Café Bistro, Café Cauchemar, Fiona said, A bistro owned by a Jew, its authentic French cuisine cooked by Thais, tables cleaned and bused, your cappuccino delivered by Puerto Rican busboys when you can find them, dishes washed by Mexicans, served by the generally white, almost young, not quite beautiful l’Amérique Profond survivor smiling the drop-dead smile—the actor, singer, dancer, the presenter of the finest medley of fresh vegetables, the musaline sabayon sauce at your table, the ironed white shirt, the black bow tie, the spotted black pants, black sensible shoes, the clean white apron, hair pulled back, fresh-lipsticked unisex clean-shaven slave to attitude, the faggot, the Broadway baby, the hopeful fool this city feeds on, at your table, at your service: the waiters.
The waiters are Davey Dearest and Walter, and Joanie and Mack, Fiona said, Besides me and Harry. Joanie’s the worst, one of those fashion disasters who gets all her hair cut off and wears too much lipstick and four earrings in each ear. Be different if she was a lesbian, would give meaning to such heavy accessorization and a reason for being such a bitch.
Then there’s Homo perfectus, Mack Dickson—Mack Son of Dick. Whatever you do, you don’t want to incur the wrath of Mack Dickson. Thee . . . perfect . . . gay . . . man. A Mack Attack is hard to survive. Mr. Poopy Pants himself, Big Baby Torpor right there in front of your eyes. Total Caravaggio—did you see the movie? Caravaggio? Fiona asked. Harry and I decided that movie should have been subtitled: or How I Lost My Mind to Have a Perfect Body. Derek Jarman needs to get a life.
A real Nazi with a tortured gym body—Mack Dickson, Fiona said, Voted for Ronald Reagan and proud of it. Coordinates his socks and underwear. Just check it out in the locker room. Today’s Wednesday, so that means his shorts and his socks are red. That’s what Harry says. Wednesday it’s red. When Mack grows up he wants to be a shallow ugly woman with an attitude and bad fashion sense—namely, Joanie.
Davey Dearest and Walter are actors, nothing more to say, Fiona said. Usually what they’re doing when they’re talking to you is trying out a human emotion to see if they can make you believe they’re feeling it. Life vérité. Walter’s the ectomorph with bad toxins in his fat cells so his overriding human emotion is depression and existential facticity. Actually, Walter just drinks too much coffee. Davey Dearest looks like Richard Gere, so Davey’s overriding emotion is whatever Richard Gere’s is. Watch out for falling gerbils. Davey just became a Buddhist. Any questions?
There are six sections in the dining room, Fiona said, Section One through Section Six. Sections Four, Five, and Six, Fiona said, Are the sections you want to get assigned to because that’s where Andy Warhol—excuse me while I throw up—and Whoopi Goldberg and Bette Midler and Faye Dunaway and Ellen Burstyn and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Mariel Hemingway and Mary Travis and Leonard Bernstein and David Byrne and Isabella Rossellini and Patti LuPone and James Taylor and Francis Ford Coppola and Judd Hirsch and Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro and the doctors and lawyers and Wall Street yuppies who order lavishly and tip double the tax are always seated.
Waiters are always started out in Sections One and Two and then theoretically, Fiona said, Are moved to Section Three, then even Four and Five, and—Yahweh be praised—Six.
Sections One and Two are by the bar, where Daniel, the boss’s brother, eats his dinner and drinks his wine spritzers and you have to grind fresh pepper onto his soft-shell crabs or his steak frites or his couscous that he never eats because his only diet is cocaine, and where the heavy-lidded, jaw-grinding Eurotrash trust funders sit and sit and sit and smoke and order bottled water con gaz and refills of espresso or cappuccino or iced decaf cappuccino and then at best leave change, never quarters, under the saucer.
Theoretically you move from Sections One and Two to Sections Three, Four, Five, and Six, Fiona said, But actually you can’t get there from here. There: Three, Four, Five, and Six, Fiona said. Here: One and Two. In order to get to Three, Four, Five, and Six you have to sell the specials and your bar check has to be high and you have to sell desserts. Every morning the owner, Daniel’s brother, goes through your checks and writes down the number of specials you sold and tallies your bar-check dollars per customer spent on booze and what percentage of your customers ate desserts. The waiter with the highest sales gets Sections Three, Four, Five, or Six.
