Crazy is what Crazy be, I'm a Crazy Freak to be in love with thee

My job has been so easy for the past six months, everyone is happy at work. All of the guests are happy, the owners are happy. In our free time, I think many of us just wanted to hold hands and skip down the street whistling and singing. Then one day the kitchen manager noticed he wasn’t so happy and became very grumpy towards the wait staff. This became and issue, but not for long because he was offered another job and gave his notice. I don’t know if I’ve been writing on this blog for you to notice one thing about this restaurant, that being that we have very high turnover in the kitchen, especially kitchen managers. I account that to very poor management on behalf of the owner. As I do not hire or fire for the kitchen, I just make sure that make consistent quality of food in a respectful amount of time.

The person I work for is very manipulative and passive aggressive. Perhaps the reason I get along with him is because I am not manipulative and just aggressive. But no one else can seem to tolerate him in the restaurant, in particular in the back of the house. When the kitchen manager left, the pantry girl (who is crazy) asked to be promoted and she was. She shouldn’t have been or if she was, she needed guidance. But she was promoted into a position that she is not capable of carrying out. The man I work for has treated her despicably and is mentally abusive. Rather than helping her get to where she needs to be, he questions all of her actions - finally breaking down her confidence to a point where she is going crazy. This craziness carries through the entire restaurant and everyone has been a lot less happy than usual this past month. It’s been difficult.

Of course, she eventually decides to leave on bad terms. Which is what has happened with almost every single kitchen manager. This Saturday will be her last day and then once again, there will be turmoil in the kitchen as we try to get it to a point of harmony. The owner has asked me to manage the kitchen more, which I will be happy to do assuming that he stays the hell away and doesn’t harass my employees.

His wife used to harass the wait staff very similarly to how he likes to ride the cooks, and it literally came to a head one night over her wanting to fire someone over a nose ring. In this particular conversation I told her that she is mean and condescending to the servers. Typically one in particular, she constantly questions every move they make, tells them their shirt isn’t right, or their shoes aren’t black enough, or a million other petty things of this nature. After a very miserable evening where she refused to look at me and I know that she would never like me the same again, she interviewed every staff member to find out if this was true and we haven’t seen her in the restaurant since. Could I ever be so lucky with her husband?

Otherwise, I had an awful man come in the bar last night. He stood in the doorway with his hoody on looking around in a very creepy manner, not like he was looking for someone but rather he was just looking for trouble. I said hello and he didn’t answer. I asked him if I could help him with something and he didn’t answer. I finally said, “Are you not even going to say hello?” and with that he sat down at the bar. He ordered water and I replied, “You come here rudely and now you sit down to have a water. You can leave.” I expect someone to flip me off or tell me to go to hell when I tell them to leave the bar, but he looks at me and says, “You’re the reason I don’t date American girls,” and I replied, “fret not, I wasn’t interested.” And then he replies, “When you are sleeping at night, you have pleasant dreams of eating your own shit.” Jesus Fucking Christ, where did this one come from and why does he have to show up on my doorstep. After a couple, “Get the fuck out, he finally leaves.”

Five minutes later he is back at the door screaming about how he is going to call my boss and tell him how rude I was to him, how he owns three bars and he can’t believe how our bar is ran, all the while interjecting a fuck you just to keep it as offensive as possible. We were tempted to ask if he had a position for our crazy pantry girl turned kitchen manager, but one crazy + one crazy never equals anything good. He eventually leaves after we tell him we are calling the police. He first says, “Call the police, taser me, I don’t care.” But then he does leave.

I don’t really ever expect to see him again, but tonight who shows smoking three cigarettes in his mouth at once. Yes, the crazy man. He comes in declaring that he will be accepting my apology and I told him that there wasn’t a chance in hell I would apologize to him, but he definitely could apologize to me. He sat down and apologized three times and then asked my name, which I replied I would not give him. To that he said I was coy and sullen, which regardless of him being completely obnoxious I found slightly fascinating. Not often described as coy and sullen. He kept trying to talk and I looked at him and said, “I don’t know what to say to you. You come in here telling me that I dream of eating my own shit. If you really own three bars, you must understand why you have been kicked out. We are never starting over. You are never being served in this bar. You will never be welcome here. You will never set foot in here again. I accept your apology.” He got up and said he would be back, which scared everyone around me more than myself, but it made me call the police to keep an eye out for him. Because you just never know, any crazy can buy a gun in this country.

