One of the very first things taught to me upon entering the bartending biz - the life - was to make friends with the kitchen. They have the ability to either save your ass, or bury it. Many are somewhat akin to the French Foreign Legion - from parts unknown ... for good reason. If you have not read 'Kitchen Confidential' by Anthony Bourdain - do. If you've never seen Ratatouille, have a taste:
Chapter 13: Ottawa. The Difficulties of Breathing for Those Within.
This the simple of my Say - I have given him the name of a small boy stuck down a water well. My Jimmy actually felt about ready to physically kill someone that night. He’d had enough of the collective bullshit - and this was thee revolution that I had waited for: the bitching and the fussing of a people set on specific action extremely more interesting to me than the usual mock union meetings that presented themselves to the Time and Again.
These were the moments when it actually seemed worthy of it all to me; I was accomplishing something by recognizing an unfolding. The restaurant was busy, and the ring of din a cool splash down the spine - an echo of distraction to my working in these semi-burbs of my tiny Ottawa.
Said Jimmy used to manage the kitchen of my work, our High School Bar and Grill; this Jimmy carefully shampooed his curly coif every single day, scrunched its spring very hard beneath a protective hair net or curved-brim New York Yankees ball cap - the some of us whispering him a nick of name from the safe side of the food window: “SideShow, get me some guac - Pretty Please.” And I should like to say he smiled and took it.
Yes. And I never ever charged this Jimmy for a single ounce of liquor. True story that is; always called him by his proper, not the fake Jimmy that I say out loud for reasons of my own - I never ever bit the hand that fed my customers.
And so the ex-convicts cooking the restaurant meals. The university students. The lifers or poor of English language tending filet mignon or halibut with the touch of a tong, maybe partially mangled finger: rare, medium rare, medium, not. These others that can cook with a mere look of the eye: colour, tone, texture. And Jimmy just some small bad boy stuck down some necessary well between tragedy and nature. He and the manner of cooks having their regular meetings back there by the stinky dumpster; heavy cigarettes and a growing whisper of doing stuff better than Kes, our seldom seen owner of High School. They: somewhere between this hairy old man and having to deal with customers face to face. Revolutionaries with a love of extremely loud music and calling each other fag, homo bag-biter; donning ratty ‘Che’ T-shirts for the pictured beret, cool of his face peering off into the distance. Fair enough.
Back behind the brown dumpster, upon pile of broken-down rhetoric, it has been said to me that Jimmy swore a very bad series of words and then kicked the big bad dumpster - very hard enough to hurt his life straight through his small sneaker; he merely smiled to his gathered brethren, and I had my spies to confirm this very fact. It is then believed that he began to experience a difficulty in breathing, his eyes straining and looking around at his fellow cigarette-smoking cooks. The power had gone to his head, they thought, and so said my friend to me. Stuck Jimmy spat out his ciggie and leaned over, put his calloused hand to his chest - and I may be only slightly embellishing this related story.
I recognize and elaborate. I have seen for my own; had viewed it very close-up, and it was not the feeling of power coursing through his body that made his pulse race and lungs fail to time the correct of an in-and-out. Jimmy had no power; he was disgruntled and he had insurrection to go with the worry and ennui and fifteen-odd years of preparing food. He had easy access to alcohol and a gift for cooking perfection in his sleep. What he was experiencing was his body presenting him the end result - I know for I have seen the similar quite near to me.
It had been building in him for some time, this general dissatisfaction with our tiny owner, the one whispered of and barely encountered: my friend Ef there to sign and hand out our forged paycheques or under-the-table monies for kitchen staff and such; this G.M. with the nipple ring to run a smooth School, and me to continue my studies. Betty, Fred and Barney - we played for tips. The kitchen for them plain-white envelopes. And Jimmy began to slow lose it for the morning notes left for him by a someone named Kes:
Order from This supplier from now on;
No, we can’t add tiger shrimp to the menu, it isn’t worth our worry;
Where were you Friday morning, and what’s this I heard about you being ‘sick?’ Again?
He barely saw the man anymore. And he could hardly yell into a cell phone that was never answered, innovate a menu that would never be sent to the printer.
