REFLECTIONS FROM THE REARVIEW
  • Home
  • Hello and Welcome
  • Blog
  • Random Gatherings
  • My Book
  • FAQ

We Were Waiting......

7/13/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture
We were all twenty-something and waiting. Specifically, waiting tables at a downtown Mexican restaurant. It was a serving of personalities. The special of the day was always something different. The people who flowed through the doors of the restaurant were like the eye catching assortment that whizzed past your eyeballs under the bright overhead beam of a late night sushi bar, thrust into your face, and then out of view again, with no explanation asked or given.

You had to show some swagger to survive, or the work would devour you. Kevin for example, insisted to customers that he was really an actor. He was saving himself for the big part. Kevin was too proud to wear the mandatory printed paper sombrero held on by an elastic band under the chin.“That’s great,” said one businessman without looking up from his spread sheets. “How about you act like you are getting my steak now”? His associates sniggered. Kevin sniffed, and disappeared into the kitchen to retrieve the steak. On the way he also dropped it on the black and greasy floor of the bus station, ground it into the mire with his unpolished shoe, and spit on the reverse when he returned it to the plate. “Just how I like it”, the business man commented, munching with fork poised in the air. “Nice and tender”. He did not know that he who brings the plate always gets the last word. 

Hadar was a waif from an Israeli Kibbutz who looked underage. Her name in Hebrew, translated to “splendour” but that may not have been the first impression when her spindly marionette legs clackety-clacked their way to your table, pad in hand. She was urgent to make good in ‘America’, saving her tips for a promised land not arrived at. She lived with a Jewish man who had a good job at an investment firm and a downtown condo. He got a piece of the land every night, and she in turn, got the taste of capitalism that someone who grew up in semi communism might crave. Her boyfriend would joke to his cohorts that you had to fight with your girlfriend to keep her on her toes. “Tell her she is spending too much money,” he quipped. “That always gets a communist. Or if you want to go for broke, tell her she is getting fat. After the fight, you can aways say you didn’t really mean it. Anyway” he said, “the makeup sex is amazing”.

It was not just the waiting staff. It was the customers too. Dollar-eighty-seven man was one example. He did not know that he was an item of comedy. “Who wants dollar-eighty-seven man tonight?” the hostess called out. You knew he was coming because it was an hour and fifteen minutes before opening time at the cheap movie theatre next door. Tuesday nights he had his customary date with himself always dressed up in the same beige suit. He would have a glass of sangria, then the second glass you brought automatically when you saw the first glass coming to an end. You would place his order, which was an extra spicy burrito with extra diablo sauce on the side, followed by a fried ice cream and a coffee. The charm of dollar-eighty-seven man was that he was predictable. He always ate the same thing, at the same time, and was happy if he did not have to converse with the waiter because interaction created false expectations for a tip. You knew in advance that the bill would be $18.13 and he would leave a twenty on the plate and disappear five minutes before the movies let in. Dollar-eighty-seven man made life bearable because the low bar of expectations gave room for things to get better. His cheapness was like the proverb that if life serves you up a sh*t sandwich, you had better eat it fast. He was like the shiny picture of apple pie on the standup dessert card, provocative in its utter blandness. 

And then there was the dazzle of the golden American Express card. It was mute, just like what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, and it was padded every Friday evening with Brian Gold’s ‘business expense’ which always happened to be a different pair of vampish looking young girls whose combined age never matched his own. Salt and pepper, one blonde, and the other always brunette. Brian Gold would reserve a booth at the end, and the golden card would be produced proudly on the end of the table, like an excuse that offers itself beforehand just in case you were asking. “Keep it coming” he would say in nervous excitement. “Don’t ask questions. Just bring them whatever they want”. Brian Gold’s trollops, would order expensive drinks and send them back. They would do the same with food. They wore smeary lipstick and blackened eye makeup, and their untouched dishes were pushed away, sniffing. Their bored haughtiness was just part of the game. “Oh, aren’t they BAD? He would ask, licking his lips. Oh, my, what am I to DO with such BAD girls?” Brian Gold, needless to say, was a good tipper. It kept you quiet just like the card which paid well but held its tongue. 