Otherwise, I’ve got some things brewing about having my own place. I don’t want to jinx it, so enough said.

First Friday coming up and we are hiring someone new. One of my servers is moving to Minneapolis to be with her girlfriend. I wish her the best of luck and we will miss her.

A guy dies and is sent to Hell. Satan meets him, shows him doors to three rooms, and says he must choose one spend eternity in. In the first room, people are standing in shit up to their necks. The guy says "no, let me see the next room." In the second room, people are standing with shit up to their noses. Guy says no again. Finally, Satan opens the door to the third room. People are standing with shit up to their knees, drinking coffee and eating danish pastries. The guy says, "I pick this room." Satan says okay and starts to leave, and the guy wades in and starts pouring some coffee. On the way out Satan yells, "O.K., coffee break's over. Everyone back on your heads!"

TOP 100 BARS

Oh yeah, and we just received top 100 bars in the country from Nightclub & Bar and we were mentioned in Sunset magazine as the place to be at night.

Booty Clap

Oh Oh Oh, What to do. The last two weeks have proven to be quite uneventful. The owners of the bar left for Hawaii on Monday. They have been speedily becoming crazier and crazier with the last phone call before they left to ensure that there hadn’t been a party in the kitchen the night before because there were dirty dishes. I reassured them that the dirty dishes were because of the new fear of paying anyone for more than exactly the amount of work they contributed, thus the pantry cook and dishwasher were sent home at 11 p.m. and there were still dishes in the dining room. Protocol has always been to leave these last few dishes for the prep on Monday, but in my boss’s new found paranoia he is sure that everyone is dancing on the prep tables, getting naked while drinking the kitchen wine and brandy, and throwing knives at one another as it could be nothing less than some sort of circus freak show.

With my restaurant plan on hold until my husband gets his shit together, I have had some time to think about what I really want. I really believe in my restaurant idea, but there is obviously some downturn in the economy and where I live has seen an overabundance of new buildings and in particularly new restaurants. In the last three months, six new restaurants opened within three blocks of where I work now and it is only a town of 70,000 people. Although our business has not really seen much of a change, there is definitely an overwhelming fear amongst the restaurant owners as to who is going to make it and how lean it will get before it gets better. There is a reassurance right now that I can leave, pick up, and go where the money is if that happens to be the case. Although, once again I believe the money will be where I am at because I work my ass off to keep that bar busy and thus far it has worked and I have no intention of not keeping busy. But once again, knowing that I could leave is somewhat reassuring. Especially from a serious commitment phobe who has a meltdown about every six months about being married and owning a home.

So I guess I will wait for my husband and see what goes out of business and then make a decision. Overall, I assume it is a good time because there will be a lot of open restaurant space in the next year. Furthermore, I have to get away from the people that I work for. They are slowly but surely becoming more and more crazy each day. Which in turn makes me become more and more crazy each day and more and more sensitive to the bizarre situation around me which will no doubt

The only real excitement of late is that one of our regulars, a Mexican business man (who drinks cuba libres and is always slightly on the prowl even though he has a wife and two children waiting for him at home) decided that he liked one of our guests enough to follow her into the bathroom, go into the stall next to her, and try to look up at her while she was peeing. Yeah, let’s just say that he’s not coming into the bar anymore. Fortunately, she had a good sense of humor about it because seriously, what is fucking more disgusting that trying to pee in a public bathroom, only to find that some jackass pervert is trying to get splattered.

