Restaurant Gal

Most local folks in these parts live today while thankfully leaving behind or only looking forward from what used to be–running through their drinks while running in their places, silently cheering themselves on as they cross the finish line that means they never again have to live who they once were.

I used to own… I used to have… I used to be…

“Here’s what I want to say,” said one.

“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you say this,” said another.

“I just can’t spell worth a damn, but I know what I want it to look like” said a friend as he furiously scribbled notes.

“What’s up?” I asked as I tossed a bucket of ice into my tiny bin.

“Gotta get a notice in the paper,” said the one who said he couldn’t spell.

“In ten minutes,” laughed the other.

“Maybe next week,” smiled the third.

“Well, um, maybe I can help a little,” I said, wondering why I had spoken up. “I used to do some writing and editing back in the day,” I said, wondering why I felt compelled to add even a shred more information.

Blank stares.

“I mean, you know, in my former life,” I laughed, wondering why I had to excuse myself and my knowledge.

“You did what?” asked the one I know the best because we are of the same age, but whom I really know nothing about.

“I, uh, I used to be a writer and editor–but really small time, nothing big, nothing great,” I said, feeling extraordinarily uneasy. “So, maybe if you need a hand with whatever you’re doing, you know, maybe I can help?” God, shut up, I scolded myself.

One shoved the legal pad toward my side of the bar. The other laughed. The third looked to the smoky ceiling and mouthed a silent “thank you.”

I scanned the notes, seeing immediately that it was a notice for a local event to raise funds for a local need.

“Can you make it, I don’t know, better?” asked the one I knew as much as I did not.

“Well, how about a headline that reads…” I said, and jotted my own notes atop his.

In a few short minutes, with very few changes, the notice was written to everyone’s satisfaction. One produced a computer from a backpack, logged on to someone’s nearby wireless, and the newly typed notice made its way through the breezy airwaves to a local paper miles away. Deadline met.

“Awesome, RG, thanks!” said the one I really don’t know.

“I barely touched it,” I laughed. “You guys did all the work.”

“Yeah, but…”

But nothing.

Later that night I dreamt I was back in D.C. tending my locals bar that had, in the way that dreams contort reality, become a D.C. bar.

“Hey RG, phone call,” said my boss who never answers the phone in real life, but who answered all the calls in my dream.

“Hello?”

“RG, ABC News here. We’d like to offer you a documentary producer’s position–for specials we have in mind that match your talent.”

Right.

“RG, phone call!” said my boss again.

“Like your style,” said the publisher. We see a book, a screenplay. We’ll up ABC’s offer. How soon can you be up here?”

Huh? What? Really?

And then I got lost in my city trying to find their offices, wondering whom I should pit against whom in negotiating a network salary vs. a screenplay advance, all as I signed a lease on a basement apartment that wouldn’t allow dogs, so I’d have to sneak them in, if only I could find a place to park so I could make the ABC interview in time–and should I tell them about the potential other deal? Because my great guy had to work a double and he didn’t know I was even in D.C. negotiating this unbelievable offer all because of a newspaper notice, except they said they knew all about my writing and I was the one, their one….

“RG, here it is!” smiled my customer a few days later.

“You made it look good,” said the other.

“Guess this was pretty easy for you,” said the third whom I will never know.

“Looks good, guys. You did all the work, though,” I said, scanning the one-paragraph blurb. “I just tweaked it a little.”

The one I wish I might someday know stared for half second, then held up his empty mug. Which I filled.

Someone wanted lunch. Another wanted a Beam and Coke. Three out-of-towners asked directions to places I didn’t know.

ABC. Screenplay contract. I laughed to myself. What crazy dreams I had, just the other day.

“People actually drink at 7:30 in the morning?” asks a friend who works in an office far, far away from here.

“Oh my God, seriously, you have business at that hour?” asks another from another city.

“They must be complete and total alcoholics,” frowns another who lives close by.

Yes.

Yes.

Probably. Maybe. Actually, I don’t know.

Because just when you think you know, just when you get your smug I’m-serving-you-and-judging-you-at-the-same-time attitude in full-blown arrogant mode, just when you figure you’re so much better than they are, you realize you are not.

