Host/Bus Boy at John Q's

John Q's sat atop the downtown Holiday Inn. At some point Christian Introduced me to Todd. Todd was a thin good looking guy with curly hair and a keen sense of style. Todd was typical of the kind of guy who works in a nice restaraunt. He developed the tastes of the people he served. They lived in nicer homes than he did, and certainly with more security, but he arranged his life to allow him the priveledges of the priveledged. Working at Inn meant he could stay in style when he traveled. It also allowed him to get to know his wines, and to score bottles cheaply. He spent his days talking with the wealthy, or at least what we considered wealthy, and he learned to speak their language. This mixed wonderfully with Todd's bohemian side. Punk bands played in his living room while the smoke of expensive cigars hovered around the pool table that barely fit in his dining room, the dining room with all the windows broken by pool cues. I watched expensive liquores being shot down with malt liquor chasers.
Todd posessed that James Bond kind of Zen. He'd watch the craziness in his house, with a good scotch swirling around in his glass, ready to raise his hand in a toast or to avoid a drunk tumbling by. He could talk about The Dead Kennedys, Miles Davis and Throbbing Gristle with equal appreciation.
I liked Todd. I wanted it a bit of what he had, that coolness, that ability to blend with any crowd. Blending was a skill I'd always prided myself on but I was grass hopper to this master of the art.
I visited John Q's with Todd as he was picking up a paycheck. The place seemed so cool. The view was great, as 16 stories was quite tall in Sacramento at that time. The Restaraunt took half the floor, the rest of the space being devoted to two suites. There was a cool entry area where the host stood. To the left was the piano bar and to the right was a hallway leading to the dining area. We sat and had a couple of cokes in the bar, enjoying the giant windows. I asked Todd if they were hiring and he told me they needed a daytime host. I decided to go home, spiff up and then come back an apply.
I got an interview right away with Tim, the lunch manager. Tim was a clean cut gay man in his early thirties. He had a low key snootiness about him, nothing too obnoxious, but just enough to intimidate and impressionable young man feeling out of his element. Tim asked me what my hobbies were. I told him I read a-lot and he asked me what I read. I could've answered Hesse or Kamus or any of the other authors that I thought would've made me sound smart when I was 18 but my mind blanked. I answered Stephan King. I felt like a moron. The truth is I do like King. I think he's underrated by the intellectuals types. I think he's another Poe, who just happens to be popular with housewives. I didn't have the self confidence to say any of that, so I offered that I mostly prefered the book's he published under the name Bachman, making me sound like even more of a supermarket paperback junky. Oh well, Tim found me charming enough and I was hired.

The lunch staff were guys who hadn't resigned themselves to be waiters for the rest of their lives. The tips were good and the hours were minimal so it was an ideal college job. A few years later, when graduating was no longer likely, the waiters would move to night shift where the real money could be made. Todd was the bartender. Tony and Paul made up the waitstaff and they had Michael as their busser. I was the host. Tim went between the kitchen and the dining room and made sure things went smoothly, stopping to kiss a little ass when a big wig came by and stopping to sexually harass me in that "I'm just playing, but seriously... no, I'm just playing" kind of way.

Tony didn't like to tip me, so I liked to give Paul the better tables. What made for a better table? Well there were the regulars who I got to recognize as big spenders, and then there was basic stereotyping. New money meant bigger tips than old money, but you had to learn to tell the difference between new money and regular folks pretending to be rich for the day. These "won 50 bucks at bingo" types could be great tippers, but they were less predictable.
I liked Paul better anyway. He was a good looking, well read sort. Tony on the other hand was an Italian stalion who cared about his hair way too much. He was trying to break into modelling and so he thought it was necessary to have his facial hair waxed. The resulting ingrown hairs did not convince him that this was a bad idea. He also liked to fart in my office when I was tallying up the days reciepts.
Once Tony stunk my office so badly I suggested he see a doctor about his rotten gut. Tim came by at just that moment looking for more menus. Normally I'd grab them for him but instead I told him where I'd put them in the office. "What the god damned hell!" I explained that the odor now stinging his nostrils was courtesy of Tony. With Tim's encoragement and backing Tony got the worst tables for the next two weeks. When he followed a customer out to the parking lot to return the lousy tip he'd recieved we decided he'd had enough.

