to Dad the next day and tell him what happened. He isn't disappointed, in fact he thinks it's kind of funny, but soon his tone turns serious. He looks me in the eye and begs of me, "You're a good kid. Don't grow up to be a grouchy old fuck like me."
It's nice when your parents admit their mistakes. Really closes the gap between you both, like now you’re on a level playing field with the same guy who used to wipe your ass. His words did ring for another reason. It stirred some memories in me.
I remember Dad worked sixty hours a week 5:30 AM to about 4PM. He made bank, but would come home already red in the face, furious from exhaustion. There was a half hour window where if Dad got bad news or somebody fucked with him, he would turn into the Hulk (or since he’s red, Red Hulk for my Marvel nerds out there). Slamming his sweaty, bootless feet on the hardwood, Dad would growl like a damn animal and turn his anger on the nearest thing. He wasn’t physically violent, but he would tear you a new asshole verbally. He made everyone in the house cry at least once. One time, Dad came home with a crossbow and fired that thing for 4 hours straight, ignoring dinner. He came inside looking guilty and embarrassed. Mom asked what happened and Dad said, “I shot the neighbor’s chicken.”
Killing small animals, that remind you of anyone?
Well, Dad eventually wised up and made a concerted effort to calm down. He started doing karate after work, which gave him an outlet and calmed him down. More than that, he would come home with a smile and all the love in the world to give. That said, he had to roundhouse people in the face to find peace.
He is a grouch, and my dad. He isn’t all one thing, not some demon in my closet, not a villain, no monster. He’s my dad. And I am him, he is me. Fury is in my blood. But I have no punching bags or dojos, only a pen to gush out my woes and a knife to carve my dreams. Used to be that I thought I was better than the old man because I didn’t have any kids to scream at, but these days I don’t know. In his defense, Dad was only angry because his dad was the same. And, my dad worked in a factory for years with heavy machinery that would cut off your hand if you slipped up, and he had to take care of three kids, and all three of those kids, myself included, were, are, and always will be, fucking insane.
This is how good of a man my dad is: he never laid a hand on any of us, but we would’ve deserved it for the antics we pulled. I once threw a banana at a total stranger in the park and yelled out, “Crystal Meth!” I don’t why I did that, I was five, no one knows where I found the banana, but point is, if that were my son, I would’ve backhanded him into the ground. All things considered, my dad was a saint. What have I to be mad about? Student loans? Wearing a stupid hat and smelling like pizza all the time? C’mon, son. I failed dad’s request before he ever asked it. I won’t become a grouchy fuck because I’ve already been.
With three days left to go out of my 2 week’s notice, I say to hell with it. I skip my shift with no intention of calling in. A mortal sin, I know, something I haven't done in years, but you know what? Good call. Instead of road raging, I enjoy my Saturday. I get drunk, pet some nice dogs, talk to a cute girl, jerk off, and finish moving my stuff into my new apartment. By the time I go to bed at the tender hour of ten at night, calm and relaxed, Jack is no longer a dull boy or an asshole. Jack is a sleepy boy.
The morning after I’m supposed to work, my coworker, Jay, hits me up. I'm preparing to smoke some herb when I get the call. Coincidentally, the street name is Sour Hulk.
Jay comes on the line and says, "It was a mad house on Saturday. People were literally setting cars on fire on Main Street. You couldn't go a single block without slowing down for a fire engine or a police cruiser. Every delivery was late, no one was happy, nobody got tipped. And y'know, I'm more than a little upset that you didn't come in to pick up the slack. What happened?"
For the briefest second, I'm tempted to tell Jay, the nicest dude, who I never had a problem with, to go fuck himself. But what good would that do? I hit the freshly rolled blunt in my hand, take a big drag, and reply:
“I was going mad. You wouldn’t like me when I get mad.”