And I always gave him the good rye, made it a double and a splash of 7. His closest kitchen comrade was my head spy, but gossip was as always everyone’s game. This gaunt young man that I lend my supposed porno name, Prince Holmwood, drank his six or seven pale ales right beside him at the end of every restaurant night, unwound with him. On a napkin, with a pen borrowed from me, they would draw crop circles and talk with a lean and a hush; from my side of the wood I could still smell the kitchen on them, make out the whiff of prep and serve: the sour cream and salsa of quesadillas, the various of wine sauce for pasta, the essence of cooked cow and chicken breast. Sweat. So I joked and minded my distance, knowing full well that Prince would fill me in later on the What that was wrong now. Even then I could hear Jimmy’s breathing from ten feet away, and then a sigh, and then he was better. They were both tired, and they were both drinking, smoking heavily. Jimmy sighed once the more and resumed the rye, leaned back in close to comrade Prince. Hauled on his ciggie and began to make his mind up, according to the way Prince would put it later. They had progressed beyond diagrams; they were somewhat ready from that very last straw night onward.
And I recognized. In that week before he left us, I waited and selectively passed on the bits that I knew: to Betty, to my two drinking buddies - Barney and large Fred. We made a pact and agreed to leave Ef out of the loop. The reasoning You can very well surmise from the rest of that mind of mine. But here is what I suspect from Jimmy in that week:
He would come home and not want to cook; perhaps he would order some Chinese food and have an allergic reaction to a certain sweet and sour sauce or maybe some mushrooms used in a chop suey. Perhaps he was susceptible to MSG. His heart would thump; he would feel lost and have to lie down and insert a cigarette. If his roommates weren’t around he could probably calm himself down or let the Whatever slowly work its way clean. He would get up and go to the washroom and force a movement. Or, if necessary, he would hide in his room from everyone, let his brain think himself towards a settled state.
Throughout that week and most likely before, he would wake from a sleep unable to remember a dream. The breath would have left him, and he would have to pat his chest with a quick rhythm - this I can know for I have seen the similar close-up, weeded through the interruptions of my own life to extrapolate this theory. At some point he might have considered the hospital or a clinic, but was probably too lazy or couldn’t be bothered to explain something that would be gone by the time that he got there. But he was positive that it was diet, the lack of exercise.
I had this exact thought myself. Before. When this similar was very close to my guess of eyes, emptying its troubled breath into the invisible brown paper bag.
And my close-up was more subtle in the before, not the now of my apartment that be retrospective and able to realize too late to do more of a good. A box of 400 Q-tips my count down from Day 1 here - not the black of a many x thru calendar days that be disconcerting to others who should happen to visit: my used one-a-days I do save in a separate box, total them ever once the while for kicks, for feeling what Jimmy did in that week before he left us. I see it now in the Past - Jimmy has long auburn hair straightened with a hair dryer and comb, ample cleavage as he lies naked beside me; in the moments before They wake up in the middle of the night, They gently rub their left eyebrow. My memory.
Me watching Jimmy place a sheet of white into every single menu. The clinical smile on his face, a tongue slipped slightly out.
My taking of a seat beside him, asking him how things were. Fantastic, he told me the day he would leave us. I passed him an insert and read one for myself:
*High School Bar and Grill – the Specials*
The same meal as always, brought to you on the raging back ribs
Of overworked and undersecured slaughterhouse workers. On the knees
Of travelling families.
It is our goal to uplift your dining experience by keeping you unaware
That our payroll usually bounces and many of us insist on cash.
We have absolutely NO tiger shrimp unfortunately.
Nice work, I threw out stuck Jimmy’s way. He winked and kept on a-stuffing the menus; it was late afternoon and the scene was near. At the end of this all I would be laughing through my nose while relating it to X. When those outside my circle of tell went on shift they just assumed it must be a joke or a made-up. Ef came in and walked by a menu, saw the sticking out, and did something he probably had to. Things were different from then on.
But whether or not Jimmy up and finally left us, or if Ef actually did can his impertinent ass was a matter of constant discussion; Ef done hauled him into the office and slammed the door most loudly. But he had to, and he had the misfortune of being a manager. But he had hired and nurtured me, taught me the stage. He was a fairly close friend for years before, and yet from Jimmy’s Bad Day on, mostly hello good-bye and straight smiles courtesy me and him for quite the while. Because of my way.
