Mary was hung over. She was a mess. First thing, when they got downstairs to change into their uniforms, she plunked herself down on the metal, folding chair and sat with her legs spread wide for balance. She buried her head in her hands.
“I had to wake her up,” Bea said to Bill. “When I got to her house she was fast asleep. In her clothes from yesterday too.”
“Least you got her here,” Bill said.
“She babbled some stupid shit and threatened to throw me out, but I dowsed her face with cold water then threw her in the shower, clothes and all.”
“Well she can stay down here and sleep it off,” said Bill. “I’ll do everything upstairs.”
“You’ve done enough,” Mary said. “You can just stay the hell off my station and stay the hell away from me.”
Bill laughed. He had already taken off his shirt and his pants and stood there in his underwear and socks. He walked straight up to Mary, so close to her he was almost touching her. He pressed himself even closer so his male parts were just about against her head where it sat in her hands. He leaned down over her and kissed her on top of her head then tucked his hand under her chin and pulled her face up. He kissed her once on her lips.
“Girl,” he said, “don’t want me on your station, get your gorgeous ass up and get dressed for work.”
Mary did not move. She did not say anything. Bea interrupted the moment by tossing Bill his uniform. He stepped back and got dressed.
Upstairs, without Mary, he drew himself a cup of coffee and took it back into the back on Mary’s station. First thing, he put on a pot of water which he would turn into au jus. Next, he lit all the ovens and set them for 400°. He lowered the temperature in the oven he would use for the steamship round.
That done, he went over to Mary’s bulletin board and read the menu for the day. Mary, he could see, had underlined today’s specials and had circled the vegetable and soup of the day. She had also circled the special salad from Bea’s station.
Everything settled in his head about how he was going to go about the morning, he leaned his butt against the counter and sipped his coffee. When he finished what was in his mug, he went over to the Bunn and refilled it, went through the line and lit up everything there. The exhaust fans were already droning. He stood a moment and looked all around the kitchen. From where he stood he determined that everything was the way it was supposed to be minus one prep cook of course.
Back on Mary’s station he sat his coffee on the stainless steel counter. Then he went into the walk-in to check how much steamship round was left over. Seeing there was enough for the start of the lunch, he began taking things he would use out of the icebox and setting them on the counter near where he had left his coffee. These were mostly the same things he had put away last night, things which would be used first during the service or incorporated into what he was going to cook.
Satisfied he’d taken out everything he wanted, he finished his coffee. On his way out of the kitchen he put the mug into the dish rack on the dish machine counter. Then he went down the stairs.
Mary was fast asleep on the metal folding chair. She was still in her street clothes and sat slumped down with her head leaning back.
Bill noted that she was quite a sight.
By Peter Weiss
RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
RULE 8: “Keep the pressure on. Never let up.” Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.
These are two of Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals.
Do they look familiar?
Have you seen them at work?
Have the Democrats been bombarding you with the use of these tactics for the last three years now?
Have the mainstream media been aiding and abetting them?
Where are we headed? Where are they leading us?
Generally I stay away from the “I” word. And generally I try to present both sides of things when both sides of things are readily apparent. Lately I’ve been saying that we are way beyond politics now, which I use to mean that our Congress has totally dropped the ball and is leading us over the cliff. If you can take a step back and look at things rationally, that’s pretty much what’s happening.
Mostly it is the Democrats. They have become crazy, toxic parents.
Sometimes I talk about while Nero fiddled alluding to the fact that while our Congress is messing around with perpetuating its attack on and its attempt to unseat a president on the left side and the exposure of such and an attempt to defend against it on the right, Iran, Russia and China are not only laughing, but they are taking as much power and territory as they can get as quickly as they can get it.
Putin must be peeing in his pants laughing at us. How stupid are we?
Sometimes I talk about the biased media. I sit back and look at things and I wonder are they crazy? Do people really not see through the media bias? Do people really not understand that our major media outlets are now owned by political operatives who are billionaires and who are not interested in a free press that is fair and unbiased? Do they not see that those people who so vehemently claim they are the champions of the people are really part of the elite class and are attempting to stay in charge of things by pulling the wool over our eyes?