Because you have never faced the uncertainty of death from an unseen enemy. Because you have never worn a uniform that garnered not one ounce of respect when you came home from death’s uncertainty. Because you don’t know what it is like to have the unending nightmares and bad dreams from which you pray for escape when you fall asleep at 6 p.m. and wake up to begin your day at 2 a.m.

By 7:30 a.m. it is mid afternoon to these tired guys who are likely your age, but are so much older. Time for a beer. Or several.

They are never annoying. They are never demanding. They never get drunk. They simply drink their beers and listen to the Pandora “Alternative Country” station I play on a Bose dock through my iPhone because my bar has no music unless I play it this way.

“Man, I woke up at 1 this morning. I hate it when I do that,” says Joe.

“Hate that,” says John.

As they study their small mugs, please-no-pints of Miller Lite, I am at a loss for conversation. I turn up the music instead.

“Hey RG, looks like your daughter is calling,” laughs Joe.

This is the downside of playing music through a Bose dock on your iPhone that doesn’t seem to work unless you allow calls and texts to come through, albeit on silent mode. The names and texts still flash across the screen.

“I’ll catch her later,” I smile. I am afraid to touch the damn phone because it takes forever to get it to again produce the soothing sounds of an “Angel from Montgomery” duet by Bonnie Rait and John Prine through the Bose dock when I do.

I check my beer stock. I wipe down the bar for the tenth time in a half hour. I empty ashtrays filled only with ashes. I steal a glance at my boys’ haggard expressions and wild gray hair partially pulled back into ponytails. I try to envision what they looked like in the 60s–so young, so naive. In a way, they still are, if I listen to them, look at them just so.

“Who drinks beer at 7:30 a.m.?” laughs a friend.

“How do you stand it?” wonders another.

“Why don’t you work in a tourist bar closer to home?” asks someone else.

Because I don’t know many fru fru drink recipes. Because I despise blenders. Because I want to be the one bartender in this tiny Keys town who gets these guys who go nowhere else because they cannot. They just can’t.

Because in our ways, we know each other’s limitations, we embrace them, and we never tell on the other. When my daughter calls. When a beer tastes mighty good at 7:30 a.m.

“So, how is everything that you haven’t been writing about?” asked a friend who, stating the obvious, wondered why I haven’t been posting as much of late.

Life has a way of becoming quite full:

–I work a 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. shift. In reality, it’s 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. when you figure in the time to wake up and commute almost an hour. Mornings? everyone wonders. Days? Isn’t the money to be made at night? Yes, mornings. And yes, money is to be made during the day. I asked for the day shift after dealing with drunks who’d been knocking back booze all day before I came on the night shift. Nothing like cutting someone off at 5:31 p.m. The result–I have full-time day shifts, am building a nice following, and am happily content.

–This past Saturday night, the other girl no-called/no-showed, so it was a long, long double, followed by doing it all again Sunday morning to cover her shift. Not that I am complaining, because the money is always welcome. The bonus: I now permanently have her Sunday morning shift.

–Then there was the ill-fated watching of the Westminster Dog Show. What, no Bostons in the final group? Which led to my wondering whatever happened to Rouletta’s puppies, which was followed up by my contacting the breeder from whom I’d gotten Rouletta to ask about those puppies, which ended with my hearing that Rouletta’s puppies were doing well on the show circuit–and my agreeing to take on another 6-year-old retired female show dog.

“She’s a little overweight after her last litter,” the breeder warned me. “And be careful getting her and Rouletta together right away. It’s been two years, and they probably won’t remember each other.”

A most rotund bowling ball on legs arrived arrived at Fort Lauderdale Airport this past Sunday evening, just as the hockey game went into overtime. I hauled her out to the curb as my great guy patiently circled around listening to the game on the radio, Rouletta in the front seat with him.

When I freed her from her crate, Miss Fatty huffed and puffed and snorted and sniffed. But the minute she saw Rouletta, it was kisses all around. Who says dogs don’t have long memories? Fond memories.

Thus, I now have to transform another kennel dog into a house dog, which I had conveniently forgotten about doing with Rouletta. So far, so good, but a lot of work to do.

