J.C. Hillary's was located in Boston's Back Bay and had two rooms, one a bar and the other a dining area. Both rooms had turn of the century decor with scuff worn hard wood floors, dark wooden booths and tables, brass fittings, frosted mirrors, and ornately framed paintings of horses in various acts of servitude. The restaurant was diagonally across the street from a thriving convention center and quite frequently our customers arrived donning lanyards and laminated name tags. They came in groups that were boisterous and some times unruly. At lunch time they wanted their food with finger snapped urgency. And the wait staff were kept hopping. Come dinner time however ties were loosened and top shirt buttons undone and the restaurant buzzed with a party atmosphere fueled by libations.
I worked lunches, Sunday brunches, and dinners and I loathed those early shifts. The pace was brutal, go go go, and I was often in the weeds. And when that happened my guts would cramp in knots and I'd break out in that flop sweat experienced by every stand up comic when bombing before an unreceptive audience. But somehow on any given day I made it through my shift without a complete melt down - although on occasion I did engender a verbal reprimand for being too slow. I would on those days despise my job and look upon my life as if it were a predicament.
Some days I worked doubles, both lunch and dinner, and I would in the couple hours between the two shifts walk the three blocks over to Copley Square to visit the venerable Boston Public Library. When the weather was nice I'd sit in the central courtyard and eat my lunch and ponder what I might make of my life. My contemplation with all its various strands of what I might do never came together in the form of a plan. It merely killed time until it seemed my only option was to make my way back to J. C. Hillary's to work my dinner shift.
My fellow waitrons were a mixed lot. Sam looked like a seedy Kiefer Sutherland and was a bounce from foot to foot guy who was forever being told to get rid of his gum. Brook seemed a misplace Ivy leaguer. Jeff walked with a shuffle from side to side that seemed to indicate he had something massive and heavy between his legs. He was studying opera. Dan lacked only a robe and crucifix to peg him a monk of a pious and humorless order. Greg had sparkling eyes and a riveting smile that had both genders swooning. There was also a queen who's name escapes me now who was always spouting off about how pink his pussy was; I once shut him up by saying it was brown. Peggy was efficient and always on top of her game. Carla was forever haggard from late night carousing and not enough sleep. She once stumped me silent when she voiced aloud, "God I could sure use a good fuck."
Our busboys were hispanic and Latin American and hard workers all. One was very flamboyant and learning english on the job. He wore frilly white shirts and one night he wound up with his hands behind his back handcuffed together around a pole. The cooking staff threw french-fries at him and taunted him in spanish until he was almost in tears.
As with any restaurant we had our regulars. There were several single diners and couples who would invariably arrive at ten minutes to closing time. They would have cocktails before ordering their fare thus keeping the kitchen from closing down. Then when they finally ordered and had their meals before them they would pick at the food late into the night until they were the only patrons left in the dining room. There was also a gay couple we called the Gibson Brothers. This was in reference to one of the couple's drink of choice. The other had a vodka martini. They literally ate dinner at our restaurant 365 days a year. Some days they also came in for lunch. One night with a calculator Dan and I tallied up their yearly bill. It came in at over twenty thousand dollars. The two of them would begin their night with a couple drinks at the bar before having a seat in the dining room. Most of the wait staff loved waiting on them. It was an easy five to seven dollar tip. Not me. I despised the brothers with a vehemence not due them. But I could not help it. I was at that time not only sick of everything to do with alcohol but I was also at war with it and to me the two of them were alcoholic and pathetic. And it showed. One night I had them in my station and the one who did the vast amount of talking lit into me with a slurry delivery about how his mother had years ago said everyone deserves respect. With a wooden smile I nodded my head.
Every night before our shift began a manager would huddle us together and inspect our uniforms and tell us what station we were working in that night. Through the good graces of a self admitted and active alcoholic manager who both knew of my war against liquor and made out the nightly schedules I never had to work the bar. But then one Saturday evening when I arrived for work and the bar seemed more chaotic than usual I found out that the manager who usually handled scheduling was on vacation . The manager who took his place informed me at line up that I was working the bar. I told her I couldn't do it. She told me I didn't have a choice. I told her I did. And I walked, leaving my table waiting days behind.
Nineteen years later however after reading about the exploits of Hemingway in Paris during the 20's I had a romantic notion of waiting tables at night and writing a novel during the day. By then I'd reached an armistice with alcohol, so that problem was nullified. Keeping my day job I made the rounds of local restaurants. I was hired at Food 101. Thus began four hellish shifts of training that stripped away any shreds of romance that my notion might have had. I just couldn't get it together. I was totally inept. Sunday brunch was my final training shift and two hours into it I was drench in flop sweat. Hemingway be damned; waiting tables was just not for me. I quit once again and I knew relief.
A short time later I was laid off from my day job and in those liberated morning hours in the days that followed I wrote a novel called Whirling Home.
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