At the end of three months, I was down to $3,000. I couldn’t ask my parents for help; that would be humiliating. I came up with a scheme to beef up my savings until I landed a job. I would fly to Las Vegas, win money, and keep my dream alive. The logic had some holes in it—really big holes, big enough to drive a tank through—but I was desperate. When you feel like you’re spiraling, your mind goes down a dark path and you just grasp at any straw to get out of it. I’d been asking myself a hundred times a day, What the hell do I do now? The Vegas idea appeared in my head, and I let my imagination take over. I could see myself at the tables, winning, and I became convinced that my daydreams were just one plane ride away from turning into reality. Part of my brain was screaming, No, Sebastian! But the much louder part said, Just don’t hit on seventeen, and you’ll be fine.
I got free flights because, after college, I worked at the United Airlines Employees Credit Union and retained my privileges until the end of the month. I took advantage. I did a quick round-trip in a single day to avoid paying for a hotel room. To get to town, I hopped the free airport shuttle. I didn’t eat any meals, just licked clean the bag of peanuts on the airplane. The trip was not a mini vacation. It was work. My sole intention was to rake it in at blackjack and to play this one specific Wheel of Fortune machine at Treasure Island. I’d hit it before when my buddies and I went to Vegas for a Spring Break during college, and I won $1,000. I thought, I’ll just do that again, easy, and pay my rent next month.
I took the airport shuttle bus directly to my lucky casino and searched for the Wheel of Fortune. I went to the bank of slots where it had been before, but it was gone. Since I’d last been to Treasure Island, the casino had been remodeled, and my lucky machine had been moved. I couldn’t find it anywhere, and believe me, I looked. I was able to find two dozen blackjack tables. I sat down and changed my bills into chips, stuck to my rules, played smart—and lost $1,000.
It happened so fast! In less than two hours, my money was gone. I went back to the airport with empty pockets, miserable, discouraged . . . and yet, still hopeful. I decided the bad day was a fluke. My daydreams of repeating my past big win were too vivid, too clear, to be wrong. I believed with my whole heart I was foreseeing the future.
A few weeks later, I returned to Vegas and did much better the second time. I lost only $800.
I couldn’t even laugh it off with my L.A. friends, because I didn’t have any. I could have turned to my parents to console me, but when I called home, I felt compelled to pretend everything was okay. In the back of my head, I was thinking, I will get out of this. Everything will be okay, so when I told Mom and Dad I was fine, it didn’t feel like lying. It put a big lump in my throat, though. If my father had had any idea I’d pissed away in Vegas the money I’d scraped together for years, he would have given me a lecture that only a Sicilian father can pull off—the kind that burns your soul over the telephone.
Keeping things from my parents made me feel even lonelier, which didn’t seem possible. I wasn’t used to this level of isolation. I came from a very bonded family and a tight group of friends who were like family. Although my father was an immigrant, he was Americanized at the salon where he worked as a beautician. He used his gift of gab to talk to people while doing their hair. A lot of my friends’ parents came from the old country, too. They did cement work or jobs where they didn’t interact with people that much so they would hang out at our place to watch my dad, listen, and learn.
After a shift at Fuddruckers, where all my friends and I all worked, we would go to my house and play foosball in the basement until 3 a.m., the smell in the air of freshly baked lasagna and tagliatelle al olio mixed with Downy dryer sheets and the sound of sneaker laces hitting the inside of the dryer. My family loved having people over, especially my mom. She would bring out food for the guests (the secret Entenmann’s stash), and we would sit at the kitchen table and joke around over coffee and cake.
The house itself was one of the newer models on the street, and because it sat on a corner lot, it made a big impression. When my friends saw it for the first time—the manicured lawn, the white brick façade—they’d say, “You live in a mansion!” In my neighborhood, our twenty-one-hundred-square-foot home was different from the others on the block. They were one-story ranch houses with aluminum siding. Ours was two stories with a backyard that resembled Mr. Miyagi’s. My father had bonsai trees and other exotic plants that should never have been able to live in Illinois. The only thing missing was Daniel-son doing wax on, wax off.
Inside, the house was immaculate, unless you walked down to the basement, where there was a lot of shit my father couldn’t let go of. He never threw anything out, including a dry sauna that he had disassembled from his old salon. Maybe he believes the day will come when someone needs to shed some weight for a wrestling competition. Or maybe he thinks this vintage sauna is appreciating in value? Regardless, it’s in a crawl space just in case. Most people inherit a property or family heirlooms when their parents pass away, but my inheritance is going to be slabs of “valuable” cedar wood that have disintegrated over time and are ridden with termites. Basically, my inheritance will be a trash removal bill.
So I went from that environment, a welcoming, warm home with tons of people coming and going, to my one-bedroom in Hollywood with a naked man outside the only window. Months went by, and I was the only person in and out of my apartment. I had left home before, for college, but campus was only an hour away from my parents’ house. I could drive home to do my laundry and get a square of lasagna.
L.A. was a four-and-a-half-hour flight away from everyone I knew and loved.
For companionship, even Paul the Pervert had his sectional. But I was totally on my own.
