As 1996 became 1997 the weather was splendid, though Perry and I spent most of our time indoors watching television, being depressed, popping Nyquil, eating like pigs but wanting nothing other than to be high...on anything. It was a longing and a void that would remain empty and open and incapable of being shut so the best you could hope for was to fill it with something that wouldn’t kill you…or at least not right away. Of course, there was no dope or any real drugs in the area to be tempted by—but there was some weed. The driest, brownest, most awful low-grade shit you could ever imagine—homegrown, Florida shit—which Perry said was always subpar because it’s too hot in the summer and too dry in the winter for anything decent to grow. I suppose there was better stuff available that was grown indoors or smuggled in from other places, but we didn’t know of any specifically and would have been unable to afford it even if we did while living off of Randy’s generosity—which was being doled out by Granny in frustratingly small and measured amounts. So I suppose I should have been thankful for the continuous crop of crap that was being cultivated about a half-mile down the road from Granny’s house in the backyard of Lehigh’s redneck bar, and marketed and sold by Lehigh’s redneck bartender.
“You know, I can also get you boys some pussy if you like,” said Nate the redneck barkeep as I finished my beer and he handed Perry a bag of schwag, but was apparently hoping to become our one-stop-shop for liquor, weed and women.
“Nah, that’s all right, I reckon,” I said as Perry pored over the pot he’d just purchased. “But just for the hell of it, Nate—how much would a piece a pussy go for in these here parts?”
“Twenty bucks.”
“Same as the weed!”
“And just as dried-up…I reckon,” said Perry in his own faux-billy accent.
“None of that kinda talk now—ya’ here!” barked Nate, though I’m not sure if he was defending the weed or the women.
“Just funnin’ around some,” Perry said. We then paid the $2 tab for two drafts and quietly removed ourselves from the wooden stools at a wooden bar in a wooden dive with sawdust on the floor that at one point might have played a greater role in creating the motif.
As shitty as the weed was, along with a lot of Nyquil it satiated me for the time being, though we were careful not to get caught smoking by Granny. And though we were constantly grappling with a longing to be high on heroin there could be none of that—so we never discussed it much like we never discussed the music which wasn’t too difficult because my heart just wasn’t in it anymore and quite frankly, I don’t think Perry’s was either. Besides, we’d always believed the music and the dope were two sides of the same coin and history had proven us right, so any musical aspirations would now have to seriously be put to bed. However, toward the end of January—probably because I’d been completely dope-free for eight weeks—my libido was seriously about to rise and shine and one afternoon while Gwen Stefani was lighting up MTV just being a girl, I thought about taking advantage of the other $20 product Nate was peddling.
“Fuck that shit,” Perry said. “Trust me—you don’t realize what’s lurking around out there in the bushes and besides, Grandma’s got a shitload of liver in the fridge.”
“So?”
“So forget about Nate’s hookers. Just grab two pieces from the refrigerator, put’em in the microwave and then stick’em between the mattress and the box spring. When you get on your knees it’s the perfect height.”
“The perfect height for what?!”
“Whaddaya think? After you heat it up it gets nice and warm and greasy—and it’s much safer than banging white trash.”
“No way,” I said—at this point still obviously in disbelief.
“Well, you know, you have to apply a little pressure to the mattress but—”
“You can’t really be serious, Perry. With liver?”
“Well not normally but the vacuum’s all fucked up.”
“Do you eat it afterwards?”
“Eat the liver? After having sex with it??? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Just then Granny returned from Publix with more groceries for us to eat and fornicate with before bitching about having to do all the shopping.
“Chill out Granny and take a toke.”
“And you boys are eating me out of house and home—you know,” she added. “Somebody better get a job around here and QUICK. Your friend’s money is just about spent.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it—Grandma,” Perry told her. “The snowbirds are coming. Soon we’ll both be working and making lots of money. I promise.”
Between the middle of January and the end of April, the population in certain areas of Florida more than doubles and in coastal cities likes Fort Myers—it practically triples. As a result there’s always a seasonal hiring boom, and though it can be profitable to work in some establishments each season, it hardly makes up for the rest of the year when much of the state is a relative ghost town.
At the very end of January Granny gave us a ride to Bistro 41 which was located in Fort Myers in the Bell Tower Mall, and there along with several other hopeful job candidates we were very quickly able to secure positions—not as waiters and waitresses—but servers. Apparently, management was incapable of retaining two, gender-specific job titles and as a result was forced to boil it down to one. Obviously, I wasn’t thrilled with the latest slight and though it had apparently and suddenly become the industry norm, as far as I was concerned it was offensive.
“What the fuck kind of bullshit is that?” I said to Perry as we waited outside the restaurant for Chauffeur Granny to arrive.
“What’s your problem?”
“Servers,” I said. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“No.”
“Well then maybe they should cut right to the chase and just go with servants or better yet—slaves.”
“You’re overreacting for a change.”
“I’m finally, totally, sick of this,” I decided. “After this one I’m done. I can’t take it anymore.”
“What’re you gonna do instead?”
“I don’t know,” I said and I really hadn’t a clue. “Maybe I can get a job at an ad agency.”