Because after the screaming had stopped, after the office door had flung its way back to open, Jimmy walked a gauntlet of hoots and hollers and me. He booted his way through the kitchen’s double-swing doors and paused only briefly to chuck us the hairiest of moons as he sauntered over to Table 33, to the two women exchanging piece of photocopied paper in booth.
And if it’s important, really important for the mid-knee dress to have always dreamed of being used between the height of 5’2” and 5’11”, then a blank is drawn from me as to her friend’s second-skin acid-washed jeans and big hair revival.
Stuck Jimmy walked up and knelt before them, gave them his real name and proceeded to explain the intricacies of killing a cow with a stun bolt and hooking it upside down to a chain line that sometimes moves far to fast to keep up with proper etiquette or safety; the first lady, the apparent weaker, squealed square into the face of the calm Jimmy with hair scrunched beneath dirty NY cap. There was silence without a slap. And then this thoughtful Jimmy made it abundantly clear that it was one of the unfortunate prices that we had to pay as a meat-eating society - that which he himself was resigned to. Still, he told lady and female companion of certain age, never forget about the guy doing the killing and the grilling. Tip the server at least ten-percent or go thirsty. This was all very important, he emphasized, adding that the food of holy High School Bar and Grill was decent enough for honest women of their sorts - he knew this for sure because he had used to cook here. Triple-A cuts or better; Very clean, he added, leaning close and stroking the bare of both their ring fingers. He recommended that they go with the wild salmon; it was bathed in a lovely sauce of vodka that he himself had prepared that very day - Smirnoff and a big smile. Thanking them, forgoing the kiss, he was off his knees and gone. His ball cap in the air, one might believe.
We watched but saved our entrance for when he was clearly headed for the front doors.
We then pounced and never gave the customers the time to think themselves into a tizzy - descended on these two ladies with free umbrella drinks and a round of giggles; Things happen, Betty and I told them. It’s all for a reason a laugh, short Barney and his long lovely hair vowed, promised with a tilt of head. It was still early and the inserts were thus removed and saved as keepsakes. No real harm done - aside from Ef.
He would stay in the office and listen to The Cure all night; we knocked, but never an answer.
I would try and add hue to this very All when I reached the end of that night and the apartment that I still shared with X; I would fall onto a coloured love seat and laugh and smear the look on the faces of those two girl ladies. Where had all of this come from, X asked, in those weeks before Spain. I don’t know, I told her - Jimmy had just lost it. He was a sad and hyperventilating soul. There was more but I was, of course, resplendent on a small couch bearing my bodily imprint. Relaxed, and that was my almost entire contribution to dissecting the cause of that drama; the insouciance before Spain that was my gift. We cracked a bottle of some affordable Australian wine, most probably a mellow Shiraz with an animal on the label, and beyond that we were barely talking at this that point of my entire lie that is Me thinking this to You. We sipped and listened to Coltrane, the TV set On but muted. Music videos and nature shows and wherever my remote would stop at midnight, one-in-the-morn.
... pause.
* Editor's Note: Press play now. *
... continue.
This the simple of my say - this is where X should be talking some more.
“He was the one with the hair, wasn’t he?” she asked at the end of my story.
“Yes,” I said, while not wearing a wifebeater, nor scratching my nuts upon that lovely love seat.
“Kes pissed him off that much?”
“Yup. And … I think he needed to get the fuck out of Dodge.” My head was back on a cushion, enjoying the soft bop of a 60’s-era saxophone. “A chance encounter with some sort of enjoyment I suppose. His uncle’s a biker - he’ll do alright.” I pulled my eyes up and saw X lighting some tea lights for the mantle, the coffee table, the top of the stereo, the bookcase. Real romantic in that living room of ours; I grabbed for the wine and dimmed the lights as X strolled off into the bedroom.
She should have come back wearing those hazel eyes in the shape of invitation.
