Cover blown, and all is well.
Chaired the meeting and then went to dinner with some of the guys at an "asian diner" concept restaurant I won't mention by name -- got their spicy Korean chicken -- big mistake.
I do not like Korean flavours. I am sorry, and I grant you maybe I've never had it right (although I seriously doubt that, this being the first time I had it in anything other than a little immigrant family's restaurant near a military base), but it always tastes -- forgive me please -- like garbage. Literally tastes like a really bad mixture of spicy rotten vegetables combined with a palate geared towards total clash of flavours that should rarely be used in isolation, absolutely never mixed. If I'd been raised on it I'm sure I'd love the stuff; I suspect it's just a cultural thing -- like those crazy East coast gringos who order enchiladas without chile. (You know who you are. You are completely and totally MAD!!!) I've had everything right down to pickled pork tongues and I love it all -- except Korean food.
It surely didn't help that there was easily a quarter cup of cornstarch in the glue holding it all together. I think that was an honest mistake, but I really don't know. I'll give them another try someday but I will stay away from anything with the word "Korean" in its name on the menu. Love your ceramics, but your food -- eh -- not for me.
Then to Foxes where we had a record-breaking night. Busy, busy, busy. Excellent crowd, excellent business. Stocked the product up to par two times tonight before we even closed -- it's never happened that I've needed to, 'til now.
The guy I took to the Heights Club on New Year's Day came in with Michael from the Chevron station, for whom he now works. He's still a mess but managed to hold on to his apartment, has a new job, is no longer afraid of going to jail, and is scrambling like mad to put his life in order. Maybe he can do it, who can say. I wish him nothing but the best.
He very casually blew my cover, too -- was bound to happen sooner or later. Martinique and Chip and a bunch of others were over in the Bitches' Corner (where else?) and he told 'em where I took him that night he fell apart inside the bar and how much he hated it at the time but how it scared him into thinking straight (or at least thinking that he's thinking straight, and who the hell am I to judge?), even if he is still drinking. Pretended not to hear (amazing how "into" my cellhpone I can get at a moment's notice), then saw 'em all looking at me completely dumbstruck.
The heavy silence lasts a whole second. "THAT doorman?" shrieks Martinique, disbelievingly, hand upturned, pointing her long, glistening fingernail in the direction of the notorious doorman of the infamous night of the thirteen martinis. It's the *third* time she's been struck completely speechless by something I have done or said. (Yeah, I'm keeping count.) "Yeah, him" he says. I shrug my soulders with a goofy grin as if to say "what else could I do?"
No one really knew quite how to react 'til Chip, god bless him, smiles, nods, and gives me the thumbs up from behind the bar. If Chip says it's OK, then it's OK, 'cause no one *ever* wants to disagree with Chip. Maybe he figured it was fitting punishment for the guy who'd bugged him in the ice room, or maybe he just wanted the conversation to take a different direction, and fast. Who can say. The conversation shifts to other things and it's forgotten just as casually as it came up.
Whew.
OK. Here's something for the AA crowd to ponder just in case any other of you people are out there reading. It's about service work and I am seriously baffled.
I have heard it's possible to do people a grave disservice by "not letting them hit bottom". Perhaps I did exactly that with this guy. But -- I ask you -- what else could I have done? Push him out the doors and land him like a hurt, overturned turtle in the parking lot? Broken his fingers in the door? He wasn't violent; he was just very, very sad, and drinking really hard. Distraught. He wanted to be around people and talk with me about how he had just that very night "lost everything" without quite being able to figure out exactly what went wrong.
The Heights Club was the only place open after the bars closed. He was desperate. I gave him exactly what he said he wanted, but not in quite the place he had expected to receive it, and finding out where he was provided a shock to his system which had been on autopilot 'til he saw the coffee, which he definitely wanted. I did it in the same way I make calls to shelters and suicide hotlines when that is what's needed. Social service agencies exist to help people who need help, and the Heights Club is (in my understanding) a social service agency. When they can be of immediate assistance to me, when I'm dealing with a customer who needs help but can't think of anybody else to turn but the doorman who'll listen to him for a half a minute before turning him out onto Central, what else am I to do?
My thinking on the matter -- and yes, my understanding's very limited -- is pretty much straight up blue book: maybe he isn't alcoholic. It's not my place to say. Only he can make that determination. Maybe he can control his drinking. He clearly didn't want to stick around for the meeting, but did pull himself together just enough over spilled coffee to think of something concrete he could do in his situation which half an hour before had looked completely and totally hopeless.
So please, before you judge me, do consider what it's like to be the doorman at a bar. These several months of posts should give you at least some inkless inkling. But seriously -- I would *love* to know how other people would have handled it.
Enough of that. Just to freak everybody out completely now, I shaved my head. My self-administered haircut from a few weeks back was starting to look really just plain wrong and I did not want to spend the money or the time on a haircut. I've thought about shaving my head for a very long time and being told by Martinique that I should do it thought more seriously about it still and have spent the last several weeks quietly studying the appearances of all the shaven heads belonging to persons that I know.
It feels really weird. Really, really, really weird. I like it. But it feels really weird. I guess I will get used to it. And if I don't, I'll just let it grow back.
