Bus Boy: The Sacramento Club

The last time I'd seen Christian he'd borrowed a silk shirt to go to a job interview.

It was months later, I was letting my girlfriend Christine support me while I went about getting some painting done. Christine and I were out for a walk when we saw what seemed to be a homeless man slapping a woman. She'd fall and he'd help her back up and then slap her some more.
I asked Christine to wait a safe distance away in case I need her to call the police and approached.
The person being slapped turned out to be Christian, still wearing the shirt he'd borrowed from me months earlier. He introduced me as his brother Keith to his slapping friend. I asked Christian to come to my place with me and he obliged. I offered him a safe place to stay if he wanted to sober up, and my free time was spent with Christian. By hanging out with him twenty four hours a day I could help him get through the first few days of drying out. We went to alcoholic's anonymous meetings every night which I loved. You hear the best stories at AA meetings. After a week or two Christian decided it was time to rejoin the work force and since I was getting very little painting done anyway I decided to join him.

We both got jobs at a new private club that was opening in town. The Sacramento Club sat on the sixth floor of the thirty story Well's Fargo Building, Sacramento's tallest building at the time. The Club was started by a group of women frustrated with the Capitol Club's exclusive men only policy.

I was amazed that people would pay thousands of dollars to join a club and all their membership earned them was the right to enter the restaraunt. They still paid for every bite of food as they sat in the fancy dining hall surrounded by paintings of food and sculptures of food. Wayne Thiebaud was on to something. Rich people loved art work depicting food.
Christian and I bought our black slacks, ties, shoes and white shirts. We also had to buy black socks and a good supply of undershirts. Every work day started with a line up consisting of Carl, the general manager, checking us each over thoroughly, including a check to make sure we were wearing black socks, and a white undershirt.

Carl taught us how to set the tables and would pull out a ruler to insure that each fork was exactly an inch from the next fork and an inch from the tables edge. Carl was intense. He fired on average two people a week for petty things like brown socks or not being shaven close enough.
John, the chef, was an intense man himself. He'd been imported from New York and he was worth the expense. When John heard that I was vegan he started experimenting immediately with Vegan dishes. None of these made it onto his menu but he wanted to be prepared and I ate very well as his vegan guinea pig. This included vegan chocolate deserts which I would dutifully gobble down.

My co-workers seemed like nice folks. Much like the John Q's crowd they knew their wines and they know the importance of a good manicure. They could somehow see the value of a fifty dollar ink pen, a concept that I could not grasp. We all worked very hard setting the restraraunt up each morning and harder durring the ninety minute lunch rush. The rest of our six hour shift though was moderatley paced and Christian and I took to sneaking smokes and coffee on the indoor fire escape.

We were paid minimum wage, but guaranteed to make at least seven an hour with tips, the Club paying the difference if the tips fell short. No cash was dealt with in the building as the diners/members signed for their meals. Most of the members added an extra ten percent gratuity to the fifteen that was included automatically with their bill, and so we bus boys actually took home between twelve and fifteen bucks an hour.

Christian and I were asked to move chairs from one of the upper stories of the building to the Club's banquet room. We were happy to do as it meant we had a night shift in this cool building.
We took our coffee and cigarettes not in an ugly stairwell, but sitting next to a pool at the buidling's athletic club. The pool was located on an outdoor patio on the same floor as the restaraunt and gave us a great view of the town. We pretended we were successfull as we savored this brief taste of the good life. We used the club members bathrooms where each toilet sat in it's own tiled little room equipped with an ashtray. And we sweat buckets as we lugged chairs about most of the night.

I was assigned to a private meeting in one of the clubs smaller rooms and while pouring coffee and filling waters I got an amazing demonstration of Laproscopic Surgery. The tools and the photos and the props depicting a diseased organ of some sort were amazing but they made me feel like a loser. I was wasting my intellect on pouring coffee and wearing black socks while these folks were finding new and inovative ways to heal us all.

