Now, news that Ken has gotten a job in the dive bar in Nelson. For the moment he's liking it, and I'm a little saddened because one of the highlights of my summer at work was finding new and inventive ways to wind him up...
Ken, Ken, had the patience of Job and would generally just look at you with a "What did I ever do to deserve this?..." look upon his face, before occasionally reaching for his knives which signaled it was time to get back to work.
To begin, Ken, as of late, had taken in with Jessica, the homeless woman living out of her car on the Ferry Landing. She had been slowly starving to death, in a spiral of being unable to make any decisions regarding her life. She was the dine and dash that we caught. So, after taking her for Thanksgiving Dinner I charged Ken with keeping her alive, bringing her food from time to prevent her from starving. Ken was too willing to oblige. Soon they were living together - not LIKE THAT, but you could tell, Ken, Ken, he had hopes. They called each other "Partner" and she went and got a job at the Hotsprings and Ken got a job in town and they found a small place to live together in Balfour.
To hear Ken describe it it was just going to be a matter of time. There were backrubs and petty domestic squabbles and they would make up.
I got to hear it all, or as much as he would tell me, which probably still too much given my incessant roasting of him.
From his descriptions he was "In like Flynn". Read between the lines and this was not going to work out well. Ken, he's used to being "Friendzoned" but this, this was "Petzoned". In the end, shortly after he got his new job he was sick for a couple of days, during which time Jessica was sick as well. Well, not sick, she just called in sick to the Hotsprings. And when finally Ken dragged his ass out of bed to go to work he came home to find a note declaring him "The Best Friend Ever" and his carton of cigarettes missing. Jessica had vanished. He checked his computer, saw that she had been googling Grand Prairie, driving routes, figured out that she was off.
So ended the best potential relationship he never had. And while you knew, you knew, she was - unstable? - maybe not the word. Maybe just down on her luck and the intolerable friendship that saved her just provided her with enough incentive to find her way home. I mean - really, the weather was snowy, shit, and to consider heading back to Grand Prairie - in the winter - well, things had to be dire. She knew she was being suffocated, groomed, Ken lacks a certain required degree of chill around women, his hopes heaped upon her slender shoulders probably proved to be too much.
Anyways, Ken in mourning, Ken now grieving yet another romance trampled before it had a chance to bloom.
***
So, Ken, starting at the restaurant some 5 years ago, a few weeks after me which meant I was his "senior" and could roast him as I saw fit. Back then I knew Ken from the Superette, where he'd worked previously, the convenience store clerk of perpetual good nature, everyone knew Ken, and so it was like a bit of "Celebrity Apprentice" when he came to work for us. And of course I'd take the piss. When customers sat at the bar I would yell into the dish-pit questions about the well he had in the basement and his butterfly collection and the van he prowled the ferry landing in and what's with all those missing women posters, huh?
And the customers would laugh and Ken would bristle and stick his head through the small dish-pit pass and glower at me like Oscar the Grouch.
Back then, Ken wasn't the only one, there was the alcoholic chef complaining about his alcoholic girlfriend's health issues, she was sickly, blind, and I would suggest maybe he should just drive up the highway with her, throw a can of Bud out the window, let her go, somebody would find her, she'd be fine....
Or the two younger guys, 19, 20, members of a "Boy Band", and I could easily divert myself roasting them. Or the other service staff.
In time, though, over the next few years we got fewer and fewer staff, chef's, the Pandemic was the final wedge, most of our kitchen staff was now teenagers, in high school, and not the sort of people I could roast with the same impunity I could Ken. And Ken, ever good natured Ken, well...the whip that once cracked over the whole crew became squarely focused on him.
I would warn the new staff about him. About how they were never to turn their back on him and never, ever, bend over in front of him. I made them practice saying "No, KEN, DOWN, DOWN" and shake their legs. I would tell them about how worldly he was and how he could say: "How much is a blowjob????" in 12 different languages. Or about his origin story, which was that basically you just had to dig a basement and a Ken would appear, most construction crews would just whack him with a backhoe and fill it in, but this Ken, Our Ken, he'd escaped. And I would do David Attenborough styled narrations of his life: "Kenneth in the Springtime. It is spring, and the Ken is emerging from his winter long slumber. Appearing in the doorway to his basement, clad only in a towel, the Ken lights up a cigarette and begins to try and attempt to attract a mate. He is the last living member of his species. His nest, feathered with soiled pizza and poutine boxes, awaits, as it has for 30 years now, the loving attention ..."
And so it would continue. I would tell the new hires about Ken's "Special Cocktail" which was basically just Date-Rape-Drug and how you'd wake up dressed funny and posed all around his basement, never remembering anything but pretty sure you'd had a good time.
Or about how they should never, ever, visit his "Only Fans" page, and then, under the shock of it all refuse to discuss it further but allude obliquely to raccoon costumes and his kittenish clawing at the camera from a red-velvet bed...or introducing him to the female customers with whom he had some sort of acquaintance as the "King of Balfour", only under some sort of evil enchantment, if only he could get a kiss from an honest woman he'd be restored....
I don't need to tell you he never did.
I would do my creepiest Ken voice and tell the new hires they "Must puts the lotion on it's skin...", or brag him up by telling them that he was one of the bestselling authors in the "Bigfoot Erotica" community, sadly he wouldn't give me his pen name but I have heard through the grapevine that he's very highly regarded...
Sometimes I'd forget to tone it down, forgetting that our staff, now largely under 18, under 16 even, they didn't have the necessary cultural background and reference points to appreciate how vividly I was painting his character. Ken, unfortunately, did, and would invariably try and interrupt my praises....
Anyways, dammit, Ken, Ken, Ken, has gone and found another job.
I'm pretty sure he's going to miss me.