Michael, the busser was my favorite. He was a young black man who would take meditation breaks by the ice machine. He urged me to try the two minute mediation myself, but I found scarfing down some chocolate mouse more to my liking. Michael did a bit too much meditating had to be relieved of his duties.

The Chef was Jose (French pronounciation, Joe, Ze). He was a character. He'd flip if you left ketch up in his kitchen. "Not in my kitchen, zis dee-sgusting American crap." Once he came laughing to the dining room where we were all hanging out after a shift. He had a magazine with a picture of bread pudding and two scoops of sherbert. It looked exactly, unqestionably like a penus and testicles. We all laughed, assuming we were laughing with our chef friend until we heard him say, "You don't serve sherbert with bread pudding." The laughing stopped and I've wondered ever since if he was putting us on or not.

Shifts started in the bar where Todd set everyone up with red hot spicy "Hangover Cures." followed by shots of espresso, which he had the unfortunate habit of calling mud makers. Cured and energized we'd fold napkins into fancy shapes and set up the dining room. Then came slicing fresh bread for the baskets and getting a backstock of ice water's ready. Once I got the rush seated I had it easy, waitinng for late lunchers to straggle in and manning to phones. I had an enormous crush on a girl named Laura and would draw pictures of her on the seating chart once I was done with it.

If you showed up early for your shift you could have breakfast in the kitchen of the more family diner style first floor restaraunt. Other priveledges included laundry service of your work cloths and cheap rates at Holiday Inne's anywhere in the world.
After lunch the waiters went home, the kitchen started on dinner and I had the bar and it's amazing view to myself. I got a lot of reading done, and my friends all new to visit between 3 and 5. My only duty was answering the phone to take reservation. At 5 the night hostess showed up, gave me the nights staff's lists of complaints about the day staff and I was free to go.

I was seating a couple once when I heard "Is that Keith. Holy shit it's Keith." being shouted across the dining room. I turned to see one of the Holiday Innes saleswomen escourting several Post Office big wigs, including my dad's dear friend who I knew as Uncle Harold. Harold loved having his ass kissed by sales people almost as much as he loved getting away with being a loud black man allowed to misbehave in a fancy restaraunt. Harold invited me to join them for lunch and the sales lady insisted. I felt strange and recieved many dirty looks from the waitstaff, but I took a seat and had some lunch. The sales staff all knew my name after that and I felt more at home than ever.

Adam Choqure was the Matre De'. He only visited the lunch shift about once a week. He called us all tiger and would share bad jokes which were hillarious when told in his heavy latin lover accent. I have no idea what his actual nationality was but like Jose he was a strange mix of Latin and French.

Tim really took care of managing lunch, but Adam would give us little pep talks. "I see some people, they are coming in late. If you are late, it is not acceptable. I am reasonable, if you are making love to a beautiful woman I understand. But I want the details, and if you're making love to her again a week later, I say it can wait, she's apparently not going anywhere, yes?"

Adam came by at five once as I was leaving and wanted to have a talk. We sat at the bar with a glass of wine for him and a cup of coffee for me. "Keith. You are a good looking boy, you know?"
I had no idea how to respond.

"Do you know? Do you know that you are a handsome young man?"

"Yeah, sure Adam, I'm comfortable with my appearance."

"Good tiger. And you should be. I like to have good looking boys work here. Perhaps you've noticed."

I did not like where this was going. Adam continued. "The customers, they like to see a handsome young man when they come in the restaraunt. And you are a good looking young man. But here's where the problem is. Keith, I dont' think that you believe me, when I tell you that you are a good looking man. You say you are, comfortable, but this is not what I see. What I see is a boy who does not like how he is looking, who thinks he is ugly."

I was starting to enjoy the liesurely path Adam was taking to whatever the hell is point was, and I let myself relax.

"How's that Adam?"

"Well this hair Keith. This hair that you wear down, in you face. Covering up your handsome face, like you want to hide it. It says, 'No. Dont' look at me. I will hide from you behing my hair.' This is what this hair says."

"Adam, would you like me to cut my hair?"

"Tiger, you do what you like. But please, know that you are a handsome boy. You have nothing to hide."