Here’s the problem, Fiona said. Only the customers who order specials and cocktails and bottles of Veuve Clicquot and crème caramel and torte tartin and profiteroles are seated in Sections Four, Five, and Six—when it’s busy they’re seated in Section Three, too—but never, never are these customers seated in Sections One and Two.
It’s the same story with the bar, Fiona said. Every week Daniel’s brother, the boss, tallies the bartenders’ pour. The better the pour the better the shift. Any questions?
I’ve been at Café Cauchemar for over a year, Fiona said, And Harry’s been here two, and neither one of us has ever had Section Three, Section Four, Section Five, or Section Six.
The reason isn’t because Harry and I aren’t good waiters, it’s just we’ve never had the chance to prove ourselves.
This is the espresso machine, Fiona said. You first pound out the old coffee into the bucket, hold this handle thing under the coffee dispenser, flip this switch—usually twice—which is the amount of coffee for a good espresso, press the coffee down firmly with this butt plug thing, and then hook this part into the machine and press the button.
The espresso cups and the little saucers and the little spoons are all under the counter, Fiona said, And the sugar packets and sugar substitute packets are on the shelf next to the reach-in behind Georgette. The milk and the con gaz water are in the reach-in. Any questions?
You’ve met the cashier, Georgette? Fiona asked. Then: Georgette, Will. Will, Georgette. Give Georgette the American Express cards when it’s busy and she’ll do them for you if she can. Georgette’s a dyke; her girlfriend is a famous model. Cool.
You could learn so much by just how Fiona said cool.
Don’t you just love Georgette’s mustache? Fiona said. Cool. White American women need to start dealing with body hair; nothing better than hair on a woman’s body. I prefer my women black and lithe.
Number each of your dinner checks, Fiona said. Put your name at the top and date the check, and what day it is, and the table number. Just do what I do, serve drinks from the right, food from the left, always clear from the right, Fiona said—she said, That don’t mean I’m a lesbian. I like women, all kinds. I really like women, sexually black and lithe for me. Not into tits, I like little-girl breasts, nubbins. I don’t talk about it much because then you got to come out and it’s political, and when you’re political what do you do when you want to fuck some dumb football guy? All of a sudden you’re hiding from your sisters, sneaking around, just to bump some guy who thinks his cock is some kind of big present for you—which it is, but I like Big Macs too, but only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Do you have a crumber? Fiona said. I’ll get you one. It helps your tips if you crumb the table.
It’s the difference between individuality and identity, I think, don’t you? Fiona said. Identity is your role in life, the part you play. Individuality is who you are, and who you are is revealed to you if you can get to complete presence. We are all, each one of us, huge spirits in our bodies, Fiona said, And the more our spirit reveals to our bodies the spirit that we are, the more we become who we are. Like the Japanese. They have this aristocratic play language they call asobase kotoba, she said, So instead of saying I see that you have come to Café Cauchemar, they say I see that you are playing at being at Café Cauchemar. The idea being that you are in such control of your life and your powers that everything is a game. One is always literally in play. Nietzsche had a similar concept with his amor fati—I call it Fatty Love, Fiona said—love of one’s fate. The fates lead her who will; who won’t they drag.
Have you seen Tony and Tina’s Wedding? You’re invited to this wedding, see—Tony and Tina’s—but it’s a play. To
ny and Tina are actors, and the mothers and fathers of the bride and groom are actors, everybody involved in the actual wedding is an actor. As a member of the audience you go to the wedding and eat wedding cake and dance to a bad combo band in matching blue outfits and participate in everything as if it were a wedding, Fiona said. I went to Tony and Tina’s Wedding. Way cool. I think that’s how we should all look at our lives, don’t you? As if they were real.
Buy yourself the kind of ballpoint pen that you can flip at the top—goes quicker in the rush, Fiona said. It’s hell to stop and take the cap off and then put the cap on the other end of the pen. Pretty soon you just say fuck it and keep the cap of the pen off and then you start marking up your white shirt and you can’t get that kind of ink out with even Clorox. But we Americans are such orphan bastards and what’s left of our European traditions is so meaningless and absurd, Fiona said. My opinion is Europe has no frontier, so they take no risks. Just walk down Paseo de Gracia in Barcelona and what you got is upper-middle-class women in fur coats and high heels and big hair shopping. You get that in New York, too, but the women in New York in their fur coats and Gucci heels are stepping over a homeless person to get into their apartment building. At least, in New York, these women are being confronted with their tiny lives. In Barcelona, they have no fucking idea they’re in Connecticut. Any questions?