Tony, the flaming gay waiter, kept a mink stole in his locker so that he always left his shift in style. He was kept by an silent older gentleman with white hair, which he claimed was the best arrangement possible. “It’s like getting your dad’s own wallet, and squeezing it for all it’s worth,” he claimed. Tony was full of informative tidbits encompassing all aspects of alternative sex whether you wanted to know or not. “You heterosexuals don’t know what you are missing,” he would scorn. He knew all the possibilities because he had worked the street when first arrived in the city, and would brag about his own version of buying up in life. “You know what the best aphrodisiac is?” he would ask. “Desperation. When somebody is old and desperate, they are willing to offer you anything to stay in the game. It makes you incredibly powerful.” Tony was proud as a peacock, and he especially hated having to serve the secretaries who came in groups to lunch on a Friday. They depleted their meagre paycheques on clothing and shoes, and before rushing back to their various office towers, they would dump a hurried pile of change on the table midst a clump of lipsticked napkins. Tony’s last day went out in style just like his mink stole. When he saw the backs of the secretaries hurriedly departing the crowded outdoor patio, he picked up a hefty handful of change and propelled it through the air like scatter shot from a cannon. “Oh Ladies you forgot your change” he yoo-hooed in a provocative falsetto. He relished their shocked faces frozen in the spotlight as the shower of pennies rained down on the pavement, each one ringing out a protest at their collective cheapness. It was a story he would tell again and again long after being shown the door.  

Then there were two head waiters who routinely tag-teamed sixteen hour shifts and bragged about how much money they made. The secret, they claimed, was to be so offensive that the customers would be scared to tip badly. I was too naive to understand at the time, that this was all a ruse. The energy required to fuel those sixteen hour shifts came from a pharmaceutical mix of shiny pills hidden in their lockers, and they commandeered the long shifts because they had learned how to jack the computer NCR system. The volume of a long day would allow them to boldly skim off a portion of cash which paid for their shiny red pills like one hand washing the other. Food theft showed up on the system, but their very audacity seemed to suggest different culprits. 

TJ the line boy was not so well hidden. Thinking to get in on the take, he had conspired with a waiter named Howard, to bypass the necessary ticket, and fry the house specialty ice-cream for a kick back of one dollar per dessert. Each ice cream cost three dollars and Howard would apologize to the customers that he had forgotten to include the desserts and coffee and would then hand write them on the tear off section at the bottom of the bill. This scam cleared him a tidy chunk of money from each table and he complained about his arrangement with TJ. “That kid is having it too good,” he said. “One third of the take and for what?” he would ask “Frying an ice cream? I mean, I’m the brains of the operation!”. TJ’s downfall came when his zeal got ahead of him and he was caught loading blocks of cheese and tortillas into his car at the end of a shift. The management was not amused. “That little jerk better not spill the beans if he knows what’s good for him,” Howard had commented. “He should’ve known that when you steal, you have to spread it out so that you are below the radar. “Incompetent.” He had said, dismissively. Howard was however, firmly against organized crime. Or so he had said, when he complained about the bikers who towed his beat up van. Two hundred dollars cash over the counter to get it back. “Those pricks,” he would say, “the system is rigged.” Howard who saw himself as a victim, did not understand the concept of irony. 

But all was not jaded. Love also flourished at Chi Chi’s Mexican Restaurant. Gary and Diana hailed from Elliot Lake, a long dead mining town in northern Ontario. They had come to the big city to breathe life into their dreams and they were saving up to get married. They were hopeless romantics whose homespun charm cancelled out each others’ imperfections so that they were perfect 10’s in each other’s sight. They were going to buy a piece of land up north where they would raise bare footed fat babies and grow old together watching the sunset from the back porch. At the end of a shift, they would exit hand in hand to a private paradise that existed somewhere out there beyond the smell of oily sweat and fried chilis.