So yesterday the Attorney General testified in the House of Representatives. It was supposed to be a budget hearing, but it was more of the same, with the Democrats perpetuating what we now know with certainty to be a false narrative. (See the two rules above.)
Or, Congress put on a show, here often referred to as Kabuki Theater. Or, Congress spent more of our money wasting our time and not attending to the business of the country.
So I wonder where they are leading us and why they are leading us there. Then I think of the Hunger Games movies and the multitude of other movies set in similar circumstances where there are huge masses (lots of times they’re zombies) ruled by an elite class of people who live in the gated cities.
Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. This is why our political leaders, mostly all members of the millionaire’s club, and our media leaders, mostly all members of the billionaire’s club, are so intent upon leading us “over the cliff.”
We go over, but of course they don’t.
Just for fun, here’s a link to a little Psychology Today article about dealing with “crazy” parents. If the shoe fits… Surviving the Toxic Parent
By Peter Weiss
Because it seems especially appropriate today while the Kabuki Theater goes on in Congress with the AG
While the show goes on in Congress, that unconscionable spectacle the despicable Dems in all their glory are insistent upon conducting today of all days…
Nearly every 30 seconds a human being will be abducted and trafficked for various reasons, the most diabolical of which is for sexual slavery.
While the show goes on and the taxpayer monies are squandered by our impotent leaders passing resolutions they know can’t succeed…
Virtually nothing will be done to stop or even try to stop those who are perpetrating the abduction of those human trafficking victims some of whom will be abused beyond any sense of what humanity understands.
While the mainstream media aids and abets the despicable Dems in conducting its unconscionable spectacle by advancing their narrative, a narrative any fact-based inquiry would debunk in a flash…
80% of those people abducted and trafficked will be girls.
And…
The billionaire owners of the mainstream media, some of whom are themselves complicit in sexual abuses, will each personally make millions more dollars.
And on it goes.
Yes, this is what we’ve come down to.
While our millionaire-club leaders and their billionaire media-giant-owner abettors sell us a crock of s–t so ridiculous they’ve had to dumb-down education in America for decades to be able to accomplish it, some of the worst things imaginable are going on right under our very noses.
No. It’s not climate change.
No. It’s not that the world is going to end in twelve years.
No. It’s not that we have a Republican President.
No. It’s not all the phony-baloney crap incessantly being eructated about him over the airwaves and in our Congress.
It’s not that white supremacy is gaining ground, because it isn’t, that’s just one of their prevalent myths.
And it’s not that we are somehow more of a racist country than we were twenty or thirty years ago.
That’s just what they, the despicable Dems and their billionaire media-owner abettors would have us believe.
It’s much worse than any of that.
First and foremost, it’s the diabolical nature of the billionaire-owned media moguls who have monopolized and consequently weaponized the media. These are the people who own organizations like Facebook, Amazon and Twitter, to name just a few, who have bought major media outlets to advance their own personal and political interests.
The continual and blatant media bias is perhaps the single most dangerous thing we face today in our society. Once the media inclusive of the Free Press stop seeking truth and start picking political sides thereby presenting a biased, political narrative, we find ourselves no better than a Third-World country in the throes of propaganda.
The second most dangerous thing going on in our society is the weaponization of the Justice Department and other governmental agencies. This was done for the very first time in modern times in the Obama administration where the attorneys general were political animals serving at the behest of a Democratic president that allowed the IRS to target political enemies. Remember Lois Lerner? She got a pension.
Within this politically weaponized Justice Department, the FBI has been allowed to selectively target the people it wants to get and to prosecute only them. When the laws are enforced selectively and not uniformly, it is not really law at all. Martin Luther King Jr. said this.
So while the Kabuki Theater goes on on TV conducted by our barrel-of-monkeys leaders, at the rate of nearly 2 per minute, how many people will be trafficked?
Yes, that’s a math problem most Americans are probably not able to solve anymore because of the dumbed-down education they’ve been getting. Certainly they would probably not be able to solve it without their electronic equipment.
The despicable Dems and their billionaire media-owner allies are leading us into what looks like the setting for the Hunger Games series of movies, that affluent gated city controlling the impoverished and enslaved districts.
On some level, it looks as if this is what they, those despicable Dems and their media-mogul allies would have.
No matter how you slice it, it ain’t pretty.