Of course, if you are an artist, Fiona said, You must have a frontier, so you must break tradition, but when you break tradition you lose your identity, and most human beings can’t live without that kind of structure. There is nothing more lonely than a true artist.
You got the bar glasses right? Fiona said. The up glass, the rocks glass, the juice glass, the cocktail glass, the snifter, the old-fashioned. They’re all at the bar station. Serve your drinks with a napkin and a straw. You know what fruits to use for the different drinks? Fiona said, So us poor orphan American bastards struggle for some kind of belonging—gay, black, feminists, Native Americans. But don’t get me wrong. I love both my two brothers Hunter and Gus and they’re both fags—I call them the Hyannisport Homos, Fiona said, she said, And I sleep with women now and then—so how can I not be for gay rights? And women’s rights—I mean I’m a woman, right? How could you be a woman and be against women’s rights? And black rights and red rights and brown rights and yellow rights—shit, people only get what they get because they fight for it, Fiona said. Keep your mustache trimmed. No earrings. You don’t wear an earring do you? Nothing more beautiful on a man. Remember that Joni Mitchell song, You stuck out like a ruby in a black man’s ear? Joni Mitchell is so underrated. She and Leonard Cohen. Mick Fucking Jagger is still on MTV, but Joni—no!
Ever read Marat/Sade or seen the play? The movie? What a great piece of work. A play put on by the inmates of an insane asylum during the French Revolution. Cool. I think great art is always insane, or makes you feel insane. And insane is good, don’t you think? I mean, everything is so fucking insane anyway, so when an artist points out the insanity or invites you in to her peculiar brand of crazy, that’s what we as artists must do, don’t you think? Actually, though, Fiona said, What I said about Europe doesn’t apply to Paris. Paris is different. Paris is cool.
You see the woman over on table forty—the woman with the mink draped over the chair? Fiona said, Have you seen those anti-fur commercials, the one with the woman wearing a mink and lying in a New York gutter gnawing off her arm so she can get out of the trap she’s caught in? Cool. I think it’s way gross to wear fur, don’t you? I mean I’d wear old furs, where the animal’s already dead, but to go buy a coat that is made up of twenty little dead hairy animals is fucking sick. Ever seen a mink farm? It’s totally glamorous—relatives to the weasel—I mean minks are mean motherfuckers, kill a cat or a dog in nothing flat—all living in wire boxes living and eating in the same pen where they shit, growling and hissing and going at it with each other. And minks are carnivorous! Believe me, honey, it ain’t manure you’re smelling when you’re smelling mink shit. You ever smelled an animal’s shit that eats other animals—I mean besides your own dump after a big slice of rare prime rib? What becomes a legend most—Jesus! you can smell a mink farm ten miles away.
I’m totally into leather, Fiona said, In all senses of the word. I love smooth leather on my body, love whips and chains. Whenever I get some free time I volunteer at the animal shelter. Animals are always completely present. All animals are Buddha, especially dogs. And I prefer to keep company with higher beings.
Polo, Fiona said. These days every gay man in Manhattan is just pouring that Polo shit on.
What I said about being a good waiter—Pm not a good waiter. My problem is I really don’t give a shit. It’s all Tony and Tina to me. But in this business, you have to give a shit. The only reason I don’t get fired is because I have a nice ass, an unusual face, and the fuck-you attitude. With Harry it’s singing Happy Birthday.
When you put in your order, Fiona said, You write down your salad order on the yellow chit first and lay the chit on the shelf above the salad pickup. Make sure it has your name, the date, the day, and the table number on it, same as your dinner check. Call out your order clearly and then get out of the kitchen, Never talk, Never point. Never laugh in the kitchen or Chef Som Chai will have your ass in a sling. You’re lucky he’s on vacation. Last week, Chef Som Chai had Harry kneeling down and barking like a dog before he would take Harry’s order.
When you pick up your salad order—it takes only seconds for a salad to come up, but you still can’t act like you’re waiting—spindle the yellow salad chit and then immediately put the yellow dinner chit onto the shelf above the dinner pickup. If your chits don’t line up with your dinner check, you’re fucked, Fiona said. You have to pay the difference for whatever item doesn’t tally. It’s against the law, but what ain’t.
