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I'm a emotional Cripple (pt 1)
It's not really that bad, but it goes a-ways to explaining the funerial stillness in this patch of Blogi-slavia.
I should have come back and written post-after-post like the rest
of the Blog-sheviks that headed down south to the Big Easy
for a week of good-old-fashioned gemutlichkeit during that big
annual Cocktail Round-up we like to call Tales
of the Cocktail .
The others, stout and true, have done a right
tidy job of summing up the events, even providing pictorial evidence of
the grand camaraderie that is Tales. As
someone who's been attending for 3 or-so years, all I can say is this:
While it has vastly grown in scope, the same intimacy of the early years
still exists as the event gets bigger and larger. Five days of
enlightened ossifying, sozzling and jellicating without a single voice
raised (in anger), nor one fist cocked (let alone loosed) proves to me
that cocktail people are the coolest and easiest people in all of
Christendom. Friendships were made, not ended that week.
But I
couldn't post. I was wracked and paralyzed. So I didn't.
See, the thing was, was that while down in Crescent City I fell
in love with Her all over again--you know her, some
of you have even met her. She's maybe the greatest un-requited
love of my life and this time we were as close to consumating something
as we've ever been, and still, I let her slip away.
To
paraphrase:
I'm not dumb, but I can understand
Why she talked like a madame but she drank like a man......
Oh my NOLA!....
I ask you--Where else would you rather be in a mixed-up,
muddled-up, shook-up world than in New Orleans
LouisianA?
Me Neither!
So it was with heavy heart that I returned to Portland, the city what
spawned the Great Longfellow, now in the bi-centennial year of his
birth, who wrote his famed poem about a girl from Acadia (not far from
here) who longed for her beloved, exiled during the Cajun Diaspora to
the soggy spots not far from my--our-- New Orleans.
(Say
it with me): Evangeline!
Oh, How Cruel the Irony.
So I lay there for a week--sometimes on my bed, mostly on my couch and a
few times I sat upright on the fire escape doing the heady mathematics
of an unemployed man trying to skip town: If I leave now, I won't
have to pay rent, but I'd have to leave alot behind; If I pay rent and
leave next month, I'll spend more money than I'm liable to make from
eBay or Craigs List and than I'm stuck here AND homeless too.But if I Say
I'm gonna pay rent, but don't..........
Whiskey helped ease
some of the bigger questions out of the way-- to a point; I recognized
its false courage when the notion of hopping a freight train seemed like
a reasonable strategy and the entirety of my farewell speech was little
more than "Fuck 'em!"
In no time, another tantalizing
option did appear before me--this time New York! I resigned to lay down
again for a spell and try to think things out. But before I could even
summon up a thirst for a gin drink (New York and Gin just go together) I
realized I would be going "All-in" with a 4-7 off suit. I mucked my
cards before the flop(house) and turned back on the TV.
Cripple, Emotional, 1 ea (Pt II)
I made a stunningly bad calculation; my curiosity had left me vulnerable to any fool idea that might strike my fancy, and since my fancy hadn't been struck in a while, I was, as they say, a "target rich environment".
I opened up a conversation with a friend of a friend who was in his own personal shithouse: he was about to open his 2nd restaurant.
It was all so very, you know, casual and stuff....
"Do you need a bartender?" I heard myself asking, even before I thought my mouth had formed the words.
In my brain, I could have heard a pin drop, but out in the world...
I said I'd do it.
My Foot Loose and Fancy Free summer had come to a crashing end and I would have to start a-tending to stuff.
But, at the same time, a large weight --something along the lines of a now-grown Luc and his Lemon--fell off of my shoulders and I fell into the happy and familiar life of a "Job-bo" (a dirisive term that habitually unemployed denizens of my favorite DC bar used to describe people with, y'know, jobs).
So the last 2 weeks have been spent in that weird netherworld of the restaurant bizness-- The "New Restaurant Boot Camp".
It's a place in which restaurant lifers either thrive or die --The shifts start early, they end late and in between you bang your body into your new co-workers or pieces of equipment or both. And just when you feel like you're making headway, the ground shifts beneath you--the unfamiliar menu gets edited or the Wines By The Glass change or the placement of all of your tools or how you write (or enter) checks is suddenly different. Or some combination thereof.
Thrive or Die, my Friends, Thrive or Die....
There's also a ton of names to remember, co-workers as well as customers--a good number of which are an exercise in futility since they simply won't be back.
Until we get our rhythm down--our moves--there's lots of twisting, twirling, gyrations and contact.
Sure, I saw the dishmachine in the corner, I've seen it a zillian times this week, but I didn't expect the door to be left open, so....OUCH! Bruised shin.
Was that my elbow against your, you know?....I promise I'll try to be more careful......
There are drinks, of course, alcoholic beverages, and they cut into the sleep we've been putting off until later.
I'll sleep when I'm dead, we say, snidely quoting Zevon, till one of us points out the long dirt nap he's still taking.
Then again, drinks are a priority in the "New Restaurant Boot Camp" simply because that's what's to be got from such hard (and unrewarding in these early days) work.
In a nutshell, I'd like to think that the challenges and rewards of opening a new joint are somehow similar to an old Italian mason's satisfaction: Sure, it's one brick at a time, and each one matters, but in the end, it's the wall that counts.