Meanwhile, the stories are swirling about in my head, and I’ll write them soon. As my aunt said during a recent phone call, “You have three different books in you; at least write one of them.” I will. And I hope to soon post more frequently as well.

But first, I have to get a pork chop pup in shape.

As one who despises the first day of any job and struggles with a ridiculous lack of self confidence through the first week, I decided to torture myself by counting up my recent employment firsts–four in three months. And I feel like I might be forgetting one.

Job one–event planning in Key West. I knew at the end of day one that something was not quite right. I forced myself to hang in for five weeks, however, thinking it was just my first-week insecurity run amok. Should have bailed much sooner.

Lesson learned: to never again ignore my inner voice, especially when it is screaming at me.

Job two–Maitre d’/glorified host. Actually, I enjoyed this job, despite the close friend of the owner who vented his intense anger at me because I didn’t recognize him my second, very busy night on the job and made him wait a half hour for a table that wasn’t the one at which he “always” sat. I knew I was making progress with my first-week syndrome when I casually mentioned to my manager that the guy at table 211 needed to tell someone other than myself how inept I was. When my manager laughed it off after personally taming Mr. Self-Important Regular’s ruffled feathers, I laughed with him. Definite progress. Unfortunately, the greater HR powers of the restaurant never understood what I was supposed to be paid. I really couldn’t live on the promised pay, much less…less, and it was only after I left Key West that I received my retroactive back wages a month later.

Lesson learned: that at least one decent manager existed in Key West, and that I could eliminate my first-week insecurity crap by simply doing my best and caring less.

Job three–Bartender. When I arrived for my first day at work and was handed a ring full of keys and a bank and was told to “go open the outside bar,” I put aside my first-day angst during a 20-minute endeavor to figure out which key went to which locked door, storm shutter, cooler, etc. A manager finally showed up to show me where a few things were that I “might need”–like ice and back-up booze. My first order was a virgin pina colada, during the making of which I burned up one rusted blender and laid hands on the other to will it to work. No tip. By the end of the shift, I’d concocted multiple “lemonade” drinks for a vacationing couple who said they hadn’t been home for months, three vodka/crans and a Bloody Mary. Total tip take: $19.

Lesson learned: My inner voice only needed to wink at me. Done and done.

Job four–Bartender. I have to commute almost an hour to another town for this one, but no matter. I was nervous for only the first half hour and then got right back into the ebb and flow of tending a locals bar very far off the tourist path. By my second shift I knew the cast of regulars. By my third shift, some of my former customers from my previous locals bar had found me, despite the distance. Very nice. It’s a decent job, for now, but I may have to supplement it with a second one.

Lesson learned: Lessons, lessons everywhere. Gotta recognize them as they happen; gotta learn from them as you can. Until the next one.

It is cold. Again. Not cold like the 40-inches-on-the-ground-cold in D.C. Not cold like the 4 to 8 inches about to fall in Atlanta tonight. But Keys cold: 40s at night, 60s during the day. Cold enough to make the tourists happy not to be anywhere north, but disappointed enough that it’s not warm enough to be hot.

As I mix up drinks I have never made before and brand them my own concoctions because I make up the ingredients, I tell the tourists where to go, and they go there. I know this because I see them later when I am off and out. After a first day on a job with no training, I am pleased that my drinks and advice have garnered smiles from a few. Hell, vodka’s vodka. Rum is rum. Add pink or green, and voila–that’s how we make it in the Keys.

It’s cold. Again. I am tired of it, but how can you complain given all that is going on in the much, much colder north? You don’t. You wear a sweatshirt over two other layers and tell the tourists it won’t last long. Even though it will. Me bad. I lie.

I am broke. Totally. Done. I have been a month without one dollar coming in, compared to so much being paid out. I am three months without anything close to what I used to make because my two Key West employers were so full of shit. I am waiting for back pay from my second Key West job, hoping it includes retroactive back pay for the difference in what I was told I’d be paid and what actually appeared in my paycheck during the one month I held my second job. I am not holding my breath. But I still hope, even as I marvel that at my age I had two jobs back-to-back that never paid me a promised wage.