MORE THAN ANYTHING, I was determined not to limp home to Chicago broke (in more ways than one) and a failure after only a few months. It would have been too embarrassing to bear.
When I was growing up, the number one cardinal sin was embarrassing the family. I’d done it once, in third grade. My friends and I carried a kid over our heads at recess. He didn’t enjoy being handled like a bag of potatoes, though, and we were sent to the principal’s office. The principal at the time, Mrs. Gifford, a petite, white-haired, beady-eyed ex-nun who could have doubled as a prison warden, looked at me and said, “Sebastian, I never thought I’d see you in here. I’m going to call your parents, and they’re going to be very disappointed in you.”
That struck terror in me. That queasy feeling of doing something that disappointed or embarrassed my parents became the one thing I never wanted to experience again. From then on, I was always mindful not to disappoint them. I was a good kid, stayed out of trouble. My friends were also good kids from good families. I didn’t do drugs or drink too much, even when I was in a fraternity. The idea of my mom telling her friends “Sebastian is an alcoholic!” or “My son’s an addict!” was enough to keep me away from that.
Anything that would cast my family in a bad light was undoable, unthinkable. I was so overly conscious of not embarrassing them, I became hyperaware of other people doing embarrassing things that, if I did them, would shame my family. Zeroing in on the bad behavior of others did become like a superpower for me. I didn’t judge people; but I exercised judgment. I can’t not notice or un-see people’s behavior, and that insight turns up in my comedy—hence the special Aren’t You Embarrassed?
My sister, Jessica, never lost sleep over making a bad impression for our family. She was blasé about spending time with us. After dinner, she’d run upstairs, talk to her friends on the phone, and listen to New Kids on the Block. When I asked her why she didn’t bring her friends over and hang out more with Mom and Dad, she’d say, “Ugh, they’re so embarrassing.” She was worried about them embarrassing her. If I’d had that attitude, I would have been less anxious. But then I wouldn’t have developed finely honed observational skills and the senses of a feline. It’s an even trade.
What I’m getting at: My goal has always bee
n to make my family proud. The thought of Mom on the phone saying “My son moved to Hollywood and tanked in three months!” was enough to get me back out there, résumés in hand.
With about $500 of savings left, I expanded my job search from restaurants to hotels. I thought maybe I could work in room service. I popped into the Sofitel Hotel and asked the person in human resources, “Do you have any positions?”
He said, “We don’t, but the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills is always hiring. Go there.”
I’d never heard of the Four Seasons brand before and certainly never stayed at a “starred” hotel. The nicest place my family went to was a Marriott. I didn’t know to be intimidated by how fancy the Four Seasons was when I went over there and filled out an application for a room service job. There were more interviews at the Four Seasons than to work for the CIA. I went from department to department over the course of three weeks, and the final interview was with Sean Laufel, the director of the food and beverage department. He made me sit outside on the couch for over forty minutes. In my head, I was thinking, This motherfucker They’ve put me through all of this and now they’re making me wait? I was so close to leaving, and if I had, it would have been one of those small decisions that had a domino effect on the direction of my life. Without my job at the Four Seasons, which allowed me the flexibility I needed to also pursue comedy, I might have never achieved what I have today.
At the interview, Sean and I sat on couches facing each other in the hotel lobby. I put it all out there, telling him, “I’m from Chicago. I’m new out here and I really need a job. I have a great work ethic. I’ll always be on time and will do whatever needs doing.”
Sean was just looking at me, smiling. I wondered if he was even paying attention, and then he said, “Your accent really brings me home. I’m from Chicago, too.” I was desperately homesick, and by talking to me, he got a little homesick, too. I guess he liked the idea of hearing more of my accent. “You are not room service material,” he said. “I need you to be around people. I’m going to put you in the bar, serving cocktails.”
A job offer. Finally. I said, “Okay, great.”
The Four Seasons lobby bar, the Windows Lounge, turned out to be the place to be seen in Beverly Hills or to take an industry meeting. Celebrities were in and out constantly. I’d be one of only two guys working there among a handful of women. I called myself a “cocktail waitress” because at the time, in 1998, working in a cocktail lounge was reserved for women. They gave me a penguin outfit and I didn’t give a shit. I was so relieved to have a job (and was only hoping my naked neighbor would sublet his apartment to a female nudist friend). And it was all because of my accent. I got my start in L.A. thanks to my Illinois roots. Thank God for Sean. I don’t know what the hell would have happened if I hadn’t gotten that job.
And so I began my career as a cocktail server. I was the new guy, eager, with a big smile and wide eyes. If I saw my younger self now, I would turn to my buddy and say, “Wow, that guy is green.” But I was just awed by it all. It was as if I’d been dropped into the center of Hollywood, where it was all happening. My first day at work, Sylvester Stallone walked through.
