It’s a busy Friday night, I have just gotten in to work. While tired and unmotivated I decide that I will persevere. I am ready for the normal Friday hustle and bustle routine, song and prance that we get accustomed to working at the Labyrinth. This is in between rushes, during the expected Friday night 9-10pm lull. This is the time in between, where the happy hour crowd leaves the bar for a short intermission where they snort their evening hungers away, maybe grab a quick low-carb bite or bowl of "American Fries," then come back out to the bars, drink their way to love and get plastered out of their gords. It's the American way. They get wasted enough to no feel embarrassed dancing like a fool to any Madonna tune as any sensible man normally would. The snorting part is just my assumption based on the fact that at night, many of the weekend customers can often be found grinding their teeth, with runny noses and mothball breath.
The first time I realized how prevalent and stupidly obvious cokeheads often are at the Labyrinth is when I watched the third customer in a row order a drink while he had boogars running down their face and into his numbed, overly lips that undoubtedly were covered in the latest lip-gloss Claire’s offers. When I point out the mess on their face, similar to the way one treats a toddler, the customer smiles, tells me to fuck off and then tells the bartender they are recovering from a cold. Then, a second later, as he is walking away, the bi-polar bitch told me that I am “adorable.” Being that I am adorable as this asshole put it, the compliments is always lackluster from these cokeheads and since its usually said in a sarcastic tone where you cannot tell if they are complimenting or putting you down. Since my self esteem is really low, I always assume the latter of the two because it's more likely. The second that he finally walks away for good, all I could smell is the hospital smell, like that of mothballs. It makes me want a sedative or at least a magical brownie to tide me over and keep me from slicing the overly manicured faces of these lovely patrons around me, not that I would really do that. Being that my job is to clean everything up here, I am not making more of a mess than necessary.
As I come behind the bar James is cleaning his bottles and chatting with Johnny about how he had seen Johnny’s trick of the week out earlier with another guy. It’s moments like this that makes me call the bar Castro high. Then Johnny tells James that his guy is like every San Francisco gay man and in an “open relationship.” Come to think of it, in my infantile experience, this seems to be true. In San Francisco, for some reason most long term gay man relationships I am coming to find are actually open ones. Being a young, inexperienced gay who is still optimistic and still clinging to the idea that love exists, this concept makes no sense to me (This was in a world that was different, before we knew that Ricky Martin was in fact a marry too). These couples would be committed to each other, but also openly have some thing going on side. Why this is acceptable, I will never truly grasp.
As I walk past the rambling bar gossip, I go back to my Friday routine. I stock pint glasses at every station. Even though I try to be working away in my own cocoon, I can’t help but notice that everyone around me is gossiping. If it isn’t about their boyfriends of the moment, it’s tricks and various lovers. It is kind of making me sick just listening to it and less engaged in being there. All I can think about is how I want to somehow end up at a better job than this.
(to be continued)
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