My great guy is cooking a great meal, as he always does. Rouletta is hovering about, hoping for a treat, which my great guy always gives her. We bought a zillion pounds of meat at Winn Dixie last week, because it was buy-one-get-one-free. Our freezer is full. So are our stomachs each night. I may be broke, but I am well fed. My great guy makes sure that I am, even though some days I’d rather nibble rice crackers and cheese slices, but I never tell him this. Even though he already knows this.

My great guy’s current job pays him the correct amount, as it always did before we ventured south to Key West. His tips are good, except when the weather is cold, as it is now, and the tourists reconsider eating at his outdoor place.

In our cold apartment, which is huge and beautiful compared to the Key West hovel, we enjoy two-for-one rib eyes and stupid-cheap baked potatoes. “I made a salad, if you want one,” my great guy offers. I just smile and shake my head.

It is cold. We are so broke after the Key West disaster. Since I’ve been back, I have tended bar one day at an outdoor place with a view to die for. I have three days off before I go back to that view. I have another job waiting in the wings. Seven days of work a week will be just fine. Gotta bank it during season in order to live when it’s off. Hell, just to catch up, although I am not sure I ever will.

I think I might even have fun at work again, even though that is very far down the list of must-haves–second, third, and twentieth after money, money, money.

In the two weeks since we moved back to an area we love, I have had no work whatsoever until yesterday, I have transformed this little apartment that seems quite large into a very tiny bit of a home. I have designated shelves to various photos of those we love. My kids. My friends. Our grandmothers, including mine who now plays with the angels and my great guy’s grandma who still makes a mean buttermilk biscuit. Such photos on a shelf make a place feel like home. Touching each framed face every morning reminds me that I am home. For now.

“How was the steak?” my great guys asks.

“Wonderful, as always,” I tell him. I am not lying.

He cooks. I wash the dishes, taking extra care with the mother-of-pearl-handled, vintage-1958 steak knives I never used until I found myself in South Florida two-and-a-half years ago and a million miles from anything resembling my former life.

“Never put these in the dishwasher,” admonished my grandmother when she set the table with them for so many years.

“She wanted you to have these,” my aunt told me when she was breaking up my grandmother’s house after her death three years ago.

“You know about these knives, right?” I ask my great guy as we savor every last bite of his perfectly cooked steaks.

“Yeah, sure,” he smiles.

“I mean, you know they were my grandmother’s, right?” I ask, wanting to be maudlin and cry and tell him how much I miss her, but I don’t because it is cold and we are broke and it’s just not the right time to have a 750th meltdown.

“I know,” he says, caressing my hand. “And they never go in the dishwasher.”

It is cold. We are broke. But Rouletta is content to bundle up in her hideous sweater, as are we in our multiple sweatshirt layers. We have jobs. We are happy. We will make it work as we work through season.

It is cold. I am broke. If I were to allow it, the reality would cut neatly and cleanly, like any and every knife. Instead, I gently hand-wash the pearl-handled blades we used tonight. I look to the ceiling and will my grandmother to touch my shoulder one more time, to tell me it will all be okay because I have a great guy, a cute dog, wonderful kids, and a job that overlooks a sandy beach.

I wipe a tear my great guy doesn’t see. I snap a funny photo of Rouletta in her hideous sweater. I carefully dry the pearl-handled steak knives.

It is cold. I am broke. Some days it all just cuts like a knife.

It’ll be okay.

Recognition is always nice, as is the surprise when it is quite unexpected. This month, two RG “posts of the week” are up for “Post of the Month” by the South Florida Daily Blog. Kind of cool.

This is not a shameless ploy to garner votes. Truly. It is, however, a huge nod to the fine writing well beyond RG that occurs on so many blogs in the South Florida area. Check them out.

New job starts tomorrow. Computer is back up. I am confident the Muse is waiting in the wings.

–RG

Almost forgot: RG interviewed about the biz on How to Be A Better Restaurant Customer

Moving is always fun, especially reconnecting all the “stuff.” Had some down time, but all is right once again.

Stories coming soon.

–RG

Rouletta and I (along with my great guy) were so excited to move to Key West a few months ago. After all, I had a wonderful career opportunity in event planning that promised salary, commission, bonuses! Too bad that $13 hourly “training” pay became my real pay, even after five weeks. But hey, Key West isn’t for everyone….