In all my years serving food, I’d never waited on a celebrity before. I’d never been close to anybody famous besides Bozo the Clown. I was on The Bozo Show with my neighbor John Papadia. We played Bozo Buckets. I lost, and that was my claim to fame until Stallone. All of a sudden, I was serving Sean Penn at his usual table, number 146 on the patio. Very intense, a great tipper, he always ordered spicy tuna rolls. I probably served him fifty times over the years, but we never chatted. He was nice, but he radiated an intimidating energy that said, “I don’t schmooze.” Over at table 147, I’d take an order from Nicole Kidman. Talk about stunning. She had an A-list glow about her. Then I’d deliver a fruit plate to Shaquille O’Neal. Shaq was a Sunday night regular, and I felt like I was serving a giant. I would give him a dessert spoon with his cappuccino, because you can’t give a man like that a tiny coffee spoon. It’d be like a Barbie utensil for him. He was a great tipper, too, always leaving a $100 bill under the plate.
One night, right before closing, John Travolta came in with another guy and sat at table 113 in my station. They were both wearing workout clothes so I assumed the other guy was Travolta’s trainer. I greeted them within three minutes (the bar rule) and put down the nuts caddy (our famous bar snack). Travolta glanced at the menu and ordered a burger, which seemed like an odd choice at midnight after a workout.
I was starstruck by him, I admit. I’d been a huge fan of his growing up, and serving him a burger blew my mind. Most of the customers barely acknowledged me at all, but he was chatting away, just making small talk. At one point, he took a close look at me and said, “You got great legs.”
“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.”
“What do you do?”
“Oh, I’m a comedian.”
“No, for your legs?”
“Oh, for my legs.” I paused. “I run laps around here getting people drinks, and I played soccer in high school.”
“Well, they look good.”
I didn’t mind that we were two men discussing the allure of my bulging legs—by the way, back then, they were solid. I was flattered. It wasn’t a life-changing moment, but I was still a cocktail waitress trying to catch a break. It gave me a lift. Never once when watching Welcome Back, Kotter did I think that Vinnie Barbarino would compliment my quads one day.
I ADAPTED QUICKLY to the Four Seasons system, and I figured out how to game it. Technically, I was only part-time. Starved for shifts, I made a habit of showing up in my uniform even if I wasn’t scheduled, offering to pick up shifts from the other servers. I’d hover by the time clock where people punched in and ask, “Do you want to go home? ’Cause I’ll work your shift for you . . .”
No one wanted to be there. The other servers were all actors and actresses who would rather work on their tans or “craft” than fetch pommes frites and martinis for snobby customers. I noticed the work ethic wasn’t as deeply rooted in them as it was in me. If they said, “I wish I could take off, but I need the money,” I’d say, “No problem.” I’d wait for the 3:30 p.m. person to show up. If they turned down my offer, I’d wait until the 4:30 p.m. person came in. I’d sit there for two hours, hoping someone felt lazy enough to leave. Nine times out of ten, I’d pick up a shift that way.
The more I worked, the bigger my cushion, so if I ever needed to take a day off to, say, perform comedy somewhere, I could. In the meantime, I worked every chance I got. I begged for it. I was sort of like the guys who linger in the parking lot at Home Depot, just in a fancier environment.
At the hotel, there was a cafeteria in the basement for staff. Housekeeping, room service, and servers were not allowed to eat the shrimp cocktail and steaks on the restaurant menus, but the hotel did provide meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and pasta to their workers as a side benefit. You were only supposed to eat at the cafeteria when you were working, but on my days off, I’d put on my uniform and go there anyway to save money. When I was on shift, I’d eat in the cafeteria beforehand, on my break, and afterward. The Four Seasons fed me three meals a day.
Let’s say somebody came into the bar, ordered a spicy tuna roll, and then got a life-changing call and ran out just as the food arrived at the table. According to the rules, I was supposed to take the plate of untouched food back to the kitchen to throw it in the garbage. But I would eat it. Or, let’s say my favorite dessert on the menu—a chocolate pudding cake; devil’s food on the outside, hot molten chocolate on the inside that oozed out when cut into with a fork—happened to break while it was being plated. We were supposed to throw that away, too, but I would scarf it. Who wouldn’t?
Was it stealing? Eating the house food was definitely forbidden, but I was only eating what would have been trashed otherwise. By my code of ethics, that didn’t seem wrong. Eating pre-garbage was something we servers helped each other get away with and bonded over. That, and compl
aining about rude, vain, cheap tippers was how I made my first crew of friends in L.A.
Remember that one other male cocktail waiter? His name is Dan Westerman, a seriously funny guy. Dan was a furniture mover who decided at thirty-four to be an actor. So he did what actors in L.A. do—he started waiting tables. I have no idea how he got or kept the job. He is a great bighearted generous guy, but a terrible waiter. His section could have one person in it and he would be running around drenched with beads of sweat over his upper lip. That said, he taught me all the tricks about working at the Four Seasons.
Dan and I were both pursuing our dreams in the entertainment business. We became tight and hung out after our shifts at St. Nick’s on Third Street, a dive bar with a jukebox. We’d have a drink or two, bitch about work, and commiserate over our shared experiences. The nature of workplace relationships is that as soon as you get out of the same environment, you have nothing in common, and a lot of those friendships fade. This proved to be true with most, but not all, of the people I met then. (Dan and I are still friends. He came to my wedding a few years ago.) But when you’re in the trenches together, you get really close, real fast.
Stay Hungry Page 2