Blackouts and Breakdowns (22 page)

I thought this was a very nice gesture.
I also hoped Big Gay Mike was not trying to hit on me.
I like new friends as much as the next guy but he could have totally been my father’s age.

“Just a little encouragement to help you along,” he said and walked away. I saw little orphan Annie approaching me as Big Gay Mike was walking away.
I gave her the
I-gotta-run-I-am-late-for-something
look and bolted.
I still did not remember her name and didn’t want to look like a complete asshole.

I walked onto the street and opened Mike’s card, in hopes there was a gift certificate to the liquor store.
“YOU DID IT! CONGRATS!!!” it said with a little dog wearing a party hat and holding a fist full of balloons.
The inside of the card read, “Congrats Mark.
Five days is a huge accomplishment.
You should be very proud of yourself!
Mike.”
How sweet it was to know someone had my back in case we got into a gang war with a rival AA group.
But, it had only been
five
days.
I had not seen Dr. Jake and no one had annoyed me to the point of running off and drinking a liter of Ketel One.
This hadn’t been
that
hard.
I wasn’t really craving a drink and was starting to feel like a normal human being.
Five days was not that long of a time to stay sober for me, because most of my drinking had been done on the weekends.
Since it was Friday, I decided my real goal was to make it through the weekend without drinking and that would be a real accomplishment.
One week was better than five days.
I figured if I turned this into a form of gambling, I could really get things done, and then if I got to one month, I got a chip, which was essentially just like gambling.
After one year I would have twelve chips.
That would be twelve more than when I started.
Maybe an impromptu trip to Atlantic City would cure what ailed me.
But for now, it was off to the cafe and a weekend full of waiting tables on stuck up little brats.

Friday went off without a hitch.
I did not drink any alcohol; instead I rediscovered my love of Shirley Temples.
I went home and went to bed.
As my head hit the pillow, I realized that I had not heard from Dr. Jake at all that day.
Maybe he was sleeping with someone else in New York. Maybe he was partying his face off and having the time of his life.
All of these scenarios played out in my head and I once again fell asleep after 4 a.m.
This sobriety thing was really doing a number on my sleeping schedule.

DAYS SIX AND SEVEN

The first weekend of sobriety was a blur.
I pretty much went through the motions of being a human being, but did not show any human emotions other than anger.
I had told everyone that I was in AA now and was not going to be up for going out and getting hammered anymore.
I had really not grasped the “Anonymous” part of Alcoholics Anonymous.
I had told anyone who would listen that I was in the program now, as if it was something to be proud of.
“Guess what everyone – I am a huge drunk!”
I told customers I was waiting on, homeless people on the street and pretty much anyone I encountered.
“Don’t bother asking me if I want a drink,” I remember telling a woman asking me which way the subway was, “cause I am in the program now!”
Alcohol had turned into a way for me to deal with everyday life at that point.
Waiting tables was not what I had spent four years in college to do and I hated every minute of it.
Drinking at the end of my shift was what I had always looked forward to.
It helped me cope with the fact that I was not living the life I felt I deserved.
After dealing with people I felt were beneath me all day, a nice bottle of wine really cured what ailed me.

It was Saturday and I was ready for a weekend of work.
Every weekend, I worked both Saturday and Sunday brunch.
This was what I imagined hell on earth to be.
People were a lot moodier in the mornings and always seemed to be in some sort of rush to get off to their super busy day.
During the weekend, I would always remember my brunches in New York.
Brunches that would last for hours, drinking mimosas and Bloody Marys while sitting around talking with friends and having a blast.
It seemed as though this never happened in D.C.
People were so boring down here.
They would instead, drink coffee, make the usual small talk about politics to make themselves feel smart and run off to do something lame like spend the day reading the New Yorker magazine from cover to cover and wishing they lived anywhere other than here.
Everyone in D.C. annoyed the shit out of me and weekend brunches were when the worst people came out.

Saturday brunch went on without too much annoyance. I began to realize that getting people Tabasco sauce and delivering them their food, was in fact my job and why people would leave me tips, so I attempted to be nice and it really paid off.
People would smile back at me when I was nice to them. What a difference a good attitude made.

On Sunday I woke up feeling relaxed and ready to grab the day by the balls and live it to its fullest.
But the cafe was crowded that day and people seemed extra anxious to get their food and get on with their day.
People were being even more demanding than usual and pissing me off. Finally, three girls sat in my section, determined to throw me off the wagon. I approached them, trying to be nice, but it seemed as though they had come to the restaurant with the intent to piss me off.

“How are you gorgeous ladies doing?” I asked.
The three of them looked at me as if I had just punched each one them in the face.
That was to be the first and only time I would compliment any of them.
They had grabbed Bloody Marys at the bar as they were waiting for a table, and the tallest of the three girls was wincing at each sip she took.

“This Bloody Mary tastes funny to me,” the tall girl with a broken Russian accent said.

“That’s odd,” I replied.
Having made the Bloody Mary mix myself, I thought it to be one of my better batches. It was grandma’s recipe for Christ’s sake.
The Rusky had thought otherwise.
“Do you like Bloody Marys?”

“Not really,” she replied.

Then why did you order a fucking Bloody Mary?
I thought.