I might have shared this pessimistic view with a few of my co-workers as I soon found myself sitting across from Carl, being fired. He offered no explaination at first. He just handed me a check and told me I would no longer be needed. I struggled to stay calm.
"Can you tell me why?" I asked.
"I've heard reports from your co-workers that you have a negative attitude and that you're unhappy here. I don't want anybody here that doesn't want to be here."
"Well shit, Carl, I love being here. I can't thing of any god damned thing more satisfying than pouring coffee for rich assholes." I thought, but did not say. Instead, I looked Carl in the eye and gave it my all.

"Carl, I'll leave if that's what you want, but I'd like to make you an offer. If you keep me on, you will be imediately glad you did. I can fix the attitude and be the best busser you've ever had on staff. I'll make the most of this conversation, and the next person to hire me can reap the awards or you can. If you'll give me two weeks I'll either amaze you with my improvement, or I'll leave without complaint. It's up to you of course and I'll accept you decision either way."
"Okay. Two weeks." he answered, turning his attention to a stack of papers on his desk.
I was so releived, and so ready to kill some disloyal backstabbing co-workers. I decided that my still being there would be revenge enough.

One of the rich ladies who had started the club and who sat on the board sent her daughter to work with us and lucky me, she would be a busser. I worked twice as hard as I struggled to pick up her slack. I also struggled to treat her like I thought she was just as sweet as one of John's deserts. My efforts worked and Carl called me into his office again to let me know how impressed he was. Some strange power balancing instinct kicked in and rather than just thanking him, I asked him if Christian and I could recieve a seperate wage when we moved chairs at night, since we didn't recieve tips then. He agreed and he seemed quite impressed with my confident and professional manner of making the request.

I was sure I'd end up fired after all when I carried a full tray of wine glasses into the kitchen and finding no place to set the tray down I set it on John's chef table. I ran to get a jack stand to move the tray to, but I arrived back too late, finding John smashing the glasses one by one on the tile floor of the kitchen. I tried to retrieve my tray but John yelled, "Don't touch it." and he continued smashing. "Clean this up" he instructed me when the last of the glasses had been shattered. I did so and waited for the axe to fall. When my shift was done John cooked me dinner and the event was never mentioned again.

Dan Quail came to the club for a $500 a plate lunch. This was soon after his Potatoe debacle and John, who was gay and not republican, served Roast Quail and Potatoes to the democrats who sat sullenly in the half of the dining room not taken up by Quail's lunch. The secret service guys went over the builing and staff thoroughly. Only one name came up on their list as not to be allowed near Quail. I figured my name was added to this list when I protested the war, but I was surprised by it. I was introduced to the head of security by Carl.
"Keith this is John Smith, head of Vice President Quail's security. Mr. Smith this is Keith."
The cop gripped my hand to firmly and looked me in the eye. "Yes, Keith Lowell Jensen, good to meet you Mr. Jensen. We'll be keeping an eye on you."
"Great. Nice to meet you. I'm afraid I'll not be very exciting to watch, but you're more than welcome." I said with a polite smile and a feigned look of innocence and confusion for Carl's benefit. The Dan Quail experience passed with little incident, other than Danny's feeling's possible being hurt when John passed on having his picture taken with the Vice President.

Christian and I, while moving chairs discovered how easily we could jimmy the locks that would allow us access to the buidling's rooftop. We began taking our lunch thirty stories up, on the helicopter pad with Sacramento's most amazing view surround us. Eventually Gabe, one of the buidling's maintainence staff discovered us, but he was willing to keep our secret in exchange for a daily plate of food and so we became a party of three. Ray, the head waiter then got hip to our little picnics and soon we were four. We taught Ray how to jimmy the lock with a butter knife and he soon had tales of wining and dining a lady friend on the helicopter pad at night.
I liked to stand at the edge of the roof and experience the vertigo. This scared the hell of out Christian, Ray and Gabe the maintainence guy. I tried to call them to the edge to show them That even if I fell I'd be caught by a huge rain gutter just six feet down. They stayed safely away, and I believe it was this thrill seeking that led Ray to shut down our picnics for good. I do believe he still made nocturnal visits to impress his dates.