Otherwise there hasn’t been any mayhem, even our constant source of enjoyment, our pantry cook, has been trying to get her shit together by applying for college and paying down her debt. After a recent excursion to the strip club, we thought that might be a perfect career for her. She always is broke, has an incredible body, a very energetic dance she calls the booty clap (where once on New Year's we swear we heard the slap of her ass cheeks as she worked it), and a kooky yet dynamic personality. She replied, “Don’t think that hasn’t crossed my mind. I was blessed with a lot of tits and ass, but I was also blessed with a brain to know enough not to bear it for money.” On that note, I’ll call it a night.

What’s new cocktail wise.

I decided to pour through some stuff that I am sitting on, like a white port. I am mixing it with lemon juice, St. Germain elderflower liqueur and it is absolutely delicious. I named it Puerto Blanco and the name however is not delicious and no one has bought it. It needs to be renamed. Next menu change.

The hot drink however is Yumm Cocktail, which is really just a cherry lemon drop made with Three Olives Cherry Vodka. I don’t put any sugar in it and instead put a homemade sugar candy that makes for a perch to put a ball of cotton candy. The presentation is incredible and everyone adores it. I want to do some cotton candy experimenting, but I am going to wait a month, I need to sell through the bagged cotton candy that I already bought. I’m excited about the cotton candy, as you can flavor it and I think it could really push the envelope on what I’m doing with cocktails. Furthermore, it screams fun and it really is beautiful.

Otherwise, all the drinks are doing well. I have trouble selling that elderflower liqueur, even though it is so delicious. No one knows what it is, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it will take over like pomegranate has in the next year or so. We just need Oprah to endorse it.

Dave works hard at the plant and spends most evenings bowling or playing basketball at the gym. His wife thinks he is pushing himself too hard, so for his birthday she takes him to a local strip club.

The doorman at the club greets them and says,
"Hey, Dave, how ya doin?"

His wife is puzzled and asks if he's been to this club before.
"Oh no," says Dave. "He's on my bowling team."

When they are seated, a waitress asks Dave if he'd like his usual
Budweiser. His wife is becoming uncomfortable and says, "You must come
here a lot for that woman to know you drink Budweiser".

"No, honey, she's in the Ladies Bowling League. We share lanes with
them."

A stripper comes over to their table and throws her arms around Dave.
"Hi Davey," she says, "Want your usual table dance?"

Dave's wife, now furious, grabs her purse and storms out of the club.
Dave follows and spots her getting into a cab. Before she can slam the
door, he jumps in beside her and she starts screaming at him.

The cabby turns his head and says,
"Looks like you picked up a real bitch tonight, Dave!"

Four Stars

Just got a great write up in the local newspaper’s food magazine:

“The small, warm room blanketed in red bustled with people, noise, and music. This bar is a classy spot with a bit of a twist. Our delicious cocktails came with names like oxymoron and hucklepeary and each arrived with a plastic monkey hanging from the rim. The souvenirs were a big hit with my crowd; we’re big fans of monkey business.”

Continues on about how good the food and service are. And another picture, although this one is of the back of my head!!!!!

A Christmas Story

Thank God the holidays are over. Somehow with the combination of Christian spirit and holiday cheer makes most people anxious and difficult to be around. The added stress that comes from having to wait at the post office for 40 minutes just to buy a book of stamps (the machine is out), slippery streets, knowing that you are buying presents for people that you hate and in turn knowing that you will receive presents from people that you hate and in turn probably hate the presents that you received always creates a general feeling of apprehension and fretfulness. Take these people, many of whom only go out to celebrate during the holidays, in a busy bar and give them a little alcohol and yes you got it, by the end of the holidays you question your ability to ever really like anyone again.

Our holiday season at the restaurant leapt off to a swift start as our pantry cook took a dive off of a refrigerator a week before Christmas. No one is quite sure what she was doing up there, although we’ve noticed that in many aspects she is not as evolved as other humans and could quite possibly still have some monkey chromosomes left in her. Unfortunate to her, monkeys have a keen sense of balance and agility she seems to be lacking.

