Ah innocence - would I never learn?

The next day I got a phone call from an English gentleman with a name I didn't recognize. It was Insect Man. He had given the hostess his civilian name. He asked me out for coffee. Coffee turned out to be dinner for six at Dantana's with a famous music producer, a rising comedian, their girl friends, and Yours Truly. I was terrified. Suddenly I realized I had been listening to this guy's music ever since I was fourteen and that he was at least a decade older than I was. That would have made him all of twenty eight, but to my eighteen year old mind that was ancient. Did he know how old I was? Actually it probably didn't occur to him at all. Word on the street years later was that the man had a habit of picking up waitresses when he was in town. See? The fringe benefits just keep adding up! I was miles out of my league. MILES!

He didn't drive so I picked him up at the Chateau Marmont in my dope mobile. It was a perfectly serviceable Honda Prelude except that it had a bad habit of rear ending people. It was full of trash and bits of wardrobe. I might have cleaned it out if he'd indicated I would be driving. Then again I might not. Social genius was not something I'd yet developed. I still haven't, but I do clean out my car once in a while now.

When he answered the door, I just stood there staring. I couldn't understand a word he was saying through his thick English accent and my nerves were so jangled, I seemed to have lost the ability to decipher language.

What happened to coffee?!

Dinner was a disaster.

I nodded and smiled a lot. I don't think I strung together more than a handful of sentences all night. I discovered that I hate Chicken Parmesan. The comedian was thankfully happy to be the center of attention for the evening. He had a new movie coming out, a hot new wife, and he was at the top of his game. It was, sadly, the high point in this man's career. Let's just say he was no Robin Williams.

Big Time Producer Guy sat at the head of the table like the Godfather. His brother was the drummer for a mega famous eighties band. Insect Man couldn't have found a less sophisticated dinner date than me if he'd gone down to Venice Beach and solicited the homeless.

After dinner, we went to The Improv to watch Comedian Guy do stand up. Like the song says, Insect Man doesn't drink or smoke. I wanted large quantities of both in the most desperate way. At the comedy club I ordered a gin and tonic which I inhaled. When addessing the moments in my life that I needed a drink, this one still comes up near the top. Insect Man seemed slightly oblivious to the fact that I was experiencing deep shock. I don't recall much of anything he said to me because I never did find the on switch for my inner interpreter. But I'm pretty sure he said nothing if not nice. OK, I DO remember some things he said to me later on, but that's another memoir that I will write after my parents are dead. Of course I slept with him. What else is a girl to do? I didn't want to leave a bad impression.

Some time later I heard that Insect Man, back from England, came into The Moustache and asked about me. It was too late. While waiting on Pierre, I forgot the sauce bearnaise. Pierre looked at me as if I had just wet myself.

"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WORKING HERE?!"

I was fired the next day.

As I said - To be (or not to be) continued

Restaurant owners on the whole tend to be crazy, alcoholic or both. Pierre was a screamer. He screamed at everyone. His favorite battle cry (with thick French accent) was:

"THIS IS NOT A COFFEE SHOP! I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR THE PLATES HIT THE TABLE - IF I HEAR THE PLATES HIT THE TABLE, YOU ARE FIRED!"

Needless to say, I was fired in about six weeks. But I had entered into a new sisterhood. A coven if you will. A group of women mostly without claws, supporting one another in this cruel, humiliating world of indentured servitude with the fleeting hope we would soon be vindicated in the arms of fame and fortune.

As I said I was "really young" - eighteen - definitely the youngest on staff. Plus, I had NO experience except a brief encounter with a cash register in a deli. The girls tried hard to protect me, they really did, but it was hopeless. Even though they were hired for visual appeal, most of them actually knew how to do their jobs. One woman could carry four plates while balancing a fifth on her head. After twenty years I can still only do three. On my first day out of training I managed to spill a drink on the same woman three times. I must have looked truly pitiable because she kept saying, "Oh, you poor thing, it's okay." When the third glass of iced tea hit her lap, her eyes had begun to glaze over as she said this, but she continued to treat me like a lost kitten on the highway. I would never encounter this level of patience again.

"The Moustache" was a hot spot in the eighties for Hollywood. Folks like Prince or "strange mystic symbol," whatever the hell his name is now, Mick Jagger, and Morgan Fairchild, were among the now washed up celebrities that were reported to have dined there. OK, so Mick Jagger isn't washed up, but he should be.