I got a haircut and Adam gave me some nightshifts bussing tables. The night crew was great. Mohsen, Adams life long friend who looked like a middle eastern, anorexic Rodney Dangerfield provided constant comic relief. He was so high strung, so hyper, and so concerned that someone, somewhere was screwing him out of a buck. Danielle was his polar opposite. Danielle looked like Issach from The Love Boat. He spoke a bit of french, and despite being the slowest waiter on staff his customers tipped big, requested him the next time, and many of the ladies slipped him their number. Danielle taught me a lesson that has stayed with me; If you sell them the shit with enough class, it will taste like Filet Mignon.

I could easily clear $75 to $100 bucks working the night shift and I loved it. The customers were a hoot. Mr. Amador would want me at his table as soon as his date of the night excused herself to powder her nose. "So Keith, what do you think of this one?" The ones I gave a negative rating to were rarely seen again. They had no way of knowing that how well they treated the busboy, even when Mr. Amador wasn't present, decided the evening's outcome.

I took my parents to the fanciest dinner I'd ever shared with them. Adam came to our table, spoke well of me and charmed their socks off.

I took Emily to dinner there and no spark was generated. The relationship had not been doing so well and then I sort of accidentally slept with her best friend Bryna (the feisty blonde from the last story). It's nothing I'm proud of but it's hardly work related so I will relieve myself of suffering through it again here. Sorry. Go have your own non-work related heartbreaks. Emily moved to Nashville a while later and this meant the official end of a relationship that had been on life support for months. Bryna was not speaking to me or out of town or both when it happened and I ended up falling for a third girl, Christine. I was keeping things interesting.

There was a private dining room at John Q's and when I saw that the folks using it were not visiting the food table I would call a friend or two to join me for a gourmet meal in an environment that made one feel like a mover and a shaker. Christian and I would sit in those chairs, popping stawberries and drinking wine roaches, pretending that we owned it all.

The wildest nightshift I worked was a Spanish wedding. $200.00 bottles of wine flowed constantly out of the bar with nobody keeping tabs. Todd let me know he'd stuck one in the ice make for me. The waiters would oder drinks for themselves to get the booze ticket up higher, thus getting their tip up higher as well. When they'd dranken all they could they started ordering drinks for us busser. Five drink ordering waiters plus two bussers equals me barely standing.

I was tottering about with a tray of drinks, praying the drinks woud be consumed by guests and not pushed on me, when I felt someone slide up beind me and wrap their arms around me. Strong arms squeezed me, breasts pushed against my back and a hand slid down towards my crotch. I set the tray down at a table that was thankfully within arm reach, grabbed the explorers wrists and whirled around to see who I'd made friends with. A shocked, and lovely young woman's eyes grew huge. "Oh my god! I'm sorry. I though you were my cousin."
COUSIN! "Close family?" I asked as I scooped up my tray and headed to the bar to down some more mudslides.

Legend has it one of the waiters ended up playing cousin with her in the restroom. Now that's a tip. I grabbed my skateboard and my $200 bottle of wine and headed to my friend Kirk's house warming party where his roommate consumed $200 worth of alcohal in under ten minutes.

The better I did bussing the better waiter I'd be assigned to and the more money I'd take home. The money got to mean a-lot as I got used to having it. I asked Adam to put me in line for training as a waiter. I began to learn my wines. I hit Danielle up for some French lessons.
I realized that I'd achieved my goal. I was becoming like Todd, like most of the staff there. We all enjoyed sharing life with the affluent. We all enjoyed being liked by and associating with the movers and the shakers. And we all liked making bigger money than we would eslewhere. We were good looking, well spoken, and this allowed us to make a decent living. But I began to notice that nobody on the night shift had any aspirations beyond waiting tables. I realized that I was for the first time in my life really attached to my job and the identity that came with it, and this began to bother me.

Bryna as well as some other friends of mine were working at a Cafe downtown called Greta's. It seemed like a cool place and all the employees who worked there were artists and musicians, including a guy named John McCray who fronted a great local band called Cake. Mostly I was interested because Christine, my new girlfriend, was working there.

I applied for the job and got it. When I gave my notice at John Q's I told them I was off to make a film, which I'd really planned on doing. It sounded better than I'm off to work at a coffee shop. On my last night shift Mohsehn said goodbye. He was almost insulted that I'd reject this life after being given the pass to join in the party. He was amazed that anyone could willingly walk away from this job. His was only and exagerated version of the response the other waiter's had given. This more than anything let me know I was doing the right thing. Danielle was the one person who seemed to get it. "Keith, you go and be happy!" he told me with a pat on the back. He was a smooth operator, but I knew he was sincere.

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