Sitting on my bed beneath my posters of Madonna and Rob Lowe.
It’s late at night and I have my curtain closed. I glance up. “Oh Rob,” I sigh like a 15 year old schoolgirl
when I look at him. His dreamy eyes and smile sparkle back at me.
“It’s all ok.” Next to him is Madonna, highlighted by a
purple boarder this is her “Boy Toy” phase.
To me Madonna is so much more. She
is everything that I want to be. Talented, pretty, famous and doesn’t have to
worry about money, ever.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I ask myself. The
grumble in my empty stomach answers my question. I have had nothing to eat since
breakfast.
I am worried. I am worried about money. The weekly graveyard
shift at Denny’s brings all types of weird folks to eat eggs at 4 am in the
morning but doesn’t give me enough money to live on. Sometimes, if I’m lucky,
there is a whole cavalcade of non-stop freaks that think that they are amusing.
Unfortunately, to the staff they are just drunk. And when they are drunk a table
of 4 will say cute things like:
“Just wait until the end you’re going to get a great tip.”
Or when asked if they want something to drink, one of them
will mumble.
“No thanks. I just want water.”
Unfortunately, to get money to pay my bills I have to sell
Denny’s food. I can’t get a tip on water.
So I will launch into “Can I get you anything to eat?” My
pen is poised above my pad ready to write.
“Yeah, one of them will slur before passing out. One Grand
Slam and four plates!”
The only constant thing I get from these drunks is
aggravation.
The weekend is the time to make the money. Lots of drunks,
spending money, fighting with each other, throwing things and vomiting. Yes,
vomiting. Who knew there would be so much vomiting? No one pays any of us to
clean up vomit yet it seems to be my constant chore. I’ve been known to leave
an empty bus bucket by a table for someone to vomit in.
“I’m going to leave this here if one of you needs it.” I will
say slipping it beneath their booth. The staff is very good at immediately
recognizing some one who has been over served. It becomes a second sense.
I also learn that I have to walk slowly once the bus buckets
filled. I have learned that you don’t want to splash any of that on your leg, especially
not if it’s the first table of the night and you still have seven hours to go.
It’s bad enough that the polyester uniform I wear holds the smell of Denny’s food
long past it’s washing.
The only problem with the weekend graveyard shift is that
lifers closely guard it. There is a staff of about 4 women all in their mid 50s
who need this job and have had this job for years. Training with them is a
nightmare. They take all the tips you make for them and they hold back information
on how to do something. If I learn the secret of how Denny’s does things I
become more valuable and they become less. Of course this is in their heads. Or
at least I think it is.
There are only two waiters at Denny’s. Me, and this guy
named Anthony. He’s gay and I’m gay. So everyone asks if we are going to get
together. I have yet to meet Anthony but swear that I don’t know him from the
clubs.
“Don’t all you gays hang out together?”
The truth is “Yes, we do!” I answer the bus boy as I watch
him eat the discarded food out of the bus bucket. At least he takes it into the
kitchen before digging through it.
To be continued…
Geoffrey Doig-Marx holds all written
and electronic rights to his writing "A Day in the Life/Down the Rabbit
Hole". It cannot be reprinted in part or whole without his written
consent.
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