President's Day Weekend, the Sunday night shift... The couple that won't leave; the French chef in for dinner, Pepe Le Pew, a colleague calls him, whose refrain, "I like food, I like wine, I like to talk about food, I like to talk about wine," the couple seated next to him, planning a trip to France, is getting a lot of; the woman who's had too much Sancerre (or without any dinner) who asks me what my deal is. The waitress goes, I send the busboy home, the downstairs waiter comes up to watch the show... Chef Pepe has moved on to tipsy woman. "Are you in control of the music? Put on The Clash," she says. It ain't pretty. I turn the lights up, eat my salmon tartar over in the corner, ignoring the "come, sit next to us." I am left in a peculiar kind of purgatory as the fruits of my labor bring me toward wrapping things up. I just want to go home. Le Pew leaves, with a jolly "thank you, my friend, good luck," and one last shot at getting her to leave with him. "I like women," added to the list. She will stay and continue her inquisition a little while longer, the likable person she was now feeling spurned. I turn the music off, and finally, the last leftover first date couple makes toward the stairs. Finally, after making sure she has everything, I walk her down the steps and hail a cab. Thank god for cab drivers.

It all strikes one as a bit disturbing, this serving of wine to people. Why did I get into it? How to get out of it? Yoga, do some yoga, then meditate... that helps. The unsettling feeling stays with me as I ride home on my bicycle, as I sprawl on the couch watching a PBS show about Lincoln's years as a lawyer, as I wake up the next day, as I go to work the next day, as if my life were held hostage by that element of society which sneaks out at night and bares itself after the politeness is over, the selfishness coming out.

But, as a friend puts it, do I continually create my own hell just by going in there? Wow. I would hope it's just a job, and it does pay the bills; I can see what she means. Nerves jangled, I'm more prone than I would be to need three glasses wine in succession, more prone to bad decisions of the same sort I've whiffed all evening, of drunkenness leading to blind sensual fixations, a person carried away with slaking various thirsts. This doesn't happen when I am home reading and figuring out what to do about dinner and other chores. And writing.... is all this 'material,' as in material for the next prose attempt? Do I really care that much about the ins and outs of wines to feel dedicated to all the details of the world of wine? Maybe some people can handle wine, in that they enjoy it as an element of dinner. But I'm not sure I can, and you know, you get tired of waking up feeling green around the gills, and maybe on top of that, a bit ashamed of yourself for the pleasure-seeking that went with a bit too much wine.

This is, I guess, why I do it four nights a week, no more. That's enough.

Last night, working alone, I was getting off easy. Until two conducting an affair come in (one is a psychologist), just as I'm getting rid of the last diners. C'est la vie. I end up eating my roast beef sandwich at the same corner of the bar I took refuge in the night before. They let me off the hook, now that I have nothing left to do but stare at my iPhone propped up against a wine decanter and finish my dinner, as I make note to myself that I must go and get canned cat food at the Safeway, and some baby food too, as the cat is constipated.

Ahh, I get home again, wiped out. Amadeus is on the old telly, and so the night sinks in as I ponder my own childishness, until I've had enough of the tension of Mozart's destruction, and head off to bed.