I was settled in and enjoying my job, despite the fact that I saw my girlfriend Christine less and less as my time was all spent working or attending AA meetings with Christian. She was becoming close with a well read young man named Sean who worked at Greta's and played bass for Cake.

Cake's frontman John McCrea still worked at Greta's as well. The Rodney King verdict came out and threw us all into shock as did the resultant rioting. I walked to work past the Capitol buidling and there, in the morning sun, stood John all by himself holding a sign reading "Kill Whitey." He was dead serious. I said hello and continued on my way. I had a long shift and it was a good ten hours later, on my way home that I passed John again. He looked like a statue standing there, holding his sign, and looking ready to explode.
"Good work John."
"Thanks Keith."

One night I was awakened by Christine and I's roommate Chris Brunner who told me that Christian was sleeping in his room.
"So wake him up." I suggested groggily.
"No. You need to deal with him." Chris said seriosly.
I knew right away what Chris was saying. Christian was drunk.
I found him and got him up, I walked him downstairs to the couch he called home only to find one his homeless friends occupying it.
"Hey you, get up and get out of my house." I yelled.
The man on the couch got up and pulled out his knife.
Christian tried calming his friend down, explaining that I was his brother. I kept yelling. I was putting all of my anger toward's Christian on this poor innocent bum. "Pull a knife on me in my house! You better be ready to use it because I'm going to kick your ass."
Christian got the guy to put the knife down and step outside.

"Christian. Go to sleep. I'll make an excuse for you at work tommorrow and when I get home we'll go to a meeting." I begged.
"I have to walk my friend home."
"You're Friend Doesn't HAVE A HOME!" I yelled. Christian walked out the door. I started sobbing knowing he wasn't going to return.

I told Carl that Christian was very ill and would be out for the rest of the week just in case he came back. I did three times my own job, making up for Christian so that nobody would bitch too much about his absence and continuing to make up for the rich lady's spoiled lazy daughter.
Christian never did come back, of course, and I explained to Carl that Christian had fallen off the wagon and wouldn't be back. Carl could see I was upset and he had noticed how hard I'd been working. He told me he'd get a new bus boy hired as soon as possible and he instructed the wait staff to help out where they could.

Carl was fired a few weeks later as the board member's got wind of his habit of firing two people a week. Jill and Ray would take over as co-managers, Ray handling the dinner shift and Jill taking lunch.

Christine was heading to Europe as had long been my dream. I was not welcome to go, as she needed the time to herself. Sean it was then announced would be going with her. I pretended not to see the writing on the wall.

I showed up for work with a button missing from my vest. Jill sent me home. I found a button that matched and returned the next day. Jill pointed out that the new button had three holes in it and the original buttons had four. She told me to go home and not to come back until I had it corrected. I told her to go fuck herself. I was not yet twenty one as I walked out on eleventh job (not counting my stint as a greeting card's salesman).

I spent my last check taking Christine to Corona to meet my family and to see where I'd grown up. She, being painfully shy, was overwhelmed by noisey family and our endless debating about religion and politics. She had a miserable time. We got home, she left for Europe. Like with
Christian I knew that it was over, but I struggled not to accept it.

I had no job, no money, and no Christine and I was in no condition to be hitting the streets. I visited Greta at her home and asked if she'd hire me back. After all she'd rehired Mike repeatedly. I teared up as she told me she would not. I went to cafe's and shops all over downtown, even heading to the mall. I have always been good at interviews, but I must have looked like some kind of junky as struggled through each one, only to break into tears as I left, knowing that I'd blown it again.

I'd gotten so good at not giving a shit. I'd run from jobs if they threatened to become meaningful. And now I needed a job, and I was just so tired of the whole process. I would get another crap job while my peers were transfering to universities and heading towards bright futures, or they were actually doing the art that I mostly just talked about, having shows, selling paintings, building careers. I didn't know who I was or what I was doing but for once I had an urgent need to be employed, and for once I was having a hard time finding that employment.

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