Channel 42 was showing the prey of one animal upon another; 29 the latest Latino heartthrob. I hit CNN to see if the world was still spinning - and it was; surfing continued until a particularly muffled note of Johnny C’s grabbed me and held on. My eyebrows released and smoothed themselves out for a stare around our Glebe one-bedroom apartment - in those days of sharing rent in a nice part of town, where people inherited a high start in life, or moved there to buy an old brick three-storey home to say that they had arrived. We could hear their childrens’ skateboards clockwork the every 11-in-the-PM.
I yelled out for X but heard not a peep. It was warm from the amassed tea lights as I took to my feet and creaked across the hardwood towards the kitchen, turned right into the bedroom. A soft whisper from me, and still nothing.
She should have been in bed displaying a smirk or a small variation on the Kama Sutra - with candles of an any type to denote mood.
And the comforter left only the angles of her face visible; the hair of auburn flowed over rest of her and queen-size bed. All darkness now that I was away from small tea lights. The soft sound of her pinkie rubbing eyebrow. Recognition of myself tiptoeing blindly into a familiar room, towards a two-year lover about to receive a quiet kiss of understanding.
I fill this in Now. Make up the part about recognition. Entirely.
I stayed in the doorway and cocked my head to a side, actually which side I do not recall, but waited …trying to figure and understand why someone would begin mood without fulfilling that expectation. If I turned my sight I could see the flicker of the tiny collective from the living room: the fast edit of commercials amongst that glow of candles, the flash flash.
She was tired from a new job and all. A new restaurant.
I crept back down the hallway and killed the television. Slowly blew out the one by one of tiny silver supporting wax and wick and promise of waking with a smile the very next day - a memory. In bed, in the queen-size bed that I slow climbed into and sought warmth against the middle of winter night, I lay unclothed and thinking my way towards X’s similar of nudity. It was the red wine. It was me on my side next to a bare female. It was me lost in thought. It was her asleep or maybe only halfway there. The gradual rush of blood with the gain of heat beneath the cover of two people sharing a bed - my left arm draped down her left arm, my fingers brushing top of left thigh. I could lie and admit that quite often this was enough for both of us - not just one. I could deny that the clitoris is an immature penis, but the truth isn’t what she felt push against her crevice. Whether her body remembers that night in bed is but to tell it what it already knew, knows. But this is me speaking for it, separating it from her and making it its own entity, able to rest and wait for rigor mortis, then to the slow release and the allowing of evaporation of skin until beyond recognition as person. Down to just bone, and up to peace and float. Only memory and solace.
I’d kept Mr. Coltrane on to remain the sound of himself presenting us with the necessarily funky background - sex to jazz a most admirable avenue to go; my intentions were honourable. It wasn’t as if I reeked of Jack Daniel’s and Aqua Velva; I’d even showered.
She was tired. No tiny tea lights to blow out in the bedroom; she’d created warmth for herself with the large comforter, and a stroke of lone finger to eyebrow had closed her eyes. I partially unwrapped her and used my inner thigh to maintain comfort as my finger stickman paraded up and down her left side - in play, in gentle hope. But she had been sleepy, and there had been no mood splayed out in this room with our big bed. Just the movement of a pair of lungs set to rhythm of sleep and calm, slow enough jazz. The two fingers of my left hand stopped up high and performed a series of Rockette kicks for the crowd that was me and my eyes taking turns staring at one thing at a time: a digital clock, the lack of moon available through slits in blinds. The thin turn of her ear down to final dangling lobe.
That was me - ten, fifteen minutes, and then asleep the while. I’ll guess and say that X awoke and went to the washroom, threw on her terrycloth robe and stepped out onto our second-floor porch to have a cigarette. This occasionally happened, and I seem to recall it kind of happening that night, too. A dot of puffing red in the middle of dark, a white robe sitting on a patio chair - my girl.
The weathered palm of Jimmy stirring a tall glass of Crown Royal and a bit of 7-up. There was probably a party in the background, Metallica or one form of Ozzy or another blaring. His briar patch of hair free at that point, and the process of inhaling and exhaling forgotten and simple auto of pilot once the more.