A few days after her daring attempt to break her neck, she got a fretful case of the flu and called out sick right before her shift. Leaving our two-man kitchen with only one man. Upon inspection, it appeared that there was no way in hell that he could make all of the food, so I left my bartending position to make salads and desserts. It is one of the most miserable nights I’ve had in the service industry, knowing that ticket times were three to four times longer than our average and that service was suffering because I was in the back of the house, making the front of the house short staffed. Amazingly, we didn’t have any unhappy guests. Once the situation was explained, everyone was very considerate. Nonetheless, the stress level was high and there was a fine line between the guests being o.k. and with all the tables just walking out in a general fit of justified frustration. Fortunately, the staff is made of sweet talkers who hypnotized them into thinking it was the greatest experience of their life. That is why each server is automatically given a pocket watch on a chain on her first night working.

Two nights later, the bald headed man who slipped on the floor (Aug. 30 blog) walked in with all of the TV newsgirls, the owner of a prominent restaurant in town, and a chef of another restaurant in town who’s birthday it was. The owner of my bar was in the restaurant and shouted hello to him. I wasn’t sure what the fuck was going on, was she friends with this asshole. I looked at her and said, you know - he’s not allowed in here. It turns out she had just met him at their other restaurant because he was such a pain in the ass she had to smooth things over with him.

She never knows what to do in these situations, she looked like a deer in the headlights. The server of that table looked at me like “what the fuck” and I told her that I would tell him he needed to leave. But in the presence of all of these people, we didn’t want to make a scene. Especially in front of the newsgirls, they are all very nice and come in the bar a lot. One of them dates our building manager and they are in the bar three times a week. We decided to tell him that he could stay with the birthday party as long as he was on his best behavior and didn’t cause any problems. Any creature including a hungry momma grizzly bear could have done better at controlling its behavior than this man. He immediately began to physically trip our food runner, make a scene about not getting a drink, and call his server names. At that, he had to leave. On his way out he flipped me off. I followed him out and asked him if he understood he was never to set foot on our property again. He started fluttering his hands in my face telling me that I was annoying him. I have never dealt with anyone as condescending, belittling, and disrespectful as this man. I asked, “Annoying you. I am annoying you? You are not even allowed onto this property. We give you the benefit of the doubt, on which you shit all over and now I am annoying you. If you don’t leave this property right now, I will call the police and have you physically removed from in front of my bar.”

He was with a very large blond woman who was obviously horrified by all of this. After he left, she came in and asked what that was all about. I explained that he had an incident at the bar and we decided that he was 86’d, but we had thought to let him in because it was a birthday party and he was with the birthday boy’s sister. This girl started freaking out because she didn’t trust that man and she didn’t want him near her sister-in-law, who was obviously dating him. I couldn’t agree with her more, since in the back of my head I figure that on the side he tricks young woman into his car, poisons them, and then cuts them up and sticks them in his freezer on days that he’s bored. She kept telling me how sorry she was for me. I told her to stop pitying me. I wouldn’t have to deal with him again, I replied, that’s the great thing about the bar - no matter how bad it is, no matter how awful a customer is, or a situation is, it will eventually end. And the shift will be over and it will be a completely new day the next day. She however, was dealing with family, which is never over. I told her to save her pity for her young beautiful sister-in-law who justifies dating a man who is older than her father and is mentally and physically abusive to everyone around him. If she lives through this relationship, she will need every ounce of pity she can garner to rebound against such a bad decision.

New Year’s eve came and went without any incidents. Just a very long work day, I was at the restaurant for over 15 hours in order to transform the space into a tiki bar. But my hard work paid off, we broke a record, everyone had fun, and we made lots of money. The owners of the bar were thrilled and thanked me about 30 times, which is great because typically I feel under-appreciated, like all good restaurant managers.