The neighborhoods are so cute, so quaint. In fact, the best restaurant in Key West is located at this corner. The proprietor was one of the few good people we encountered among the hundreds of not-so-good. But hey, Key West isn’t for everyone….

At first, we thought we should buy bikes to ride around this charming town. But we thought we’d leave that to the tourists and those brave locals brave willing to take their lives in their pedals on the quaint streets. But hey, Key West isn’t for everyone….

Then we thought, What about scooters? Everyone rides them!

But we soon thought twice about those adorable means of KW transportation as we played the game “Stop or No Stop,” during which you guess if the speeding scooter whose whining motor you hear before you see it will actually stop at the corner on which you live. This game worked equally well with motorcycles, street-legal rental golf carts, as well as assorted cars and trucks. But hey, Key West isn’t for everyone.

Parking for residents is a simple thing. The spots marked “Residential Parking” are all yours thanks to your easily gotten parking permit. Remember, you’re the local now, and no one else is allowed to park in these coveted parking spots under penalty of the KW law. That’s right, Key West isn’t for everyone!

From time to time, however, no one pays attention to this law–including the parking enforcement people. You could park your out-of-state clunker for weeks, blocking a spot in front of someone else’s house, and never get a ticket! Well, never get a ticket unless you’re my great guy who parked for 10 minutes in front of our house to unload stuff during our move to Key West and immediately received a $35 fine. You know, sometimes Key West isn’t for everyone.

Unfortunately, many of your neighbors will have residential parking permits, too. One night they will drive home after enjoying some wild KW fun, and they will smash their SUV into the back of your little VW, which is finally parked two blocks away from your house because it took two hours to find such a spot. A witness to this crash will alert the police, but the police will say they have too much to do to respond to such a call. Later, after an investigation for which you have to plead the police to conduct, a nice officer will bring the owner of the perpetrating vehicle to your house, saying the owner wasn’t driving but wants to pay you cash rather than go through insurance. When you tell this cooperative neighbor that the damage to your car will cost $1500 to repair, he is suddenly unable to understand English. The police will ignore your entreaties for help, shrug, and explain, “You agreed to settle with him in front of a sworn officer of the law. Sorry, Key West isn’t for everyone.”

Shopping is a blast in KW. So many Duval Street shops to choose from! Like this one for a cute T-shirt for the folks back home:

And don’t worry if you can’t find what you’re looking for in one place. Chances are, another store just like it is two doors down!Oh, you were looking for something less, um, tacky and more original? Hey, Key West isn’t for everyone!

Key West has plenty of fun spots at which to enjoy a cocktail or two: Rick’s outside bar when our favorite bartender is working, as well as Dante’s poolside bars anytime and Schooner’s Wharf in the afternoon when Michael McCloud is singing. Many good times were had at all three, and during those good times it was easy to think, “Key West isn’t for everyone, but maybe it will be soon for us.”

An occasional favorite was Cowboy Bill’s Reloaded, where you could watch the sexy bull riding on closed circuit TV in peace and quiet while sitting in a saddle.

Thanks to the cute bartender who was enthralled with my farewell photo project and allowed me one last moment in Key West from behind her bar! “Too bad it didn’t work out for you here,” she said. “They say Key West isn’t for everyone, but it sounds like you had a really rough time.”

You could say that. After the fourth week of working for a negative, whining boss who continued to pay far less than was promised, you will–as I did–feel the urge to enjoy many such beverages every day! One day, when you have had one too many of these beverages, you will find yourself crying to a sympathetic guy who’s just trying to book sunset sails and snorkeling tours, but he listens to you anyway. When you go back to see him on the farewell photo tour, he remembers you, offers to help you find another job, then wishes you sincere good luck. Key West isn’t for everyone, but nice people do reveal themselves now and then.

So, it’s bye bye Key West. So long, farewell to living the dream-turned-nightmare at Mile Marker Zero. Sure, many people love living and working in Key West and would never go anywhere else. But, as they will continually remind you, “Key West isn’t for everyone.” After hearing that for the hundredth time to excuse all that is wrong with the place, you will finally agree that you are one of those everyones. You will acknowledge that it’s time to make the long trek north and appreciate all that was a part of your life before you fell this far south. And you won’t have to travel too far north at all.