I have always told people they should wait tables some time in their life, that it teaches you something, except that I could never nail down the exact lesson. Waiting might be the most appropriate of terms because it was the only thing we had in common. Waiting for something that had not arrived yet, just like the Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Godot. The point of the play is that Godot never arrives. What you are left with was the burning hunger. It hits me every time I hear one of the songs from the loop they played over and over at the restaurant. I am charged with suffused desire that only happens when life is spread out in front of you like a blank spreadsheet waiting to be collected.

And that, is exactly the point. The deliciousness of any endeavour is in the hunger of its anticipation and not in its arrival. Ask anyone over fifty and they will tell you. It’s not the things you miss, it’s the anticipation of things, that you may never feel again. 

We were waiting...


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    UNCOMMON
    ​THOUGHTS

    ...about common things. 
    ​

    Categories

    All
    Accidental Story
    Activist
    Adjusting The Recipe
    Adult Admission
    A Flannery O'Connor Moment
    After The Tiger
    A High Christology
    A Little Bit Redneck
    A Little Lower Than The Angels
    All About Widgets
    Allah Wallahi
    Al Low Vs The Man
    All Saints
    A Long List Of Thank Yous
    Amazing Grace
    A Month Of Sundays
    An Offer You Can’t Refuse
    Antique
    A Pile Of Wood And A Plan
    Are We There Yet?
    Artifact
    At Hand
    Attending To Beauty
    At War
    Bad-Ass Outlaw
    Bad Faith
    Badlands
    Baked Boiled Or Fried?
    Balcony Lady
    Beautiful By Design
    Beauty For Ashes
    Being Human
    Belial
    Beneficence
    Beware Of Men Who Cry
    Big Buts Of The Bible
    Blessed Are The Pew Warmers
    Bound For Beauty
    British Invasion
    Bronte Oak
    Bucket List
    But If Not
    But Is It Sandable
    But Is It True?
    Buyer Beware
    Camp Of The Unknown God
    Carlton The Delivery Man
    Chaos
    Cherry Top
    Class Monitors And Safety Patrols
    Clothing Optional
    Cloud Of Witnesses
    Contra Mundum
    Couldn't Not
    Counting The Cost
    Covid Cut
    Creed
    Crucified Man
    Dangerous
    Dangerous Chemicals Of My Youth
    Dieu Et Mon Droit
    Different Drum
    Distressed
    Doing The Lord's Work
    Do It Yourself
    Do-Over
    Do Something!
    Dreaming And Doing
    Edifice
    Egging Armour Hill
    Even As I Am Known
    Even Me
    Even Stranger Things
    Fallow Season
    Family Bible
    Family Business
    Fellowship Of The Brush
    Field Of Faith
    First World Chair
    Fit As You Go
    Fixing The Machine
    Flawed People
    Flock Of Angels
    Follow The Money
    For A Time Such As This
    Fortissimo!
    French Horn
    From A Distance
    Frozen Man
    Funny Words
    Genetic Lottery
    Gifting
    Good Bones
    Good God Almighty
    Good Government
    Good Luck Skippy
    Gott Mit Uns
    Greatest Is Love
    Gross Anatomy
    Grunt
    Haka!
    Hammer And Tong
    Hands And Eyes
    Happy Rooster
    Hearing Voices
    Hello My Juan
    Helping God Show Off
    Hidden In The Secret Place
    High Dudgeon
    History Bites
    Hockey Tape And Rubber Bands
    Holy Disorder
    Home Economics
    I AM
    I Cannot Help You
    I Could Be Wrong
    I Dare You
    Idiots
    If You Build It
    If You Get There Before I Do
    Im Khalil
    Impossibly Cute
    In A Strange Land
    Incarnation
    Influencer
    In My Own Time
    Inner FIfteen Year Old
    In The Details