I should have known that the feeling couldn’t last more than 48 hours, but for some reason I always am hopeful, almost like a child. And just like most children's hope is killed by a stunning dose of reality, so was mine. Two days into the new year, the woman who owns the bar and I got into a dispute over nose piercings. Which are against the rules in the rule book, but three staff members have them and no one has ever said dick to them. But on this certain night, she came in, scolded our new food runner for having a piercing (she has already been working with us for over a month) and told her to go straight to the office for a talk. I was appalled, since she also had just called down to the restaurant and told one of the servers that she was an idiot. I love my staff, they work very hard for me and are very loyal. They are smart, witty, good salespeople, and extraordinarily hard working. I didn’t feel like the owner should be shitting on them for no reason than to improve her ego. So we had an argument. Which is still up in the air. I apologized that night; I didn’t figure it was worth having a fit about. She however, is still not speaking to me.

So on that note, Happy New Year’s!

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What’s New Cocktail Wise:

Sub Rosa just released some new vodkas onto the market that are unlike anything else right now. The vodkas come out of Dundee, Oregon and are only available on the West Coast right now. But if you see them, pick them up and mess around with them. They are bold and fun.

Oxymoron

Sub Rosa tarragon vodka, ginger syrup, lemon juice, and simple syrup

Oblivion

Sub Rosa saffron vodka, ginger syrup, orange bitters, fresh squeezed orange, and lime juice

Garnished with pepper threads (they look like saffron)

Berry Bliss

A four berry lemon drop made with Three Olives berry vodka, blackberry puree, lemon juice, and simple syrup

Topped with a blackberry, blueberry, cinnamon foam

This drink is killing it

Orchid Lychee Mimosa

Orchid Lychee Liqueur, Hou Hou Shu Sparkling sake, served with a lychee fruit

Easy to make and very yummy. I think it will do better in the spring and summer, although it is doing o.k. now.

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An Indian walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand and a bucket of buffalo manure in the other. He says to the waiter, "Me want coffee".

The waiter says, "Sure chief, coming right up". He gets the Indian a tall mug of coffee, and the Indian drinks it down in one gulp, picks up the bucket of manure, throws it into the air, blasts it with the shotgun, then just walks out.

The next morning the Indian returns. He has his shotgun in one hand and a bucket of buffalo manure in the other. He walks up to the counter and says to the waiter, "Me want coffee". The waiter says "Whoa, Tonto. We're still cleaning up your mess from the last time you were here. What the heck was that all about, anyway?"

The Indian smiles and proudly says, "Me in training to buy restaurant. Come in, drink coffee, shoot the shit, and disappear for the rest of the day."

Money Makes the World Go Round

In the midst of trying to finish my business plan and talk to investors, the owner of one of the hot restaurants in town came and asked me to train his bartender behind my bar. He claimed that the reason he couldn’t do it at his bar is due to the fact he is closed for the month to do a remodel. His second overhaul in less than two years. Completely unnecessary if you ask me since he has one of the most beautiful restaurants in town, I’m not quite sure where he gets the money.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to train his bartender because he claims that in his remodel he is redesigning to be the adult version of our bar. Which we aren’t really quite sure what that means, since the average age of our guest is probably 45 (although I have the sneaking suspicion that most of them like Jell-O and play with tinker toys in their free time). Anyhow, he asked and I didn’t say anything but that I’d have to think about it. I figured if I had a day, I could figure out a better way to phrase, “You coke-sniffing scum sucker who calls himself a chef because he knows what julienne vegetables are, what are you fucking nuts, we are not training your bartender for free so you can steal all of our drinks, systems, and ideas.” He had the audacity to send this poor kid in and tell him that he was going to “help” me behind the bar. I got a phone call from the opener at 4 p.m. telling me that some guy was there for a realistic. I haven’t hired anyone in months and I am not hiring anyone, so I was baffled. Then I figured out it must be the scum sucking chef’s little henchman. When I got to work at 5:30, he was having dinner with coke-sniffer who was so delighted that I was going to train his bartender. I called him the next day and said as flattered as we were to be asked to train him, he needed no training since bartending is just really glorified dishwashing.

