Restaurants and Strip Joints

Home. What a great word. One thing I have done at home so far today: fried up a package of bacon, which is no longer an economy dinner in this household. You'd think for as expensive as bacon has become that the purveyors could make it less scary. Even when you start it out in a cold pan on low heat, it's not long before you have bacon grease spattered in your hair, on the stove top, and have suffered a thousand little zings each time it hits your skin. Could they fix that? Make it so the streaks of fat just melt quietly away, like ice cream? Someone should investigate the difference between ice cream melting and fat frying, for even if you put ice cream in a heated pan, the results don't attack you like exploding grease does.

The ultimate in kitchen explosions outside of faulty gas lines is when you lower a basket of raw chicken wings into a vat of hot oil, especially in a restaurant kitchen. God forgive you if the wings are not unthawed completely, as they often aren't in times of a rush, and the ice crystals inside the chicken grenade quickly turn to water, then steam, then blammo! You will be digging hot fat out of your remaining eyebrows, but who has time for hygiene when the order has to go up?

One of my former lives entailed restaurant work, beginning with my first job at a discount store snack bar. I made sixty bucks a week part time nights, was able to buy contact lens and thus started a dating life with a series of law enforcement officers, who liked to stop at the snack bar for coffee. Oh, gosh, this entry was to be about Danger Food, Restaurant Days, or Amusing Anecdotes About What's Really On Your Plate in a Restaurant, but I must interrupt to tell you about the first of these dates because for one, you don't really want to know what happens to your food before it's brought out.

A co-worker was seriously going out with an older officer, who had a series of buddies he thought would make a perfect double date situation. Guy number one drove a black Stingray Corvette and was maybe named Tony. He thought powerwashing my glottis hello would cause any sense to leave my head and incur female stupeficatious enamourati to occur. I said Hey in a voice reserved for dogs who were just thinking about getting into the garbage, and we drove on to the appointed place of dating fun, where we were to meet my friend and her fellow.

Now I am not saying all of the guys, but most police officers know the best places for entertainment since they have probably conducted raids on any of them. The evening these two men planned began at a dive in a part of the city unknown to people with jobs not involving mugging someone. It was in an older block of Genessee Street, in a strip joint with pink neon proclaiming the name Federal Gardens. I was so naive, I thought police officers meant stopping in at the doughnut shop to say hi to Fran, then a G rated movie and custard cones at the lake. What can I say, I was eighteen and new to the outside world.

I think my friend was embarrassed as well, but had the clouded view provided by true love, a bad case of the stupeficatious enamourati mentioned above. She must have, or else the look I tossed her through the rosey-glowed darkness would have killed her dead the Tuesday before. But, then again, I was dying to land on Helen Gurley Brown's Planet of the Cosmopolitan girl, who was brazen, adventurous and unafraid of new circumstances. I think my friend was, too. Filling tall bags with glow in the dark yellow popcorn and restocking twelve ounce cups at the snackbar was mundane compared to the exotic satin stage curtains thick with atmosphere or something else that were hanging on either side of the stage of this place. We slid into a booth and ordered drinks.

The officer that had fixed up this date said to me, "Well hey! Whaddaya think of my friend Tony?" I pulled out a smile and said he-was-nice, that we were getting to know each other, thinking he probably knew how many fillings were in my mouth by now. Tony leaned over, "You gotta see this girl, she's coming up next, wait'll ya see what she can do." I dug into my Tom Collins.

The stage show started with a drum roll and this man, this sort of squishy looking man came onstage in clown makeup and a costume that said it would rather be on a bus to Hoboken, under the head of a porno director who slicked his cigarette hair down with Brylcreem. The man looked as if he had the same sentiments as the clown suit. He welcomed everyone, which consisted of the four of us and a man and a woman at separate tables. He sang "Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries" wink wink and one of my favorites, "Smile," written by Charlie Chaplin, words later added by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons. "Smile, though your heart is aching, smile even though it's breaking..." The Tom Collins had given me a teen age buzz.

A skinny girl came out, Tony said Not this One, the Next One, and she danced and did model spins onstage, thin as a string bean. It was the first striptease I had ever seen outside of Natalie Wood in Gypsy, it was the first naked girl I had ever seen since kindergarten, when I accidentally walked into the big girl's locker room looking for Mrs. Budczynski and came face to face through the clouds of steam with what was at my eye level in those days. The girl onstage wasn't completely naked legally, but wore this string a ma jig of silver sequins that left no illusions as to what was what. Matching pasties over her nipples. I was supposed to be watching this?

Finally, the hit of the evening was to appear, as announced by Mr. Chuckles the clown man. I don't remember her one word name, but she was substantially older and larger than the first act. I mean older, like almost my Mom's age. Gravity was winning, except for the fight between it and the hairspray holding up her platinum do. But if you have seen "The Graduate" you know what her talent was, which also explained why her breasts were longer than her elbows, besides that business with g-forces.

After removing her jacket with not one ounce of flair, she exhibited sparkly tassels you might find at Liberace's Museum hanging from the ends of her zoomers and began spinning them. Her face was knotted with concentration and maybe pain as all I could think of was the Number Eight Breakfast at House of Pancakes. They were synchronized, first going one way then the other; after I was elbowed by Tony so I didn't miss this next part, she flung those puppies in clockwork spins, one in each direction. She was out of breath when she took her bow and waved at the two officers we were with. Another drink? No. Wanna go? Yes.

Tony drove me home and tried The Technique again. I pushed him off and said enough, he apologized and immediately asked if he could see me again. I said nooo, falling into the role of not wanting to hurt this clod's feeling but definitely not wanting a car wash again. He whined, I capitulated into a maybe and got out of the car. He bugged the other officer to again set up a date as I hadn't given out my phone number. I couldn't imagine this guy calling and having my father answer the phone.

The other guy pressed me hard to go out with Tony again..."Don'tcha even like him a Little Bit?" "We'll go in the same car this time.." With no chance of being alone with Tony, I said okay but only after the first guy promised me an old pair of handcuffs. I had no clue that people used handcuffs for sexual play as well as keeping the bad guys in tow, and after getting them, wore them hooked into the front belt loops of my bellbottoms. I don't know what impression I was hoping for by wearing them, except that they made me feel like my pants were double locked. The key was kept in my pocket for when I had to pee.

Anyway, I did end up on a second date with Tony, four in a car. We were in the backseat. This enchanted evening was burgers I forget where, and then a drive to the city park which was closed after dark, except we had the Open Sesame of two off-duty police officers. But why were we stopping? The two up front started to neck. Oh sweet jesus h., I thought, and tried having a conversation with Tony who saw my mouth open to speak and took that as a sign from god that he should stick his tongue in it. I turned my head, and he shoved his tongue in my left ear. "Get your tongue out of my ear," I growled and shoved him. The two up front broke apart and my friend's date turned on the light. "This isn't working, is it?"

We drove back to where Tony had left his car, and I was expected to get in it so he could drive me home. No tongues. Okay. I was young, no one had cell phones, I had no money, and the other two people were hell bent on getting away from us. Don't yell. Not much talking on the way back, I was keeping my mouth shut. He asked for a last good night kiss, just one, just one, no spit. There was something wrong with this person, for as I dove in for a quick peck, he lunged forward with no accuracy and got me in the eye.

The other two officers that were selected as double date material had little on Tony. One dumped me in the fog of the famous Federal Gardens for one of the strippers, and the other was nice enough but had to keep popping Tums and Pepto-Bismol for his stomach. Beside, he slicked his hair back with Brylcreem.