By Peter Weiss
Mary sat down on the milk cases to wait for Bea. Bea was slower coming up the stairs and still buttoning the top two buttons of her dress. She was dragging her ass, tired.
“Girl is all messed up,” she said to Bill out in the hall right in front of Mary. “Girl is mad at you and at herself too.”
“No reason for her to be mad,” Bill said. “She knows how I feel about her. I don’t feel like that about anyone else. No one.”
“What about me?” Bea asked.
“What about you?”
“Go on break my heart,” Bea said.
Bill went over and put his hand on Bea’s breast over her heart. “You mean there’s a heart in there?”
“For you, all of my feelings are down here.” Bea pointed to that spot between her legs. She smiled, laughed, looked at Mary. “Let’s go, girl. You need help getting up?”
Mary was busy scratching her coochie. “I don’t need no help,” she said.
“Need help scratching your coochie?” Bill asked.
“I don’t need nothing from you.”
Mary didn’t bother to look inside the kitchen. Jimmy was not on the line although he had gotten there. Esserine was on the pantry station. She had been there since four, her usual time. Grandma was not in yet. In the full scope of things, Grandma not being in did not matter much. The worst that would happen would be they wouldn’t serve fried chicken.
“Get some good sleep,” Bill said to Mary as she walked past him and out the door. He had a terrible urge to reach out and feel her up and he would have done so if the bell had not rung. Hearing the bell, he simply let her pass and walked into the kitchen.
All his girls were working. Lexi, Norma, Lorraine, Arlene and Victoria were all on. This meant he would have no trouble getting beers when he wanted them. This meant he would have no trouble getting bourbon if he wanted it. This meant he could even have some fun out in the hall shooting the shit and messing around. It was a strain-the-grease night, so if it was slow and there were no late orders he had a good chance of getting out early.
We plan. God laughs.
Bill sat on the milk cases once he’d read the dupe. There was nothing on it that he needed to do immediately. It was an order for shrimp cocktail, a chef salad and a prime rib. He knew that Lorraine, whose order it was, would come get him when she was ready for the hot food. In the meantime, Esserine would do her thing and the customers would do theirs. So while he had a moment, he went outside around back of the building and smoked a joint.
That’s where Jimmy found him and when he did he told Bill that orders were coming in and he was needed on the line. Bill finished the joint quickly and followed Jimmy inside.
They worked on and off, mostly on, until ten-thirty. Every now and then one of them would take a break, go out in the hall to smoke a cigarette or downstairs to pee. For the most part they had enough orders to keep them both on the line.
The girls working seemed pretty pleased by the number of customers they had, although for waitresses it could always be more. None of the girls played around, not because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t have time to do so. They brought soft drinks for Jimmy and the dishwashers, beer for Bill. Twice Lorraine brought Bill a double bourbon which she gave to him out in the hall.
Then they were into the end-game where the waitresses were ordering their own dinners and the early girls were getting ready to close out. It was looking like Bill would have a chance to be out on time. But then six late tables came in.
And so it goes.
By Peter Weiss
Mary was sitting up on the stainless steel counter when Bill got down into the meat room. She held the bottle of bourbon in her hands and was drinking from it. As usual, she had her legs crossed at the ankles and she was swinging her feet.
Henry Lee was cutting steaks, top sirloin butts, the steaks they used most in both stores. He already had a pretty decent supply, he told Bill, enough for the day and almost enough for tomorrow for both stores. In the morning, he said, they would make the hamburgers and bleus and bring all the rest of the meats up to inventory.
“I’m going home drunk,” said Mary. “I’m gonna smoke another joint with Henry Lee and I’m gonna finish this bottle of bourbon. So if you want to do any drinking, you can go steal a bottle off the party room bar.”
“You better take it easy,” said Bill. “Sounds to me like you’re already drunk. You got kids at home to take care of.”
“You ain’t my mommy.”
Bill started toward Mary from where he stood but she put her hand up in front of her and told him not to come near. He said “Whatever” and did a near about-face, opened the walk-in door and went to start getting the meat trays.
Just before his last trip, he noted that Mary had finished the bottle. Purposefully, he paid her no mind, took the last two trays of meat and went up the stairs. He did not go back down. Instead, he went through the line a last time and made sure everything was in place and set the way he wanted. Then he went around back and made sure everything there was okay. Satisfied, done with all he had to do, he lit a cigarette and went out into the hall where he sat on his milk cases to smoke it.
