Filed under: Work
The smell of a bar on a college special night can be boiled down to a few choice scents:
Cigarette smoke.
Jaegermeister.
Vomit.
Desperation.
Every Wednesday night I watch the same sad public display. Boys with their shirts half unbuttoned, choking back bitter bomb shots and swallowing over and over again to keep them down. Girls tripping on their spiked heels until they inevitably fall against the rough brick walls, scraping up their tender palms, knees, faces.
There are tell-tale signs I’ve been trained to look for. As I push my way past the crowd, sticky tray in hand, I’m constantly scanning faces for these indicators. It’s part of my job to throw people out if they become a liability. When they won’t listen to a 5’3″ waitress their own age, I go to the bouncer.
I have a live one. She’s wrecked, in every sense of the term. From the bar, she looks 40; halfway to her booth, 30; up close, 20. Years spent in tanning beds have settled in the lines around her mouth. I ask her three or four times, honey, you want some water? She orders more shots.
In my head, I try to add up the odds, figuring how many more bombs I can sell her before she succumbs completely to alcohol poisoning. She’s flapping one of her orange hands at some guy at the table, asking if he wants more too, her fingers grazing first his shoulder then his crotch. It’s hard to tell if she’s flirting or just losing control of her motor skills.
The guy scoots away, looking at her half-lidded eyes in disgust. It’s hard to tell if he doesn’t even know her or just doesn’t care.
I decide against the shots. She won’t remember she ordered them. Not two minutes go by, I have the tab in my hand ready for her signature, and she’s gone.
I scan the bar, looking for the too-dark hair and too-tan face, my mind racing with the other tabs that need to go out. I have so little time for this bullshit.
Then, there she is, and it’s so very typical. I shouldn’t be at all surprised. It’s shot night.
Sitting in the three square feet of carpet occupying a seventy square foot cement floor bar, she’s covered in her own vomit, cradling it in her lap like a small child. Two friends flank her, trying to get her up and all I can think is, don’t you dare fucking spill that shit on the carpet.
I’m sure I look angry because both friends glance up at me, the clarity of fear flickering across their faces, then try harder to get her to her feet. She’s limp, a 120 pound problem in my evening.
Here is what we try to avoid. This girl, sitting in a pool of her own filth, has all the signs I’m supposed to cut off at the pass. Her eyes roll in her head, her mouth hangs open, her body heaves. More vomit comes out. She might need water, she might need her stomach pumped. Either way, she’s been eating nothing but pumpkin innards for days if her puke is any indicator of her diet.
I point into her dazed, pale-tan face and say, get her the fuck out of here.
This is the only time I’m allowed to be this way. When the bar becomes responsible for some half-retarded college kid who can’t hold their liquor, I can say and do whatever I want to get them out. They don’t tell you this, but if she drinks too much and falls, hurts herself, passes out in her own vomit, dies like Hendrix, the bar is fucked and therefore, I tell them again, get her the fuck out of here.
Any other time I’m like the wind. I bring the drinks and leave, and no matter what I say, who I smile at, I may as well be invisible. I am a service, not a person.
But they’re listening now.
I am not to be fucked with.
I watch as these two sorority girls get her up, their poor wrecked friend, the one whose face looks the way mine might in 40 years, and manage her through the heavy door. I don’t offer to help. I fucking hate cleaning up vomit.
My moment has passed. No one even notices when I’m on my hands and knees, rubber gloves digging in the pumpkin innards she’s so kindly left behind for me. Patrons leave no more than two feet from me, laughing and talking and enjoying the evening, and here I am cleaning up some dumb cunt’s vomit.
But my power doesn’t end when their attention does. I motion for the bouncer, trying not to breathe through my nose, and point one rubber-gloved finger outside at the three girls waiting for a ride. I say, don’t let her in here again.
He nods, understanding. A comrade in the service industry.
I can’t even drink Jaeger anymore. It smells like vomit. The two are synonymous.