This is me, counting Q-tips and confessing to a cactus. Pepé speaks a Hi to You, and I answer in stead. 72, I add. I have seventy-two used Q-tips in my hands; and going. And out my Now window the Cooper Street that I have returned to live in. To leave the Glebe television Off until I am good and bloody ready to press On and take my chances with scene invoking remembrance; To gain wisdom back within the Centretown square of postcard Rideau Canel, Parliament Hill to my north, the streets of Elgin and Bronson confining where thirty-seven-year-olds too poor to afford a shitty Chevy Nova cruise the way on cheap of used mountain bike. It is what distracts - the area’s sometime lack of need for love. Bachelor apartments and four students living in an overpriced two-bedroom; the skids …some of them that call the Royal Oak home; the howl of a three-in-the-AM street cleaner that soothes and cleans the dirty mind of our parallel avenues, perpendicular streets. Pizza without the jingle or memorable phone number.
This All out my Now window, quietly loud and there for the see. This the look back of the Jesus Years and free nights mostly without Ef, pauses courtesy the sometime imaginary excuses given to me by Betty - very close pal of X. Barney and big and large Fred remain the stirred makings of a hangover, and we do at various points on the calendar, but time is quite often me, and the cactus gift of pre-Spain. Post-Spain. My open window and view of another red brick wall not twenty feet away. The fact that lime not only to comprise mortar but was once actually employed in lighting the Stage of past - the early 19th century. But still, sorry for that bit.
I’ll guess and say that X has settled comfortably into her very own rumoured of Centretown apartment. Female frills and dried orange rinds hanging from the wall of a kitchen or actual hallway that she might be able to afford by self. I’ll suppose that things be going well at the nameless eatery of Italian origin that she manages in the still Now. I’ll guess that she wakes only when her bladder is full, and hope that nicotine is mostly a friend to her, fair-weather and not.
This the simple of my say - this is where X should be talking some more.
“He was the one with the hair, wasn’t he?” she asked at the end of my story.
“Yes,” I said, while not wearing a wifebeater, nor scratching my nuts upon that lovely love seat.
“Kes pissed him off that much?”
“Yup. And … I think he needed to get the fuck out of Dodge.” My head was back on a cushion, enjoying the soft bop of a 60’s-era saxophone. “A chance encounter with some sort of enjoyment I suppose. His uncle’s a biker - he’ll do alright.” I pulled my eyes up and saw X lighting some tea lights for the mantle, the coffee table, the top of the stereo, the bookcase. Real romantic in that living room of ours; I grabbed for the wine and dimmed the lights as X strolled off into the bedroom.
She should have come back wearing those hazel eyes in the shape of invitation.
Channel 42 was showing the prey of one animal upon another; 29 the latest Latino heartthrob. I hit CNN to see if the world was still spinning - and it was; surfing continued until a particularly muffled note of Johnny C’s grabbed me and held on. My eyebrows released and smoothed themselves out for a stare around our Glebe one-bedroom apartment - in those days of sharing rent in a nice part of town, where people inherited a high start in life, or moved there to buy an old brick three-storey home to say that they had arrived. We could hear their childrens’ skateboards clockwork the every 11-in-the-PM.
I yelled out for X but heard not a peep. It was warm from the amassed tea lights as I took to my feet and creaked across the hardwood towards the kitchen, turned right into the bedroom. A soft whisper from me, and still nothing.
She should have been in bed displaying a smirk or a small variation on the Kama Sutra - with candles of an any type to denote mood.
And the comforter left only the angles of her face visible; the hair of auburn flowed over rest of her and queen-size bed. All darkness now that I was away from small tea lights. The soft sound of her pinkie rubbing eyebrow. Recognition of myself tiptoeing blindly into a familiar room, towards a two-year lover about to receive a quiet kiss of understanding.
I fill this in Now. Make up the part about recognition. Entirely.
I stayed in the doorway and cocked my head to a side, actually which side I do not recall, but waited …trying to figure and understand why someone would begin mood without fulfilling that expectation. If I turned my sight I could see the flicker of the tiny collective from the living room: the fast edit of commercials amongst that glow of candles, the flash flash.
She was tired from a new job and all. A new restaurant.