So I met with an investor last week who is looking to get out of the business he is in now. He is in his early 30’s and has always dreamt of owning a restaurant. He came to me, I didn’t go to him, which felt good. But his ideas of what a bar should be differ from mine and I don’t think I want him to be my soul partner. He is a nice guy, but extremely boring with absolutely no sense of humor. I found myself explaining tidbits of sarcasm most of our lunch. I don’t know how he feels about being just being one of many investors; I have the sneaking suspicion that he wouldn’t like it because he really wants to be a part of the restaurant, which is exactly why I want to have more than one investor. Nonetheless, he is very interested and sounds like he could put the money together. So it is a start, made me start thinking more in the money terms and less in the concept of a restaurant terms. It also made me see that the first step is to see if I can buy the bar I manage now and then if that doesn’t work to move forward from there. On Thursday, I have lunch with one of my regulars who absolutely adores me and when I asked him to have lunch with me because I was looking at buying the bar he told me what an idiot I am to want to invest in that business because the entry was too low, the success rate is minimal, and the return is low. And I agreed with him on all of those things, but it wasn’t what I was expecting and definitely a blow to my ego and a shock nonetheless. But I feel better now, still ready to go eat lunch with him on Thursday. I’m taking my best friend, who I also work with, who is positive she can sell him on the idea.

So maybe it is the beginning to something bigger for me. For the meantime we got a write up in the local food magazine for our winter cocktail list. I just got photographed for another local magazine and Sunset Magazine is doing a piece on the bar. I’m supposed to talk to the woman writing the article tomorrow. Hopefully it is very glamorous and enticing.

Excited for the weekend. We are going to do hot buttered rums with cinnamon nutmeg compound butter, homemade caramel, and spiced rum. I’m also making eggnog from scratch with Myer’s and brandy. I have a crème brûlée martini with vanilla cream, Navan Vanilla Liquor, and Vanilla vodka with a handcrafted vanilla sugar candy that I made that’s been killing it. I drizzled the candy when it was drying and all of the candies look like beautiful pieces of artwork. I’m also doing a gingerbread martini with a gingerbread man hanging off the rim of the glass for First Friday. I think it will be really cute.

Cocaine

Cocaine is God's way of saying you earn far too much.

A History Lesson

Alcohol can tell your history. The first time I ever drank hard alcohol was at one of my parent’s friend’s parties. They lived up on a hill on the south side of town next to miles of sprawling BLM land filled with piñon trees and cacti. While everyone was enjoying the nice weather and the mountain vistas, my sister, her friend, and I put some brandy in a large Dixie cup and informed our parents that we were walking back to town. It was the middle of summer and the day was long, we walked late in the evening in full daylight each taking sips with a quick shake of the head after each one.

That would be one of the last times I drank hard alcohol in moderation. I was soon thereafter awarded a scholarship to go to Europe and within a month found myself drinking pot-stilled vodka mixed with Coca Cola until I vomited, but even that wouldn’t keep me from ordering another drink. I moved back to the states for an unusual fondness for McCormick’s vodka mixed with orange soda. As were my platform shoes and short haircut short lived once back in the States, my palette changed for a partiality for micro-brews and marijuana. One day some unusually clear thinking showed me that I was spending quite a lot on beer and how that could be better spent on clothing and long trips. I quit drinking for the most part and then almost entirely when I met a guy who viewed alcohol almost in the same context as my Southern Baptist grandmother, that it was only put on this earth to make you weak. I was doing pull ups off the door jams at this point, so any chance of fragility was out of the question.

I left college and moved to the city where I was surrounded by people that drank as a hobby, a sport, and some for exercise. I started hanging out more and jumped on the cosmo craze, feeling hip with my pink sips as I developed an interest in designer clothing, chef-inspired cuisine, and started to understand the difference between a viognier and a barolo. I soon after took on a cheerful alcoholic as a boyfriend who turned me onto Crown Royal and expensive bottles of champagne. It is with this I left a three-year relationship when I was making some of the better money of my life, with nothing more than a few photos of well-dressed drunk people in fancy restaurants.