It was a quiet time. Waitresses were in and out of the kitchen. He could hear them, but there was no need for him to be in the kitchen since whatever they were doing had nothing to do with him. They were busy making sure they had everything they needed on their stations, that the dining rooms were completely set, that everything was clean and neat and ready to go.
Bill was thinking. He was considering popping a black beauty. He was considering smoking a joint and getting himself a beer, or actually having one of the waitresses get him a beer. He wasn’t doing much of anything and he was happy about that. He was feeling tired and the feeling of tiredness convinced him to pop a black beauty.
So he was just kind of sitting there peering out the back door when Lorraine stuck her head in from the kitchen and told him he had a phone call. He went out into the side dining room and took the call from the waitress station there. It was his fiancé telling him she was going to be out late, going to a mime workshop. He told her he would be home soon as he could after work.
He was just getting back in the hall when Mary came up the stairs in her civvies. He could see her wobbling and she was visibly inebriated.
“What you looking at?” She stared him down angrily, put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you be looking at me like you’re judging me.”
Bill reached out for her but she moved to evade him. The hall was not wide to start with and less wide with the things that lined the walls on both sides. She didn’t have much room to avoid him so he was able to grab her up and hold her to him. She struggled but he was younger, stronger and not drunk. He pulled her tight against him and forced lips on hers.
“Goddamn you,” she said.
By Peter Weiss
Bill and Arlene got back to work at 5:00. Mary was sitting in the hall when they came in the back door. Arlene was in jeans and a sweater now. She wore tennis shoes on her feet and carried her uniform in her hands. She walked past Mary and went down the stairs. Bill saw Mary’s head turn, saw Mary follow Arlene with her eyes as she went down.
“What’s up?” Bill asked.
“Ain’t nothing happening,” said Mary. “Have a good afternoon?”
“Yeah. We had a nice long talk.”
“That all you did? Talk? She wasn’t dressed for talking when you left here.”
“No, I guess she wasn’t.”
“Boy…”
“Boy nothing,” said Bill. He walked over to Mary, stood before her. “I don’t feel about Arlene like I feel about you. We talk about her mother mostly, and until today, well, that’s all there is to say.”
Bill reached down for Mary. She resisted, but he took her by her elbows and pulled. The more she resisted, the more he pulled until finally she was standing before him. He leaned in and kissed her, just once, softly. Then he whispered something in her ear.
“Fuck you,” she said. “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”
That’s when Bill realized she’d been drinking. She didn’t seem drunk to him but he could smell the bourbon on her breath.
“You don’t mean that,” he said.
“You bet your white ass I do. And you ain’t getting no more of me neither.”
Bill went into the kitchen then. First thing he did was take a look at steam table to see what was in place. Noting how everything was, he went around back and looked into the convection oven for the baked potatoes. They were just sitting there, so he opened the double doors on the oven, felt one potato, the biggest one, to see if they were done. Satisfied, he did what he always did which was to take them out two at a time in each hand and place them into a steam table insert. He covered the insert with foil and walked around to the steam table to set it in place.
Next, he went around back and looked into the ovens. The prime rib was sitting in its roasting pan, all done. Mary could have taken it out and set it in place on the steam table’s stand on the line, but she hadn’t done so. He went about doing that, carried it over to the line on a small, flat, metal tray.
Everything else, he saw, vegetables, sauce, au jus, was already in place. He took a moment to get a carving knife from the knife sheath and then went back to the rib to trim all the fat off the tail. That done, he made one neat, straight cut along the very bottom of the tail so that all the rib slices would be uniform.
When he’d set the rib up on its stand and covered it with a wet towel so it wouldn’t discolor or dry out, he checked the reach-in freezers for what supplies he would need to bring up. He determined that he needed French fries, onion rings and fried shrimp. He saw there was enough pickerel. Then, before leaving the line, he checked the meats and made a mental note of what steaks he had to carry up.