I crept back down the hallway and killed the television. Slowly blew out the one by one of tiny silver supporting wax and wick and promise of waking with a smile the very next day - a memory. In bed, in the queen-size bed that I slow climbed into and sought warmth against the middle of winter night, I lay unclothed and thinking my way towards X’s similar of nudity. It was the red wine. It was me on my side next to a bare female. It was me lost in thought. It was her asleep or maybe only halfway there. The gradual rush of blood with the gain of heat beneath the cover of two people sharing a bed - my left arm draped down her left arm, my fingers brushing top of left thigh. I could lie and admit that quite often this was enough for both of us - not just one. I could deny that the clitoris is an immature penis, but the truth isn’t what she felt push against her crevice. Whether her body remembers that night in bed is but to tell it what it already knew, knows. But this is me speaking for it, separating it from her and making it its own entity, able to rest and wait for rigor mortis, then to the slow release and the allowing of evaporation of skin until beyond recognition as person. Down to just bone, and up to peace and float. Only memory and solace.
I’d kept Mr. Coltrane on to remain the sound of himself presenting us with the necessarily funky background - sex to jazz a most admirable avenue to go; my intentions were honourable. It wasn’t as if I reeked of Jack Daniel’s and Aqua Velva; I’d even showered.
She was tired. No tiny tea lights to blow out in the bedroom; she’d created warmth for herself with the large comforter, and a stroke of lone finger to eyebrow had closed her eyes. I partially unwrapped her and used my inner thigh to maintain comfort as my finger stickman paraded up and down her left side - in play, in gentle hope. But she had been sleepy, and there had been no mood splayed out in this room with our big bed. Just the movement of a pair of lungs set to rhythm of sleep and calm, slow enough jazz. The two fingers of my left hand stopped up high and performed a series of Rockette kicks for the crowd that was me and my eyes taking turns staring at one thing at a time: a digital clock, the lack of moon available through slits in blinds. The thin turn of her ear down to final dangling lobe.
That was me - ten, fifteen minutes, and then asleep the while. I’ll guess and say that X awoke and went to the washroom, threw on her terrycloth robe and stepped out onto our second-floor porch to have a cigarette. This occasionally happened, and I seem to recall it kind of happening that night, too. A dot of puffing red in the middle of dark, a white robe sitting on a patio chair - my girl.
The weathered palm of Jimmy stirring a tall glass of Crown Royal and a bit of 7-up. There was probably a party in the background, Metallica or one form of Ozzy or another blaring. His briar patch of hair free at that point, and the process of inhaling and exhaling forgotten and simple auto of pilot once the more.
This is me, counting Q-tips and confessing to a cactus. Pepé speaks a Hi to You, and I answer in stead. 72, I add. I have seventy-two used Q-tips in my hands; and going. And out my Now window the Cooper Street that I have returned to live in. To leave the Glebe television Off until I am good and bloody ready to press On and take my chances with scene invoking remembrance; To gain wisdom back within the Centretown square of postcard Rideau Canel, Parliament Hill to my north, the streets of Elgin and Bronson confining where thirty-seven-year-olds too poor to afford a shitty Chevy Nova cruise the way on cheap of used mountain bike. It is what distracts - the area’s sometime lack of need for love. Bachelor apartments and four students living in an overpriced two-bedroom; the skids …some of them that call the Royal Oak home; the howl of a three-in-the-AM street cleaner that soothes and cleans the dirty mind of our parallel avenues, perpendicular streets. Pizza without the jingle or memorable phone number.
This All out my Now window, quietly loud and there for the see. This the look back of the Jesus Years and free nights mostly without Ef, pauses courtesy the sometime imaginary excuses given to me by Betty - very close pal of X. Barney and big and large Fred remain the stirred makings of a hangover, and we do at various points on the calendar, but time is quite often me, and the cactus gift of pre-Spain. Post-Spain. My open window and view of another red brick wall not twenty feet away. The fact that lime not only to comprise mortar but was once actually employed in lighting the Stage of past - the early 19th century. But still, sorry for that bit.
I’ll guess and say that X has settled comfortably into her very own rumoured of Centretown apartment. Female frills and dried orange rinds hanging from the wall of a kitchen or actual hallway that she might be able to afford by self. I’ll suppose that things be going well at the nameless eatery of Italian origin that she manages in the still Now. I’ll guess that she wakes only when her bladder is full, and hope that nicotine is mostly a friend to her, fair-weather and not.
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