clavus

Holy shit, you guys are patient and kind. Sorry for the delay.
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Our restaurant had two factions: the Kitchen and the Servers - those who prepared the food and those who put it on the tables. There was constant friction between the two. On a busy night, one mistake by either side could escalate the tensions to the brink of violence. A steak too well done meant that the goddamn Kitchen was trying to screw a Server out of his tips. A changed order was clearly a goddamn Server who was fucking with the Kitchen.

Both sides viewed the other as somewhat incompetent and vastly inferior, while secretly worrying that the other side might be right. The dishwashing station was the DMZ between the two tribes. Servers and Bussers dumped dishes in my sink, and the Kitchen took delivery of what I cleaned. Neither side claimed me as their own, but fancied myself part of the Kitchen.

While the Kitchen and Servers skirmished to see who should look down upon whom, neither was the lowest caste. A third group was forever at the bottom: Cleanup Crew - two sorry, anonymous bastards who showed up before sunrise and cleaned up the mess from the night before.

The heavy rubber mats that grid the kitchen floor were taken out in six foot sections, hosed off with scalding water, then reinstalled. The ovens were degreased with “Pink Death” - a caustic goop that burned the eyes and lungs, and scarred any skin left exposed. Cleanup Crew vacuumed up the roaches under the dining room seat cushions, changed the rat traps, swept, mopped, dusted, buffed and scrubbed. If there was any time left before Serves and Kitchen staff arrived, Cleanup Crew washed the leftover dishes.

No one talked to the Cleapup Crew. They were filthy, nameless wraiths, who punched out just as everybody else was punching in. So it wasn’t surprising that nobody knew what I did when I wasn’t the Assistant Dishwasher. Six mornings per week, I was one half of the Cleanup Crew.

The other half was Joel.

Joel was everything Doc was not. He bitched constantly. To hear him tell it, his was a life of victimization; a string of wrongs stretching from his birth to his inevitable, sorrowful demise. He was overworked, underpaid, unappreciated and unloved. And THAT was the reason he was such a slacker.

I vacuumed the restaurant while Joel hunted down any booze the bartender forgot to put away. I wrestled the slimy floor mats out the door while Joel smoked cigarettes and told stories about the women who dumped him. Despite his aura of lazy doom, I liked Joel.

And the day when he produced a fifth of Cuervo he had purloined from the bar, I liked him even more. After our shift, we went back to his place to drink it. We got sloppy drunk, and listened to Joel’s collection of old blues LP’s until I passed out on his floor.

As the Summer stretched out towards Fall, I found myself at Joel’s more often. Eventually it became routine. After cleaning up the restaurant, I’d go to Joel’s and get loaded. Fridays and Saturdays I’d go from the restaurant, to Joel’s, then right back again to wash dishes.

We rarely got falling down drunk like we did during my first visit, but we I smoked a tremendous amount of weed. And like a million stoners before us, we fell into a comfortable routine of familiar lethargy and called it friendship. And like a million other bongwater friendships, it changed when the routine changed.

Joel made a new friend. And he introduced us. His new friend was opium. At first I thought his new friend was pretty sweet. But eventually there just wasn’t room in Joel's appartment for all three of us.

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Ass, gas or grass. Nobody rides for free.

healer

Fucking awesome! I love the way it's written and how easily it reads. It's as if one of my oldest buddies were just sittin' back, telling me a story.

I hope there's plenty more to come.

Thanks clavus.

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bermuDa

Awesome stuff, made me all nostalgiac just by mentioning the pink death. By all means, let there be more!

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I am the very model of a moderator gentleman.

The_Jazz

It was worth the wait. Thanks. I'm looking forward to more.

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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - B. Franklin
"There ought to be limits to freedom." - George W. Bush
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo

Coppertop

"aura of lazy doom" - fucking brilliant work

little_tippler

Excellent writing once again...I love the description of the Clean Up Crew. Have to say that "aura of lazy doom" also struck me as particularly brilliant. Will there be more?

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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

clavus

Thanks. I appreciate the feedback.

Yes. There will be two more chapters. I'll post the next one as soon as it pops out of my head.

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Ass, gas or grass. Nobody rides for free.