The last thing he did before he went back out into the hall was go around back to Mary’s station. He made sure everything was turned off, including the oven the rib had been in. He made sure that all the pots that were on the stove were covered as much as they could be. Then he carried the empty rib pan, a big roasting pan, over to the pot washer station where Andy, the pot washer, stood smoking a cigarette.
When he got back into the hall Mary was gone downstairs.
By Peter Weiss
They did know. If Bill could have seen them he would have known they knew because they sat there and openly talked about how he was going off to get laid. Bea thought it was funny. Henry Lee kind of wished it was him cause he didn’t have a girlfriend now that Marie was gone. He was on the lookout, particularly, as he told Bill, with the girls at church. Or, as he had said, not the girls of course but the married women.
Mary was a different story. She cared. She cared about Bill. She more than cared about him. She loved him. So she was jealous. She was jealous of Arlene’s youth, of her figure, because Arlene was skinnier and taller than her. She was jealous because he was off with Arlene while she still had to work and she wanted it to be that she had dressed up for him and he was off with her. She wanted him to be up against her, not someone else, on top of her, touching her, kissing her, not anyone else.
If Bill could have seen it, if he could have heard it, he would have seen Henry Lee looking into Mary’s eyes from across the booth where they sat. He would have seen Henry Lee recognize that Mary was somewhat hurt, maybe more than just somewhat. He would have heard Henry Lee ask Mary what was up, and then, when she declined to respond to what he asked, he would have heard Henry Lee invite her downstairs into the deep freeze to get high. He would have heard Henry Lee tell Mary that Bill loved her and that he’d told him so many times. He would have heard Henry Lee tell Mary that Bill had remarked how messed up it was that he was engaged.
And so it goes.
And so it went that right after they got up from the booth in the side dining room they went into the kitchen. Mary took a moment to check everything she had on the stoves and to make sure it was all okay. Then she went downstairs into the meat room and accompanied Henry Lee into the deep freeze where they smoked a joint. Done with the joint, having hung up the parkas and put away the mitts, she helped herself to a good swig of bourbon before plopping her butt down on the stainless steel counter in her usual fashion.
If Bill were there, he would have seen all this. He would have joined them in the deep freeze to smoke a joint and he would have taken the bottle from her and helped himself to a good long swig. Then, after she plopped herself down on the counter he would have approached her, probably spread her legs apart, kissed up her thighs. She would’ve slapped him upside the head and told him to stop, but secretly, deep inside, she would have wanted him to keep kissing and to kiss up further.
If he were there, he would’ve heard her say, “Goddamn shit,” which is what she said. Then he would’ve heard her say, “I’ll fix his skinny white ass.” He would have heard Henry Lee guffaw and smack his lips at Mary as if to say “yeah right.” Then he would’ve heard Henry Lee tell Mary that he knew she would fix him by giving him her ass. “What it is,” Bill would’ve heard Henry Lee say to Mary. “The way you gonna fix that boy is by making sure you do him better than Arlene ever could.”
If he were there, he would’ve heard Mary say, “Yeah, right,” and he would have heard Henry Lee laugh, a loud throaty laugh. He would have heard Henry Lee say “Goddamn right I’m right.”
By Peter Weiss
If only Bill had understood that every time he responded to an F-it situation it would pretty much backfire on him, perhaps throughout the course of his life he would have responded differently.
But then maybe not.
Later on in his life he would subscribe to the idea that youth is wasted on the young. At different times in his life he would think, from time to time, that he had it together and he knew what he was doing. But just as he got to those moments and thought those thoughts, something would come along to tell him that he had no idea what he was doing and like everyone else, he was just winging it.
So it was on April Fools’ Day that Arlene came out to him after the lunch while he was sitting in the hall. She was dressed in her civvies but she was dressed differently than her usual. Ordinarily, she wore jeans, running shoes and some kind of sweater-blouse. This day she wore a low-cut blouse, short skirt, dark stockings and high heels. She was also heavily made up, the makeup capped with dark lipstick.
Bill was resting, minding his own business. Mary, Bea and Henry Lee were still out in the side dining room finishing their lunch. He had gone to the hall to smoke a cigarette and he was considering popping an acid tab since the business was very slow.
“What’s up with you?” he asked, seeing her the way she was dressed.
“I got a few free hours before the night shift. I was hoping you might be able to get away.”
“You look really great.”
“I know. I did it for you.”
