Sleepwalk With Me_ And Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia [31]
We get in the tow truck and he keeps going. He’s like, “What the hell was that! We almost fucking died!” Minutes later, we’re driving to the service station and he calls his wife and he’s shouting into the phone: “I love you so bad, honey! I almost fucking died! Do you understand me!” I can faintly hear her return it back through the phone: “I love you so bad! You get home right now! Who’s with you?”
Large hangs up the phone and pulls out a cigarette. He starts smoking fiendishly. And even though I don’t smoke I ask for a cigarette. Now we’re both chain-smoking. And I’m sitting there, smoking, thinking, We almost fucking died. What the hell was that, man?
We drop the car at the service station and he leaves me at the worst motel I have ever stayed at. It’s called The Sleep Inn, which is kind of opposite of how I feel because I’m thinking, I gotta get the fuck out of here. The “all-night receptionist clearly with a shotgun” doesn’t do much to calm my nerves. I barely sleep. I just lie there, waiting for the service station next door to open up for business. The next morning, after seven hundred dollars in station wagon repairs, I drive my battered tank back to Brooklyn.
I had done the worst gigs, made no money, stayed at the worst hotel, and nearly died. I was actually feeling pretty good. There was some part of me that thought, At least I’m in the way front. I’m driving up the Jersey Turnpike and I spotted a Roy Rogers. I stopped and had breakfast. It was the best Roy Rogers.
THE DEAL
When I was fifteen, my father forced me to get a summer job. I was spending a lot of time around the house. Every day he’d look at me for a moment, sum me up, and then shout in another direction, “This kid needs some goddamn reality testing!” I’m not sure who he was talking to, but I definitely heard him. He had a point—I hadn’t taken any steps toward becoming a professional break-dancer or a hip hop recording artist, so it’s possible that I did need a push. My brother Joe got me my first summer job, at a restaurant on Cape Cod. He had worked there the summer before as a prep cook, shucking oysters and deveining shrimp. Fortunately they needed busboys the day I walked in, because Joe’s job seemed kind of terrible.
I met Tyler, the manager, in the front entranceway of the restaurant and followed him back toward the kitchen. Walking into the kitchen of a big restaurant is kind of like going backstage at the circus. It’s all lit with fluorescent lighting, it smells funny, and everyone seems to be yelling at each other, often in languages you’re not hearing in the dining room.
Since I was Joe’s brother, the fix was in. Tyler asked me one question during our interview. Had I ever been a busboy before?
Of course I had. Joe had told me to say this. He had explained that the paradox of working at a restaurant is that you have to have previous experience working at a restaurant. Even if you don’t. Get it?
“Got it. So I lie?”
“Well, it’s more like implying.”
“What if he asks me follow-up questions?”
“He won’t. He doesn’t want to know the truth. He’s just trying to cover his ass.”
Tyler didn’t ask any follow-up questions and I got the job. The first thing Tyler did was give me some advice. Gesturing to the cooks behind the line, he said, “You gotta stay out of these guys’ way in the kitchen. Get in and out of here with your trays as quickly as possible, and do not talk to them unless you absolutely must.”
And since the kitchen was like 150 degrees and full of angry cooks, I said, “No problem.”
The only time I would be in the kitchen was to clear trays, and I will confess, I was one of the busboys who hid the beer bottles that only had a sip taken out of them. My busboy colleagues and I held these near-full green bottles up to the light like chemists, agreeing that the alcohol in the beer should kill any of the bacteria in the backwash. And I think we were right, because none of us died.
I learned a lot about restaurant hierarchy that first summer. Primarily that the cooks are the angriest, sweatiest, most-underpaid people in the