“That worked out real well the first time.”
“Or maybe at a newspaper or something. I don’t know—anything.”
To be honest, though, Bistro 41 wasn’t that bad. Besides Kirk, who was one of the managers and a complete dipshit, it was a decent place to work and the food was good—especially the calamari. The place had just opened, and at the time it was one of the trendier establishments in the area. But most importantly—as far as I was concerned—it was the wait staff or rather, the server staff that was so remarkable and not in terms of their job performance because of course, that would’ve flown completely over my head and under my radar. But in terms of being a “recovering” addict attempting to reprogram his brain, my coworkers were critically important because I needed to be surrounded and distracted by intelligent, interesting people living healthy lifestyles…or at least healthier lifestyles. Unfortunately, however, living 25 miles away from the restaurant without a car in an area with little to no public transportation would require us to seek out more convenient accommodations in Fort Myers.
For several days we scoured the area for duplexes or complexes within walking distance of Bistro 41, but they were too pricy or there weren’t any vacancies. Then, after about two weeks of busting Granny’s balls with round trips to the restaurant, Pete McKay—one of the waiters—suggested we try Pine Manor which was a community located about a half-mile away from the restaurant and not too far from Downtown Fort Myers. Of course, “Crime Manor,” as it was more commonly and notoriously known throughout Southwest Florida, was a neighborhood comprised of almost identical duplexes, and populated with a nice cross-section of The Underbelly of America. Indeed, white trash drunks and drug addicts, black gangbangers and Latino kids selling crack on bikes were suddenly my new neighbors. And besides all that,
not only was the rent affordable—but at Crime Manor there was always a wide array of available apartments to choose from thanks to a never ending stream of evicted or arrested tenants. Indeed, gunshots were certainly not an anomaly and police were ever-present along with ever-ringing car alarms. And, for the first time in my life, I lived in an area immersed in the drive-by drug purchasing culture that exists in many places throughout the country, though I was usually unaware of this unless I happened to be looking out the window.
Certainly, relocating to a drug-riddled neighborhood wasn’t the wisest decision, but we didn’t have a stunning array of options to choose from, especially since we were without a car and required a place that was within walking-distance to work. But thankfully, even though Crime Manor was nothing short of an expansive, illegal drug-mart—like everywhere else in the area there was no dope being dealt, which we discovered only because at one point during a drunk and sloppy moment we actually went looking for it. We did learn, however, that virtually every other drug— prescription variety included—was being sold somewhere on some specific street in some part of the community.
Clearly, Crime Manor was hardly an ideal living situation, especially with an ever-present desire to be high or at least chemically altered in some way; but with the exception of one or two drunken decisions to buy a $10 rock being peddled by a Puerto Rican on a bike 15 feet from our front door and then regretting it later, Perry and I managed to satisfy that irrepressible craving exclusively with weed and beer. Fortunately, we were never big drinkers or smokers and both indulgences were usually refrained from until returning home from work each night, though we would occasionally blaze before heading in as well. Actually, we always blazed before heading into work—else I doubt I would have been able to make an appearance. Of course, pot no longer affected me like it did when I was in college. Gone were the drug’s mild hallucinogenic qualities and even the munchies were a thing of the past. By this point, if anything, marijuana seemed more like a Xanax or even a valium that prevented me from going on indiscriminate killing sprees throughout the restaurant. Sometimes, though, I wasn’t sure it would be enough.
15
By the end of February the weather was magnificent, and I was making good friends and good money at Bistro 41. In fact, the money was great. The restaurant was located in Southwest Florida’s most pretentious mall north of Naples and predictably the clientele was usually very wealthy. Of course, being that it was still in Florida, much of the clientele was not only very wealthy but also very old, so much so that at times I found them considerably more difficult to deal with than the average customer—especially when they tipped like it was 1920.
As far as my coworkers were concerned, even the kitchen staff—typically the most ornery of any employees anywhere unless you happen to be working in HELL—was usually in a good mood (relatively speaking) and approachable (also relatively speaking). Unfortunately, however, Kirk and I had problems almost from the very beginning which, I believe, due to my intimate understanding of such things, was because he was a little out of his fucking head. Actually, besides the fact that he had orange hair, bright red freckles and the thickest, ugliest pair of glasses I’d ever seen in my life, most of the time Kirk was fine. Well, I mean he wasn’t fine, but he was either running errands, working in the office or fine-tuning a fouler mood in the kitchen; however, he usually wasn’t bothering me which was all I really cared about. Still, there were moments when I’d be cutting paper tablecloth at slightly the wrong length, or incorrectly garnishing a drink or some other stupid shit and he’d take me aside and LOSE HIS FUCKING MIND. It was like being berated by a cursing, sweating, wired and bespectacled version of Alfred E. Neuman. And to be honest, I NEVER saw him behave that way around anyone else. He obviously had it in for me from the beginning, and I knew that in some way he would ultimately be the cause of my demise at Bistro 41.
After each extraordinarily busy evening at least half the wait staff would assemble at our furniture-free apartment in Crime Manor for two to four hours of mostly smoking weed—but there were always a few six-packs being passed around as well. Interestingly enough, other staff members began intermittently referring to our apartment as the Hippy Commune or the Kennedy Compound due to its exaggerated reputation as a destination for debauchery.