“That’s really sweet, Arlene. But don’t you think we’d be better off just staying as friends?”
“I think lots of things,” Arlene said. “I think things all the time. Sometimes I think them through and sometimes I don’t. I’ve thought this one through and I want you to come home with me. No strings, no consequences.”
Bill stood up. Looking at her, one head said to give it a pass and the other one said “go for it boy.”
And there it was, again. Standing right before him was the proverbial f-it choice, that simple choice which required either a what-the-hell or a “no” response. It was clean and easy, yes or no. He could have a few hours of pleasure with maybe a little bit of guilt afterward or he could kick himself in the head for the rest of his life for passing up the temptation.
Her intentions were obvious. He understood this from the way she was dressed. He understood this from what she had already said and from the way she stood there shifting from one foot to the other in the high heels that she wore and with her tongue suggestively moistening her lips from time to time.
Goddammit, he thought. Shit. It was as if he were in the Garden of Eden standing before the tree he was not supposed to touch. And there was that fruit, right there, saying pluck me, take me, devour me.
“I’ll beg if you want me to,” she said. “I don’t really want to, but if it’ll get you to go with me I’ll do it.” She stepped up really close to him, so close he could smell her perfume, so close he could feel her breath on his neck as she whispered in his ear. “I’m not wearing any underwear,” she said.
He didn’t hesitate any longer. He told her to wait for him in the parking lot, that he’d be right back.
After he’d watched her go out the back door, he walked through the kitchen into the side dining room where he told Mary, Bea and Henry Lee he’d be back in a few hours.
“Take your time,” Henry Lee said. “We know where you’re going.”
By Peter Weiss
Steakhouse East had a stretch of slow business. The college basketball season was into the playoffs. Ohio State made it there and the playoff games brought big volume. But that was mostly it.
Lunches were strong. Businessmen from out in the area came in as always, as did some of the ones who were on the outskirts of Columbus-proper. Dinners had a decent rush, sometimes not much more than that, so they could have done without Lillian if they so chose.
Throughout March Arlene worked day and night many times. Tommy fixed it so she could go home between shifts to see her mother. Her mother, as Arlene told Bill, was doing kind of okay. She was getting ready to be treated at Cleveland Clinic where they were finalizing a new treatment plan.
Bill and Arlene had plenty of time to talk. Lots of times after the lunch when Bill was sitting in the hall smoking a cigarette, she would come out and talk to him. She would have her coat on and be ready to head out the back door for her split shift. She would tell Bill exactly what was going on with her and her mother and she would openly share her feelings.
But they had not gotten together. In fact, sometimes when there was the possibility of them getting together Bill brushed it off. Several of those times Arlene asked him why he was brushing it off. He didn’t answer.
It was not that he did not want her. It was not that she was undesirable. Mostly he stayed away from her because she was vulnerable and he did not want to capitalize on that. Not only did he not want to take advantage of her situation, but he did not want her to think it was a payback for him getting her extra shifts. He also did not want to hurt her feelings in any way since he knew their getting together could be nothing more than a few intimate experiences. Or, he knew, and she knew this as well, there was no future for them. So Bill figured it was better they just stayed platonic friends.
He had tried the same with Lorraine, but Lorraine’s circumstances were different. Lorraine was older. The age mattered in the sense that she could more clearly articulate her needs and more accurately understand the implications of having them met with Bill. So while he and Lorraine had feelings for each other in the sense that they liked each other and had fun together, they understood there was no future for them, that it was temporary, that they were like ships passing in the night.
Not that there was anything wrong with ships passing in the night. Because there wasn’t. In fact, from the start, he and Lorraine had discussed everything, had waited for Lorraine to process everything (because they had started out together by having a tiff caused by Lorraine not wanting to get the drinks Bill wanted her to get) and then make the first move, which she did openly and avidly.
Over all of this was the fact that Bill had a fiancé and he was cheating. Not even married and he was already cheating.
That was messed up. He was messed up. He knew he was messed up about this and yet sometimes he just couldn’t help himself. Then there was Robert, sweet Moman, who ran around singing “Huh glory,” and telling everyone “What’s good to you is good for you.”
On some level, all of the fooling around, every bit of it, was existential. It always came down to an “f–it.”