“Maybe you just got a bad one,” I replied thinking this was impossible, as her two friends were drinking the exact same drink and not complaining.
Since I was going to be a nice person today I offered to get her another one as if this was going to make a difference.
I walked back to the bar and saw my co-worker Kate standing there.

“CUNT ALERT!” I screamed into Kate’s ear.
Kate was great because she had the same
go-fuck-yourself
attitude and she hated waiting on girls as much as I did.
Girls seemed super-demanding.
I think it had something to do with the lack of men in D.C. and the fact that most girls hadn’t gotten laid in over a decade.
So being annoyed by their involuntary celibacy, they would come into the cafe with the intent of aggravating the shit out of my co-workers and I.
I got the Russian a new Bloody Mary and delivered it to their table.
She sipped it and winced again.
I figured that since I had made the correct attempts in rectifying the situation, it was no longer my problem.
The girls gave me their orders and I put them in the computer.
The cafe is essentially more of a creperie. They serve crepes, salads and sandwiches, none of which are all that great.
But it’s always busy and people seem to love it.
Since people in D.C. seem to settle for just about anything, this place is considered borderline amazing.
One of the featured salads on the menu was a chicken salad, with mushrooms and gruyere-cheese served warm.
Two of the ladies at the table ordered it and when I returned with their meals, the girl with long frizzy hair gave me a face that looked like I was serving her a dead baby on a plate.

“What the hell is this?” she asked as I put her chicken salad in front of her.

“It’s a chicken salad, isn’t that what you ordered?” I replied.

“Yes, but the chicken is all chopped up,” she said. Who were these people?

“The chicken comes chopped up. Does it make a difference?” I replied.

“Well, usually, when you order a salad that has chicken on it, they serve it as a breast of chicken and you chop it up yourself.”

“We have just cut out the middle man for you here,” I said as if I had done her an enormous favor.

“Did this chicken come from a can?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” I looked at her with confusion in my eyes.

“Did this chicken come from a can?” she asked again.

Not once in my twenty-five years had I ever seen chicken come from a can.
I really did not know that this was a culinary possibility.

“Does chicken come from a can?” I asked.
I was being serious with her. “If it does, I have certainly never seen it before and certainly not in this restaurant.”

I looked at her in the eyes.
I could tell she had nothing to come back at me with.
I really thought that we were heading toward a chicken of the sea conversation and kind of felt bad for her stupidity.
She opted not to go there and instead asked to see the menu again.

“Your friend does not seem to mind the fact that her chicken came chopped up.” I said referring to the only girl at the table who had not pissed me off and ordered the exact same thing as the girl who was complaining.

“Yea, this is good,” the third girl said, scarffing down the salad.

“I can’t eat this,” the frizzy haired girl said. “I hate chopped up chicken!”

“Were you planning on eating a whole breast of chicken in one bite?” I asked.
Now I was getting angry.
Other tables needed me and these bitches were pissing me off with their ridiculous demands.

“No. I just don’t like chopped up chicken and you should have told me that this salad was not served with a whole breast of chicken.”

Jesus Christ!
I had every intention of stabbing this girl in the heart with a steak knife, but there wasn’t one around.
Perhaps, a butter knife would have done the trick.
As I was plotting this girl’s death, the Russian girl chimed in again:

“Oh my God, what is this?” she screamed.
I thought that she may have found a hair or something in her food, which at this place was just about an everyday occurrence.
I looked at her plate and saw nothing but a runny egg.

“This egg is runny!” the Russian screamed.

I took the menu out of the frizzy haired girls hand and shoved it in the Russians face.

“Look!” I yelled pointing to what she ordered on the menu. “This is what you ordered.”
I shoved the menu in her face.
“Your crepe comes with an egg over easy!
In America, an over easy egg is usually runny.”
I took the menu and threw it on the ground.
“What do you want?”
I screamed at the frizzy haired girl. She ordered something else and I picked up the chicken salad and flung it in on the bar.
I turned to the quiet girl and yelled, “while we are at it do
you
have anything to complain about or did you friends do enough complaining for the three of you?”
She looked at me as if she was a puppy and I had just kicked her.
She nodded “no” and I put the bitchy girl’s new order into the computer.
I hated waiting on people but these girls took annoying the shit out of me to a whole new level.
After the bitchy girls order came, they ate quickly and left. I turned my attention to the two gay guys who were sitting next to them who I had pretty much ignored while trying to deal with the Great Chicken Debacle of 2008.

“Maybe those girls were so bitchy because their hair was unmanageable,” one of the gay guys said.
Nothing like a few bitchy queens to make a girl feel better.

“Were they awful or was it just me?” I asked.

“They were horrible!” the other gay said, “all they did was bitch about everything.
They even took their bitching beyond today and started bitching about the service at the restaurant they had gone to last night.”

“Jesus. I am so glad I don’t date girls!” I said.

“Cheers to that!” they said as they clinked their champagne glasses together.

“You know, I am in AA now,” I told the two of them as if we had been lifelong friends. They looked at me with confusion in their eyes and I walked away.
Had this been the previous Sunday, I would have poured myself a glass of champagne, joined them and talked about how much I hated everyone.
But this was the new Mark, so I would have to take my anger out by smoking a ridiculous amount of cigarettes and possibly eating a whole cake when I got home.
I realized that these girls where just bitches and I was not really their problem.
They just sucked at life and I happened to be in their line of fire that day.