So there's already 39 covers--meaning 39 customers, spread out into parties of two and four, six, five, whatever, showing up at different times, but mainly concentrated around the usual 7 PM dining hour--on the book when I get to work, but the downstairs people on a slow day shift who has already earned one point in the pool, and will make two by the end of the day, help decide that we only need three servers not four, one busboy, and the number is going up already by the time the door opens, and there are walk ins...  as far as what I can gather when my Monday night jazz night shift begins...   It's going to get crazy.  I see a familiar name for a seven top, a friend over the years.  She likes wine.

But I will not be able to get to her.  

Where's the boss?  Is he in the kitchen, directing traffic, expediting?  

And as I'm thinking of finally making it, at 9:15, with the band ending at 9:30, the guys come up the stairs smelling like weed and smiling, hey, man...  They want to eat.  They will be joined by other guys...  So much for an easy uncomplicated ending of silent dutiful peaceful cleaning.

The night, amongst many, you want to tear your hair out and almost try to, your shirt is soaked with sweat, the regulars...  what the f can you do, I'm sorry, I've done the best I can all these stupid years to get to you and give you and fast and as efficiently as I could all the good stuff that might be possibly available, and not a bad job, but tonight, f it, it's not possible, I've been totally undercut, I'm powerless, I'm sorry, this shit is too much...  I come over,  still I'm dong the best I can, but, look, look at what I have to deal with...

For my friend Mary, I did get them up and running, with a couple of tastes, oh, we will go with the Bordeaux.  Great.  Another couple joins them, with nice bottles of their own.  Corkage.  Damn, why didn't I save the good big Bordeaux glasses...  At the end, she says, please, taste them, okay, and eventually, as a reward for her patience, when she suggests a little taste of bubbly, fine, no problem, seven little glasses for the table, on the house.

Mary is sweet.  We go way back.  You should taste these wines...  A Nuit St. Georges, from 2009, yes, nice.  And then a big name Bordeaux, not a Cos, not a Margaux, hmm, what was it...




The problem with writing is always the same problem, the same problem the Amish and the Aboriginal might have with being photographed.  Shy people, artists, people who aren't drunk.  Strangers.

It's all there, in you, all of life's thousand battles historical and personal all bleeding together, but when you get home and can sit down, poof, none of it is right, none of it is right to write about.  It's oh-boy, what a mess.  It's oh-boy, what a stunning tragic stupid defeat, all of it pointless, all of it erotic and about love, and about the life you'd want to have lived, all in that short time when there are so many possibilities, but...  but...   but...

That's the closest you'll get to writing.  That's the pressure of air and gravity which makes breaking the natural limitations of the physical world, its electromagnetic energy continuum, impossible or everyone would be doing it, as everyone is already doing everything anyway, and you're the only jerk asshole imbecile who's not seen the light of taking life and living with it, getting coupled up with a beloved person you really enjoy of the opposite nature and sex, but the same, if you can overcome the  sound barriers of your own pain, your own shitty situation, the things dragging at you like your old shoes strewn across your carpeted floor...  Perceived psychological issues, whether they are there or not, time, time passing...

You only know.  The sense the creatures of the sea must have of being in the sea, of their element.  The sense the wordy minded creature has when time allows the return to thoughts, thoughts that must be turned, dug up, like potatoes, put away like silverware cleaned now, folded napkins...  No, I'm not the psycho...  The psycho stuff is spread through all, and now manifested in the situation of mankind, this crazed creepy particular juncture when the seas will rise and cover up the floors of cities where millions live...




Totally stupid and shy am I, to meet the world of "men."   Sound of Music.

I'm not the only writer of my age, pondering the fleeting gone experience of college, the concentration of various exciting people, smart, attractive, all brought together, to be fruitful, capitalized upon, not the time to make a glorious head case out of yourself...  but that's what you did...

I walk home, from work, home, such as it is, so it is.  I deserve that, not having made any effort to be a professional of any kind, and it's late anyway...  And there are thoughts that run through my mind, I'm hungry, I'd like to sleep, I'd like to relax, but the calculus of all that tells me I should have given up on my chosen profession as a night barman, unhappy milkman, full of wine  trade stories, and have embraced the world of those of the "Day Walkers..."  responsible people, who all can talk to each other, bit by bit, detail by detail, sharp factoid, useful considerations of all practical natures....

Every time you try to write something smart, you write something stupid and foolish and not worth showing.  This is the truth.


To write and to live is to pass through and beyond regret, and to see the new, and the love, the life, the possibility, all the good stuff caged and set free...


Then I wake up and it feels like I've given away everything for a song...  so the mind tells me...