Enough for now. Be well!
I do not like Korean flavours. I am sorry, and I grant you maybe I've never had it right (although I seriously doubt that, this being the first time I had it in anything other than a little immigrant family's restaurant near a military base), but it always tastes -- forgive me please -- like garbage. Literally tastes like a really bad mixture of spicy rotten vegetables combined with a palate geared towards total clash of flavours that should rarely be used in isolation, absolutely never mixed. If I'd been raised on it I'm sure I'd love the stuff; I suspect it's just a cultural thing -- like those crazy East coast gringos who order enchiladas without chile. (You know who you are. You are completely and totally MAD!!!) I've had everything right down to pickled pork tongues and I love it all -- except Korean food.
It surely didn't help that there was easily a quarter cup of cornstarch in the glue holding it all together. I think that was an honest mistake, but I really don't know. I'll give them another try someday but I will stay away from anything with the word "Korean" in its name on the menu. Love your ceramics, but your food -- eh -- not for me.
Then to Foxes where we had a record-breaking night. Busy, busy, busy. Excellent crowd, excellent business. Stocked the product up to par two times tonight before we even closed -- it's never happened that I've needed to, 'til now.
The guy I took to the Heights Club on New Year's Day came in with Michael from the Chevron station, for whom he now works. He's still a mess but managed to hold on to his apartment, has a new job, is no longer afraid of going to jail, and is scrambling like mad to put his life in order. Maybe he can do it, who can say. I wish him nothing but the best.
He very casually blew my cover, too -- was bound to happen sooner or later. Martinique and Chip and a bunch of others were over in the Bitches' Corner (where else?) and he told 'em where I took him that night he fell apart inside the bar and how much he hated it at the time but how it scared him into thinking straight (or at least thinking that he's thinking straight, and who the hell am I to judge?), even if he is still drinking. Pretended not to hear (amazing how "into" my cellhpone I can get at a moment's notice), then saw 'em all looking at me completely dumbstruck.
The heavy silence lasts a whole second. "THAT doorman?" shrieks Martinique, disbelievingly, hand upturned, pointing her long, glistening fingernail in the direction of the notorious doorman of the infamous night of the thirteen martinis. It's the *third* time she's been struck completely speechless by something I have done or said. (Yeah, I'm keeping count.) "Yeah, him" he says. I shrug my soulders with a goofy grin as if to say "what else could I do?"
No one really knew quite how to react 'til Chip, god bless him, smiles, nods, and gives me the thumbs up from behind the bar. If Chip says it's OK, then it's OK, 'cause no one *ever* wants to disagree with Chip. Maybe he figured it was fitting punishment for the guy who'd bugged him in the ice room, or maybe he just wanted the conversation to take a different direction, and fast. Who can say. The conversation shifts to other things and it's forgotten just as casually as it came up.
Whew.
OK. Here's something for the AA crowd to ponder just in case any other of you people are out there reading. It's about service work and I am seriously baffled.
I have heard it's possible to do people a grave disservice by "not letting them hit bottom". Perhaps I did exactly that with this guy. But -- I ask you -- what else could I have done? Push him out the doors and land him like a hurt, overturned turtle in the parking lot? Broken his fingers in the door? He wasn't violent; he was just very, very sad, and drinking really hard. Distraught. He wanted to be around people and talk with me about how he had just that very night "lost everything" without quite being able to figure out exactly what went wrong.
The Heights Club was the only place open after the bars closed. He was desperate. I gave him exactly what he said he wanted, but not in quite the place he had expected to receive it, and finding out where he was provided a shock to his system which had been on autopilot 'til he saw the coffee, which he definitely wanted. I did it in the same way I make calls to shelters and suicide hotlines when that is what's needed. Social service agencies exist to help people who need help, and the Heights Club is (in my understanding) a social service agency. When they can be of immediate assistance to me, when I'm dealing with a customer who needs help but can't think of anybody else to turn but the doorman who'll listen to him for a half a minute before turning him out onto Central, what else am I to do?
My thinking on the matter -- and yes, my understanding's very limited -- is pretty much straight up blue book: maybe he isn't alcoholic. It's not my place to say. Only he can make that determination. Maybe he can control his drinking. He clearly didn't want to stick around for the meeting, but did pull himself together just enough over spilled coffee to think of something concrete he could do in his situation which half an hour before had looked completely and totally hopeless.
So please, before you judge me, do consider what it's like to be the doorman at a bar. These several months of posts should give you at least some inkless inkling. But seriously -- I would *love* to know how other people would have handled it.
Enough of that. Just to freak everybody out completely now, I shaved my head. My self-administered haircut from a few weeks back was starting to look really just plain wrong and I did not want to spend the money or the time on a haircut. I've thought about shaving my head for a very long time and being told by Martinique that I should do it thought more seriously about it still and have spent the last several weeks quietly studying the appearances of all the shaven heads belonging to persons that I know.
It feels really weird. Really, really, really weird. I like it. But it feels really weird. I guess I will get used to it. And if I don't, I'll just let it grow back.
Enough for now. Be well!
posted by xeltifon at 6:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home