In my second week a certain new wave rock star named after an insect, came in for lunch. He was hot even without the war paint. I was mesmerized. Why not? Hot rock star, hormone afflicted teenager, what do you expect? I was salivating in the kitchen when one of the waitresses suggested we go to his table and ask for his autograph. He was engaging and as I said, cute. He was wearing those little round wire-rimmed glasses. I LOVE THOSE! I still have his autograph, he signed a menu for me. It is on the red meat page. My waitress friend told him that he had made my day. He told her that I had made his day too, and that he was single.

Secrets and Lies!

I already told you that I didn't aspire to be a waitress. So I guess I have to tell you my dirty little secret. I haven't told anyone this in years. Ready? Drum Roll - Deep Breath - I was an aspiring actress. Yes, it's true. In my teens I wanted nothing more than to pretend to be somebody else and to be loved and adored by millions. Now, given that I had a slight substance abuse problem and the attention span of a housefly, this was never to be. I did acquire my SAG card playing an evil drug dealing punk rocker on a Christian television show. The character's name was Grace Jitlov (that's voltage backward, clever writer types). That was my one and only union job. My agent folded because one of the partners put all the revenue up his nose. It was the eighties after all. After that, I lost my momentum. It was questionable to begin with, but there you have it. Nothing interesting or new, just screwed up high school kid in Southern California; drops out of school with delusions of fame and fortune. I had to get a job or my mom would throw me out.

I was really young, really blonde, and cute enough. A friend of a friend got me a job at the "Now-Not-So-Famous-Moustache-Cafe" in "oh-so-trendy West Los Angeles." The owner was a volatile French guy with a huge handlebar moustache and a weakness for cute young blondes. I'll call him Pierre. Now I told you that Pierre liked blondes and I swear, every waitress in that restaurant sported varying shades of bottled blonde hair. Other than the fact that I had never taken an order, carried a plate, or even picked up a tray, I fit in nicely.

To be continued!!!!!!

Sigh!

Food service is not a place to which you aspire. It's a place where you end up. For the term, "Experienced Waiter Wanted," read, "Burned out middle-aged person whose life has been filled with false starts and poor choices, pretended to care about their job, feigned interest in the "dining experience" of ill-mannered customers, and has taken all manner of verbal abuse from pin-headed managers whose lifetime fantasies of personal power have finally been realized.

Restaurant managers are a special hybrid of food service burnouts. The only ones ever worth a damn are those who spent way too many years waiting tables and couldn't take the uniform anymore. So they thought it would be better to work twice as many hours a week for the same money. At least you can wear your own clothes and get a steak once in a while. Once they realize their mistake, they sigh and get on with it. Usually they do a decent job. This means they can get through an evening without the entire staff planning their assassination.

Then, there are the others; the evil changelings that, failing to take over the world, decided to get into restaurant management instead; emphasis on MANAGEMENT. Do you remember that kid in school whose mother always yelled at him in front of everyone? He always smelled like tuna fish and the teacher couldn't remember his name? Poor thing - he is now a restaurant manager. How about the bully who couldn't spell his name and spent recess picking on the Special Ed kids? Remember him? He is now a restaurant manager. What about all the guys smoking cigarettes in the parking lot in high school listening to bands like Led Zeppelin and getting stoned? No? Sorry, they are all waiters now. BUT the weird little guy they wouldn't hang out with is a restaurant manager.

Don't edit this, Mom!

My adult life can be described as a trek through a series of restaurants. I cannot distinguish one year from the next until I figure out where I was working at the time. At this point I tell people I've been a waitress for twenty years. I say this as I swish my long blonde ponytail at them and give them my best Malibu Barbie smile, so they know of course that some form of exaggeration is involved. I am over forty and have been waiting tables, tending bar, and now, managing for at least twenty years. If you throw in three years of part-time hostess and cashier work before that, you get twenty four or five - I can't remember. This is as much higher math I ever required until my son reached fifth grade. However, I am confident in its accuracy. By the time anyone actually reads this, my total official table service years will probably have reached and exceeded twenty. I will be an embittered, disappointed single woman pushing forty, having watched my cute years swirl down the john. Some of my more vicious co-workers would say that's the current description. Screw them; this is my book. Write your own pathetic memoirs.