After a move to the Virgin Islands and a realization that I needed to regain a sense of dignity and pride, I moved back to my hometown. Where I met my husband who showed me the delights of Jameson. I then found Jameson 12 at an Irish pub in Phoenix, and for now that is my staple drink. I like looking at the back of a bar and seeing a bottle that reminds me of a certain time, or a certain place, or a certain friend. I just wonder how that history is for some people, for example my regular D.

D is in his late 40’s, tall and thin with a long blond ponytail. He is always very cheerful and loves to tell everybody what good energy they have. He is the kind of guy who keeps crystals in his pocket and advises to have your tarot read in times of trouble. He usually never has any trouble himself, since his father sold a winery in Napa in the 70s and D lives off of that money. Thus, D has never had to work and lives about 25 miles out of town on a ranch that has an abundance of housecats and no other animals.

Obviously, money is not an issue to D. He has always been an extremely generous tipper and a good spender. Over the months I’ve come to learn that he is engaged to a woman S, who waits tables two nights a week at a French bistro in the town that they live near. He always speaks very highly of her and how they were getting married in Hawaii in February. About two months ago, he brought S in for dinner. She is the same age as he, extremely beautiful, nice, and charming. S and D started coming for dinner once a week, always sitting at the bar, always ordering the same NxNW glass of cabernet and ending with the same Italian coffee drink.

Last Friday, D was in alone. Which is not unusual. He had two Italian coffees and his tab was $15. He paid with a credit card and then left $100 as the tip. I didn’t look at the slip and just put it in the drawer. G.I. Joe might have thought that knowledge is half the battle but when it comes to what people have tipped me, I’ve found that I cannot help but lose my enthusiasm to poor tippers and furthermore I think it’s tacky to look at the charge slips as you pick them up.

A few moments later, he calls me over with the curl of his pointer finger and says, “you didn’t see the tip, did you?” To which I replied no, I didn’t. He says, I left you $100 and then I feel like he is trying to kiss me from over the bar. I turn my head and say thank you but wonder if he thinks I am one of the cheapest prostitutes in Bend. I saw Cathouse, $100 won’t even get you a hand job. But the money wasn’t really for me; it was to impress the smart-looking blond girl sitting next to him. He proceeded to place his arm around her, rub her back, and kiss her on the neck. He bought another round of drinks, this time Voyant Chai liqueur, and this time left $50 on it. He left with this blond girl and put on a show of kissing her hard against his truck outside of the restaurant.

At 1:45 a.m. the phone rings. The phone never rings this late into the night, I am always alone now with the doors locked counting money or putting stuff away. So to hear anything in the building is shocking. I answer it. S asks me if I’ve seen D becaise she is concerned that she hasn’t seen him all night. I told her he left the bar around 10 p.m. I was surprised that he was fucking around on her; surprised that this woman was calling in the middle of the night, surprised that somehow I was in the middle of their fuck-up-ed-ness. But unfortunately, I am numb to people having affairs, people cheating with their wives’ best friends, and bar owners fucking their staff while their wives do the books in the backroom.

D & S came in the next night. S told me how D had fallen asleep in the truck in the driveway and how she didn’t find him until morning. I had to turn around and roll my eyes. S was looking at the back of the bar and saw the tall orange bottle that the Voyant comes in and asked about it. I told her it was Chai Tea Liqueur and that it was very yummy and creamy with cinnamon and nutmeg, like putting the flavor of Christmas in a bottle. She asked D if he wanted to try it and he says no. So just like I think of fun times, friends, and exquisite meals I’ve had when I scan across the bar, I just hope for D’s sake that they don’t have Voyant at the bar on his wedding day.

Dear Abby:

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job over three years ago he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does is buy cigars and cruise around and bullshit with his pals, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me and hints that I am a lesbian.

What should I do?

Signed,

Clueless


Dear Clueless:

Grow up and dump him. For Pete's sake, you don't need him anymore. You're a United States Senator from New York, act like it!