Since there was no furniture in the apartment of any kind, as soon as we arrived we’d begin to assemble around the breakfast bar and within seconds, a blunt was being passed around and some beers were cracked open. And then at last, the daily decompression would begin as the tension drained away from the head, heart and extremities that absorbed so much of the abuse and I felt a sense of peace and serenity enveloping me:
“I just wanna KILL that ugly motherfucker.”
“What are you talking about, Craig?” said Rick who was gay and one of the few staff members older than Perry and me. “You and Kirk look exactly alike. You’re just a slightly younger, curlier-haired version of him.”
“We look nothing alike,” I said even though I knew he was just kidding. “And besides, my hair isn’t orange and my freckles faded away years ago.”
“Not the ones on your shoulders,” Perry chimed in.
“Did you notice those when you were kissing his neck?” asked Kristen who was my favorite waitress.
“Craig, you’re not the only server Kirk picks on,” said Donna—my least favorite waitress and one that actually looked a lot more like Kirk than I did.
“What the fuck did you just call me?!”
“Craig’s a WAITER—not a server,” explained Pete as I already read him the riot act about this a little earlier in the week.
“How’s that any different?” Donna asked.
“BECAUSE IF YOU SIT IN HIS STATION YOUR ASS IS GONNA BE WAITING!” Pete blurted out like he’d been waiting to say that for years.
All joking aside, however, I think I was actually considered to be a bit of a prima donna throughout the restaurant and I’m not exactly sure why:
“Hey!” I barked on the very next day at Annie, who was Bistro 41’s 17-year-old hostess. “This is a list of customer criteria or better yet—things I better never-the-fuck find in my station.”
“Oh, wow—how unbelievably cool,” she said as she eagerly attempted to snatch the important document from my hand.
“Not so fast,” I snapped as I slapped her filthy little fingers away. “Just to make sure you know the score and there’s no confusion about ANYTHING, I’m gonna stand here and recite it to you so listen the fuck up!”
“Okay.”
“There will be no nurses, no personal attendants, no medical personnel of any kind in any official capacity at ANY of my tables!”
“No problem.”
“I’m not finished yet!”
“Oh, sorry.”
“NO walkers, NO oxygen tanks and NO FUCKING WHEELCHAIRS. Got it?”
“Yeah, alright already!” she suddenly snapped at me with an appalling degree of disrespect for her elders.
“In fact, now that I think about it—NOTHING on wheels. NO strollers, NO baby carriages, NO FUCKING BIG WHEELS! You see anything on wheels you better just roll it the fuck over to the other side of the restaurant. Catch my drift, buttercup? Huh? DO YOU? Alright—stop laughing. I’m fucking SERIOUS!”
“OKAY! Now go over there and bother Kristen or something.”
By the middle of March, as winter weather battered much of the country, the brunt of the busy-season came bearing down upon Southwest Florida and it seemed as though Bistro 41 was the only restaurant in town. There was constantly a line out the door, and though the wait staff handled the throngs of hungry guests with grace and dignity under fire, occasional difficulties would erupt that were clearly beyond our control. And for some reason these difficulties always seemed to come quickly and in bunches, whether they were rolling around on wheels or not.
“I’m gonna need a void,” I told Kirk as I showed him the check, while at least temporarily distracting him from busti
ng Kristen’s balls for something stupid as I could see appreciation in her eyes and a wave of relief wash over her face. “The redneck at table six doesn’t think he should have to pay for the fish special.”
“Which one?”
“The one with the greasy jeans and disgusting bandanna.”
“No, which FISH special?” he said with a sneer as he rolled his eyes.
“Oh…God, I forgot what it’s called—the one that’s cooked in a bag.”
“The lemon-baked branzino?” he asked in a nasty, rhetorical way.
“The what?”
“The bass…the one that’s cooked in a bag,” he explained as he was now mimicking me in mocking mode. “What was wrong with it? Why didn’t he like it?”
“Oh, no—he loved it,” I told him. “He ate every bit of it.”
“Then why doesn’t he wanna pay for it?”
“Because he also ate the bag.”
“Well maybe if you were a little more prepared to offer some details about the dish he wouldn’t have.”
“Oh, no—I’m pretty sure he would’ve anyway.”
“Hey, Craig—you need to get over to table twelve,” Perry suddenly told me on his way to the kitchen.
“What now?!?”
“The lady at position three said there’s something wrong with the fish special.”
“Again? Which one?”
“The stuffed tuna.”
I headed over to table twelve to check on position three.
“How can I help you, miss?” I asked an entirely dissatisfied customer.
She said nothing, and only held out a fork with a hunk of tuna attached to it.
I took the utensil and after holding it up to the light, realized there must have indeed been something wrong with the tuna because it was wearing a bloody Band-Aid.
“That is just so disgusting I don’t even know what to say.”
After apologizing profusely I removed the injured tuna from the table for evidentiary purposes and found Kirk.
Needle Too: Junkies in Paradise Page 9
