Hey Pandas, What Was Your Wattpad Moment? (Closed)

Let me start by saying I was young, stupid, and just dropped out of college thus in desperate need of a job -- for that matter, three decades and one career later, I still am.

Anyway, I went through the phonebook looking for interesting sounding places. One of which was Heritage Amusement, which owned all the pinball machines in Athens, GA. Really cool, right, fixing machines, collecting quarters, making friends with the bartenders and store clerks on my route?

So I give the place a call: "Hi, I'm looking for work."

"Who gave you this number?"

"Um, it's in the phonebook."

"Oh. Okay."

So we get over that little quirk, and he says it's lunch time, can I meet up with him at the Arby's on the rougher side of town? Sure, no problem.

We meet, we talk, all's well enough.

He says to follow him, and I assume we're headed back to the Heritage building. We're not. It's a motel. And a seedy one at that.

But Fonzie's office was in the men's room, and this was just that sort of duche nozzle. I shrug; what the heck, I'm broke asf and getting nowhere fast. Cheap place, so I assume this is some sort of retreat where dude does a lot of his work away from the noisy warehouse or something. Whatever, there's no accounting for taste.

He starts taking off his shirt. "Let's start with a massage."

I look at him with that rounded o of great surprise, eyes big as moons, completely dumbstruck.

He looks at me with that rounded o of great surprise, as he thought I knew what position I was interviewing for: prostitute.

I got a job interview for the position of prostitute.

He was scared shitless that I'd rat him out to the cops. I was scared shitless that he'd kill me to ensure I wouldn't rat him out to the cops. We kinda nodded a mutual agreement that this never happened, and I was gone -- so very GONE.

Learned a lot that day. And a lot over the years since.

Dude was Reece, a member of the Dixie Mafia. They used the pinball machines to launder money. After Reece passed (and presumably some payments to some key people stopped coming), the FBI raided Heritage and took all the pinball machines as evidence.

I haven't played a good game of pinball since. But I have a fairly good story about that one time when my job interview skewed on the w-axis, the one we never learned about in school: Amusement, get it? I was applying to be the amusement.

FFS, FML.

I had two guys competing for me at some point. They both liked me and wanted to take me out on a date. It was very unpleasant as we were all in the same friend group and I ended up rejecting both of them.

As a great vocalist, I can sing just about anything. Working for a studio, the engineers knew my talents. After finishing my personal album, one engineer took me aside to ask for something special. I was hoping it was that proverbial “big break”. Nope. Completely different: he did sound for porn films on the side, laying in music and cleaning up audio tracks. On the latest film, sounds from the actors did not record well. With a male vocalist, we were asked to re-dub the noises they would be making during sex. Just the sounds. The film was projected in the studio, we stood in front of mics and followed their breathing to make noises at the right time. Couldn’t stop laughing when we looked at each other . . . so . . . back to back, one shoulder touching, we could tell when each other was taking a breath to make sexy sounds, no laughter. Covered it in about 2 hrs. So somewhere out there is an adult movie with my sounds of erotica. (For this project I demanded payment in cash -- NO screen credit. Not like I would have won an award . . .)

Probably simping over Tom Hiddleston and then I ran smack dab into him and couldn't talk. He laughed and said it was ok. The sweetest gentleman you could ever meet.

What is a Wattpad?