    In The Usual Manner
    Invader
    Judge Not
    Just A Few Words
    Justice
    Just In Our Own Time
    Just Like God
    Keep Calm And...
    Keeper
    Keeping House
    Keeping On Keeping On
    KJV
    Knock Yourself Out
    Kumbaya
    Kybo
    Lamentations
    Lemonade
    Less Is More
    Let Me Count The Ways
    Let's Go RIde A BIke
    Linked In
    Little Boxes
    Liturgy
    Lo And Behold
    Logos
    LOL
    Looking Back On The Forward Looking
    Looking For Some Real Good News
    Lord Jesus It’s A FIRE
    Lorem-ipsum-dolor
    Lost-and-found
    Luck Of The Stable
    Magical
    Make-a-baby-laugh
    Make It Nice
    Maker
    Maker’s Mark
    Ma-pitom
    Marbles-in-spring
    Measure Of A Man
    Memory Box
    Men In Loincloths
    Men's Barber Shop
    Middle Ground
    Middleman
    Mistakes All In
    Montreal Spice
    More
    Morse Code
    Mosh Pit
    My Neighbour
    Myth Of Sisyphus
    My Wife The Movie Star
    Name Calling
    Natural
    Neighbour
    New Day
    New Wine
    Next To Godliness
    Next Year Country
    No Fancy Diagram Needed
    No King But Caesar
    None Deserving
    North Of Ground Level
    Nothing Particularly Important
    Nothing Personal
    Not Waiting For Godot
    No Wonder
    Oak
    One Coffee At A Time
    One Smart Farmer
    One Thing
    On Richard Rohr
    On The Lam
    On Writing Clearly
    Ordinary Time
    Out Of Egypt
    Over And Again
    Paint Over That
    Paper Boy
    Particularity
    Particulate Matter
    Part Of The Tradition
    Pater Noster
    Patina
    Pelagian
    Perfect
    Perfect Crime
    Perfect Ride
    Philosemite
    Pilate's Dilemma
    Pinky Swear
    Place At The Table
    Playing Favourites
    Pop-a-corn!
    Potato War
    Preaching Parrot
    Predators
    Prince
    Print Shop
    Prisoner Of Jesus Christ
    Proof Text
    Psalm 1
    Psalm 19
    Put Away The Books
    Putting Up The Lights
    Reduce Reuse Recycle
    Restoration
    Rosemary And The Drug Dealers
    Sandwich
    Say My Name
    Scars
    Second Naiveté
    Seeing Red
    Seven Sixty-Five
    Shouting From The Areopagus
    Shrove-tuesday
    Silent-witness
    Small-c
    Small-graces
    Sore-afraid
    Squat
    Starting With What Is True
    Street Food
    Superstar
    Take-a-punch
    Takedown
    Talking-head
    Talking Your Parents Down From The Ledge
    Telling-the-story
    Thanksgiving
    The-best-for-last
    The Bliss Of Ignorance
    The Church Invisible
    Thecrossingking
    The Evil Day
    The-general
    The Great Mystery
    The-joys-of-hash
    Themysteryofthecheshirecat
    The-particularity-of-place
    The-quickening
    Therefore-choose-life
    The Table-ness Of A Table
    The Way
    Though One Be Raised From The Dead
    Thoughts On Sixty
    Three Jews And A Gentile
    Thrice Wise
    Throwing The Spaghetti Against The Wall
    Timeless
    Time Vs Time
    Tim Falladay
    Tims No More
    Tonto And Me
    Touching Stones
    Trevor’s Super Bad Day
    Trick Key
    Tubafore!
    Unbelievable
    Under A Bush? HELL NO!
    Uninvited
    Unspectacular
    Use Gently
    Watching Paint Dry
    Wayside Chapel
    Weaker Sex (?)
    We Stand On Guard For Thee
    We Were Waiting
    What Are You Prepared To DO?
    What Lazarus Knew
    When Cows Fly
    When Odd Becomes Interesting
    Why I Still Like Cowboys
    Witness
    Woke
    Wood Show
    Woodworking Lessons In Empathy
    Words
    Words... The Right Tool
    Worthy Adversary
    You And Me And Rob

    RSS Feed

Contact Us

    Subscribe Today!

Submit
Picture
  • Home
  • Hello and Welcome
  • Blog
  • Random Gatherings
  • My Book
  • FAQ