It was yesterday, right? Okay, maybe only a few weeks ago.

What? A quarter century has passed? No. Not possible.

Because I know there is a beautiful baby boy out there who was bald for two years before he sprouted the most amazing golden curls. I have forgotten his colic. I will deny he ever went through the terrible twos. I am sure I remember that he was the perfectly well-behaved teenager.

I absolutely know he makes his mama proud every single day of his life.

Of all the times in my life I wish I could take back, edit, alter, do over–two I wouldn’t change for any amount of anything in the world: RG Son and RG Daughter.

Happy birthday sweet baby boy. Tonight, scant hours before you were born a baby of the 80s, I am sending you all the colorful wooden blocks, the zillions of Lego pieces, the hundreds of Playmobile characters, the thousands of plastic green Army men, the hundreds of volunteer hours at your various schools, the multiple road trips we took on the spur of the moment when your dad was out of town for work, the 20 great visits to you in college, the hand-me-down furniture from my teen years that is now in your apartment.

Happy birthday to “the best baby in the world.” Happy birthday to a toddler who was too darn cute to scold. Happy birthday to an earnest grade schooler. Happy birthday to a middle schooler who shined on stage. Happy birthday to a high schooler who did it his way. Happy birthday to a college kid who figured it out in his way.

Happy birthday to my handsome, successful young man, to whom I will always send my unconditional love.

In the grand scheme of my life, of anyone’s life, this is meaningless.

In the grand scheme of the past two months of my life, it is a very, very bright spot.

Tonight, after driving back to Hell (read Key West) from the upper Keys, after securing what I hope is a job in the upper Keys that will pay my rent in a cute new place in the upper Keys, after three mojitos and a shared dinner in Hell because we cannot afford even that, except that we won big money last night at a Wii bowling tournament we entered on a whim four months ago in the upper Keys (which is one reason to move back, right?), and after we went out for said shared dinner and decided the place we were sharing dinner was one place that escaped the boundaries of Hell, and one we might–MIGHT–revisit IF we ever go back to Key West, that it happened. Big.

I bowled a perfect game. The big 300. On the Wii.

When no one was watching. When I was alone in my closet-sized living room because my great guy, who knew he was losing another in a long string of games, was puttering in the kitchen.

When I was in a zone that I am sure I will never find myself again.

Twelve consecutive strikes in one game, but it was actually my 17th strike in a row, or was it 19, given how many games we had been bowling. Given how damn good I was. Because when my life was good and simple and I lived it at face value, I figured out how to loft a Wii bowling ball from behind a bar while working, make a strike, and never look back.

These are the days to remember…these are the days.

Because perfection comes almost never in almost no one’s life. It has been a joke of a goal in mine. I mean, really, who actually strives for perfection? Ever? Certainly not I. Well, mostly.

Until tonight. And it wasn’t a goal. It was simply an ironic conclusion to one of the most twisted, ironic times of my life. Yet, there it was–a 300 score blinking on the TV screen as TV confetti streamed down on the screen. And no one was around to see this except a half-asleep Rouletta, who, in her way, got it, I am sure. At least after I woke her up.

And as I smoked a celebratory cigarette on a tiny porch I will thankfully inhabit for only one more week, I wanted to shout and dance and sing to all the tourists who walked by, stuffed as they were from a great meal from the restaurant three doors down, “I bowled a perfect game! Hey you–I’m P.E.R.F.E.C.T!!!!”

I didn’t. But my great guy did tell a mutual friend who called on the phone, “Yeah, she just kicked my ass on the Wii, and yeah, we’re moving back in a week, so if you can help us unload the truck…”

Sure. Downplay it. It’s just perfection.

But I know it’s a sign. Good things come to those who wait. Who focus. Who say to themselves, “I am not f—ing beaten down after all that would beat anyone down.”

Yeah, yeah. It means nothing. But sometimes, nothing kick starts a little something. And after that?

Wanna bowl?