Be careful with Chef Som Chai. I can get on with him because I’m a sexual object. I’ve got him wound around my left nipple and he’s never even come close to that nipple, you understand, but with men, with you, with waiters, it’s different. He’s got the typical—what we Americans call the third world—male mentality that women are second class to his first class. Like Yoko Ono said, Women are the niggers of the world, Fiona said. Plus the chef’s got that Napoleon shit going on—you know, short-man short-dick bigger-than-thou mentality. Have you seen M. Butterfly? My God, what an insight into race and sexuality. There’s a part in the play where M. Butterfly says that white heterosexual males—that is, western European culture—see Asian culture as feminine, even the men as feminine, as opposed to the African, which white heterosexual males—that is, western European culture—see as masculine. God, what a way to look at the world! They’ve defined everything about this culture, about the whole fucking world, really. Fuck white men with thin lips! Fiona said.
Chef Som Chai says all American men are pussy-whipped. What does that mean? He abhors gay men, so he really hates waiters, yet he is absolutely fascinated with the waiters’ cocks. Men like Chef Som Chai think everyone who works for him—not just women—is something he owns. He owns the kitchen. Every one of those men in there are related to him somehow. They all got to America and got a job here at Cauchemar because of Chef Som Chai. And they all live together in houses he owns in Queens. He drives a new black Mercedes-Benz—I mean, someone drives it for him. Scary, huh? At least when we leave here we can leave Chef Petty Tyrant behind, but not those guys back in the kitchen. The big boss, Daniel’s brother—an educated Jew—lets him get away with it. The dish, if you want to know, is big boss smokes too much dope. He’s smoked so much dope he’s growing tits and can’t get it hard anymore. Can you imagine?
If you use a damp cloth napkin on the wineglasses you’ll wipe off the streaks off. Wineglasses are stocked below each one of the three bus stations: next to the window, at the stairs down to the rest rooms, and over by the bar. Be careful. Just know the chef’s got an agenda. It’s nothing personal, OK? Just put it in your mind: This is nothing personal. On
e waiter, after his first day here, went home and overdosed on insulin—wasn’t even diabetic. Offed himself. Harry says he—Harry—even enjoys the abuse now. Says he’s going to get Chef Som Chai in bed if it kills him. Cool. It probably will. If anything, sex is going to kill Harry O’Connor.
Desserts are the same trip. You write out a yellow chit, with all that same information on it, and you hand it in to the dessert person, who’s the guy next to the salad person. Call out your order clearly. Leave—don’t ever wait or look impatient or they’ll have your balls—come back immediately, serve the dessert. You can get your busboy to get your coffee if it’s busy. But good luck. A busboy never lasts more than two weeks around here. Brush up on your Spanish.
Whether you get a staff cocktail, depends on if John the Bartender likes you or not. Don’t take it personal if all he lets you have at first is draft beer. I’m up to Southern Comfort, two, sometimes three. Harry gets whatever he wants but that’s because John’s an opera queen and Harry is a tenor. Harry sometimes sings in the chorus at the Met. You can’t believe this guy’s voice. One Saturday night when I first started working here, right in the middle of busy, Harry came out of the kitchen with the candles burning on a gâteau au chocolat and started in on Happy Birthday, so hard these postmodern chandeliers shook. When Harry was done this café was quiet so fast like only New York can get. Then Harry got a standing ovation. John the Bartender was weeping into a bar towel. A standing fucking ovation. I watched Harry’s face flush Irish pink while he sang, watched his face as the crowd stood and applauded. Cool. Only in New York. That could happen nowhere else in the world.
I live for stand-up in-the-moment performance art like that. My favorite performance artist is a guy named Argwings Khodek. Ever heard of him? He does this thing with Hamlet. He plays Hamlet on his accordion, playing all the parts—Hamlet, Claudius, the ghost, Gertrude, Ophelia, Laertes, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern—in forty-five minutes. On the accordion. He’s a master of complete presence. He’s my AUI, Fiona said, My Absolute Ultimate Idol. Even more than Leonard Cohen! If I could ever meet Argwings Khodek, Lord! I understand his next performance is Antigone. Cool, Fiona said. Can you imagine Argwings Khodek doing Antigone on the accordion?
In the City of Shy Hunters Page 9