Heavyweight - The Heavy Wait Diaries: Chapter 8

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

Heavyweight Season 4 begins September 26th. Until then, we bring you The Heavy Wait Diaries. Each Thursday, a new chapter will be presented to ease the burden of your wait. In Chapter 8—the final chapter—Jonathan takes a co-reporting trip. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Previously on Miller High Life Presents The Heavyweight Diaries We have a season premiere wrap party Timothy Nelson Roast beef Cheese slaw Ham salad I hate him

Tuna melt Hate everything about him Chicken salad Grilled chicken salad We've not been recording You cactus If today's reporting trip had any chance of success, I would need to do something no sane man has ever done. Rely on Timothy Nelson for etiquette advice.

What does one wear to a subway sandwichery, I ask? Are shoes and shirts permitted? There isn't a dress code, says Nelson. All dining has a dress code, I say. Toreador pants for tapas, leather vests for cutlets, and a tuxedo with an American flag cummerbund when imbibing Miller Highlight. Dress as you would for eating a sandwich, Nelson says.

A white woolen bib it is, I say. Nelson picks me up at dawn. Because I am filled with desperate energy and several root beer schnaupses, I fail to notice that my bib is stuck in the passenger door. Seeing me grow hysterical, Nelson continues driving at a sensible speed for several miles. It is only when I grow hystericaler and finally hystericalist that he pulls to the curb so I can yank my bib inside to safety.

Why are you wearing a cape? asks Timothy Nelson. What I am wearing, I correct, is a backwards reversible white woolen bib. And are you familiar with the Henry Heimlich maneuver? Because I'm considering ordering the whitefish. Outside the Subway sandwich, we go over a checklist of our recording equipment.

In the process, we learn that professional radio producer Timothy Nelson has forgotten to pack any batteries. After a good 10 minutes in which we volley blame to and fro, Nelson and I drive to a hardware store and purchase an extension cable to connect the recorder to the lighter in his van. It's only as we finish unraveling the several hundred feet of bright orange extension cord that it occurs to Nelson and I that we might better have used our visit to the hardware store to purchase batteries. How foolish, Timothy Nelson snorts. You must be certain to include this detail in your telling. I will tell it as it needs to be told, I tell him.

Timothy Nelson's deluge of suggestions peak when he suggests that, since the process leading up to the first episode has been so interesting, I should put out many episodes, one per week, detailing the experience. That is a spectacularly terrible idea, I snap. That will alienate our audience with frivolities and have them hitting the unsubscribe button in hordes. But in the ensuing silence, I secretly make a mental note to reconsider the idea. We arrive at the restaurant well past lunch hour.

I am famished. Bursting through the door, microphone extended like a divining rod, Timothy Nelson steps on my bib, causing me to fall onto my backside. Gazing up from the ground, extension cord tangled about my waist, legs, neck, and bib, I see a fluorescent menu wall. There is something called a meat ball sub. If the photograph is to be trusted, this culinary miracle is constructed by rolling meat into small balls and placing them, like happy little sailors, inside a submarine made of bread. Tugging on his pant leg, I tell Timothy Nelson that I would like to try the meatball. Don't tell me, he says. Tell the Subway Sandwich Artist.

Aha, yes, I tell him, with all the sarcasm I can muster. I shall immediately inform the Giotto of gyros, the Picasso of po-boys, the Miro of heroes. Rising off my fanny, or for those listening in Great Britain, my buttoxes, I catch the eye of the uniformed teenaged counterman. What can I get you guys started with today? He asks with a snap of what appears to be hospital gloves. I would like a meatball submarine sandwich, I say.

Absolutely, says the counterman. And what kind of bread would you like? I always have the Italian, says Nelson. Oh, really, I say, rising to my feet and casually adjusting my white woolen floor-length bib. From which part of Italy? Is it a piadina from Romania? Ooh, or a Tuscan ciacciata?

Don't tell me. It's one of those pane caffones they make in Campania? Because no thanks. You're embarrassing me, says Timothy Nelson. Oh, you can't stand to see me have a good time, I say. We are here on assignment, Nelson says. Fine, I say. Watch how a real journalist operates.

Say, I say, rising onto tippy toes and straining my recorder over the counter so that the spongy tip of my microphone grazes the counterman's lips. There was a sandwich my, um, friend here ordered that was, well, it was the wrong sandwich. And we were wondering, that is, my friend and we were wondering that is my friend and I were wondering if you might know who might have

prepared his sandwich. Hmm says the counterman a pubescent crack in his voice. Do you know when you visited? I can check the schedule.

April the 4th says Timothy Nelson with alacrity. Supper hour. I remember because it was my lady and I's 10th anniversary. As the hallmark jangle of hollow notes wafts out of the ceiling speakers, I stare at Timothy Nelson in horror. Makes sense something went wrong with the order, says the oily knock-kneed counterman.

April 4th dinnertime is Perry's shift. Perry, I ask? My dumbass brother, he snarls. Pushing my microphone ever closer so that the saliva-saturated nub is pressed firmly against his teeth, I press on. Sounds like you and your brother Perry have issues? Uh, yeah, he says.

Dude, the two of us haven't spoken in months. Months, I repeat, with a mix of empathy, curiosity, greed, and desperation. And that can get super awkward, he continues, since we sometimes work the same shift. Straining up onto the nails of my tippy toes,

I navigate the mic into the counterman's mouth, careful not to activate his gag reflex, but equally careful to capture each delicious narrative droplet of wet emotion. Interesting, I say, barely managing to contain my ecstasy. How did the bad blood begin? Perry stole my girlfriend, he says. And worst of all, she sits around here all day,

scarfing hot peppers and mayo and making googly eyes at him during his shift. Well, that sounds like the kind of problem that's unique to you, but that lots of people could relate to at the same time, I tell him. Like the kind of thing you've been putting off, but you want to address, possibly through the use of a third-party interlocutor. Uh, I don't know what you're talking about, stammers the sandwich artist of sadness. But, uh, okay. As Hall and Oates harmonize, I lock eyes with my co-reporter. Timothy, I say. I have work to do here. real work. And also, I never want to see you for

as long as I live. Well, see me you shall, as I'm currently stationed in your office at the union desk, he says. For once in his woe-begotten life, Timothy Nelson is right. But I'd worry about that sometime in the future. Because for now, I was a beautiful bumblebee, happily rolling around in the sweet nectar of storytelling. The heavyweight season had been saved. This has been the final chapter of the Heavyweight Diaries. The new season of Heavyweight will begin in one week on September 26th. Remember, the best place to listen to Heavyweight is on Spotify.

The second best place to listen to Heavyweight is in the emotional echo chamber of your beautiful beating heart. Heavyweight is me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Jorge Jost, Stevie Lane, Kalila Holt, and B.A. Parker. This episode was mixed by the wonderful Emma Munger. Music by Bobby Lord. Our ad music is Vivaldi Spring, performed by the Wichita State University Chamber Players. See you next week for Season 4.