THE HOSPITALITY DIARIES #5
Posted By Jason – 04.10.2012
I’m plagued by curiosity. When I wake in the morning I immediately begin wondering about stuff: why aren’t there any waterproof cigarettes? Do they burry conjoined twins in V-shaped coffins? Is it rape if it’s only in the mouth? It goes on like that all day. But the thing I turn over in my head the most is why the fuck did I tolerate the hospitality industry for so long? I’m an educated, able-bodied white man with what I’ve been told time and again is a remarkably thick cock–ipso facto the world belongs to me. So why would I put up with work that pays little and drives you insane? If I had to describe the hospitality industry to someone who didn’t speak English, I’d pretend to pick up pennies while being attacked by a hawk. To be fair, I didn’t always have a terrible time scraping plates, obeying orders and being treated like a doormat at an abattoir; there were some good times, but no one wants to hear about the good times, do they. Misery is and always will be the order of the day. So here’s another tale of my suffering at the cruel and idiotic hand of subservience. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… The Hospitality Diaries… Episode 5.
Years ago I worked at a little spot in Chinatown called Brown Café. It was a great gig because I lived right around the corner, and that meant I never had to wear a winter coat. During the colder months I just donned my t-shirt and Jeans and ran like Gary Busey’s nose. Here’s the thing about winter in New York–it’s freezing (duh), so for four months of the year you practically live in the same bulky fucking pelt. It’s like being a puffy Inspector Gadget. Christ, it sucks… Now I’ve forgotten the story I’m meant to be telling…Oh yeah: The Fucker.
The Fucker was this fucker who had lunch at the café Monday through Friday and–my–what a fucker he was. But he wasn’t always a fucker; at first he was just a pleasant, middle-aged man who liked a chicken sandwich, a cappuccino, and a friendly, though slightly banal, chat. I liked the Fucker; he didn’t demand a lot of attention and he mostly kept to himself. Their were other regulars at Brown Café who were much more deserving of my unreasonable power-hatred. For example: Malcolm. Malcolm was a slimy, skulking, creepy piece of shit. He slithered in the door every couple of days and wheezed over his lunch like an ailing frog. Malcolm was forever ‘forgetting’ to pay his check, and he never but never tipped. What a scumfuck. If you’re reading this, Malcolm, I hope you get hit by a bus and your brains squelch out your eye sockets.
There was also this cocksucker I dubbed ‘Ur-hur’ because that’s all he fucking said. He’d start a conversation with you and then, like a German at a cocktail party, he’d just smile over his spectacles while you did all the taking. That didn’t really bother me–I like to talk, but the thing that got my blood up was the way he kept saying ‘Ur-hur’ just before I finished a sentence:
So how have you been?
Goo…
Ur-hur.
Yeah, looking forward to the weeke...
Ur-hur?
I’ve got some friends in tow…
Ur-hur.
Probably do the typical touristy stuff with th…
Ur-hur.
You kno…
Ur-hur.
Statue of Lib…
Ur-hur.
Empire State B…
Ur-hur.
Say Ur-hur again and I’ll knock you ou…
Ur-hur.
I often wonder where Ur-hur is now. Hopefully he’s in a ditch somewhere, being sexually assaulted by bikers.
Anyway, the Fucker. Like I said, I didn’t mind the Fucker at first. I wouldn’t have wanted to get stuck next to him on a flight to Greenland, but he didn’t really bother me... And then I discovered what he’d been doing to our magazines.
Like any café, we had a magazine rack. It was situated in the short corridor leading to the bathroom. One day the Fucker finished his coffee, stood up, and waltzed off to the toilet, as was his custom. Nothing wrong with that: who doesn’t need to float a lumpfish after a big lunch? So off he went to take his daily crap, and by pure chance I happened to look up in time to see him fold a magazine under his arm and enter the bathroom. I was gobsmacked! Who on God’s green earth thinks it’s okay to take reading materials–reading materials that are shared by all patrons–into the fucking toilet? Who does that? Who? I’ll tell you who–the Fucker.
I was mad as hell. How dare he smear faint traces of his excrement on our periodicals. I devised a plan to teach the bastard a lesson.
The following day my workmate, Carlos, and I spied up and down the street outside the café, watching and waiting for the Fucker’s arrival. At around 12:30 he appeared two blocks away, trudging down the street like the loathsome anthropoid he was. ‘He’s coming!’ shrieked Carlos, and we ran to the magazine rack and took everything down: ID, Vogue, Rolling Stone, National Geographic, Black Tail, Barely Legal, Knave, Club, High Society, Jugs, Razzle, Swank, Moist Tramps, Freaks of Butt, Asian Scat Factory, the lot; and we took them out to the kitchen and we hid them.
Enter the Fucker. Hello, he said, and he ordered his coffee and sandwich, and sat down at a table next to Ur-hur. Ur-hur had seen us defoliate the magazine rack, and I guess he knew what was up because he just gave a sly nod and murmured a few knowing Ur-hurs.
Thirty minutes later, the Fucker finished his lunch and, like fucking clockwork, he rose to go to the bathroom. I watched him out of the corner of my eye. He approached the vacant magazine rack and stopped, he stared at the space where there should have been quarterlies, monthlies and weeklies, and then he tilted his head like a confused hound.
‘Where are all the magazines?’ he said.
‘I’ve taken them away.’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t want you to touch them anymore.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Of course you don’t. You’re a tapeworm.’
The Fucker’s face burnt red from the collar up.
‘What’s wrong, Fucker, truth hurt?’
The Fucker’s hands were suddenly at my throat, but it was too late, Carlos had the fishing line on him and was throttling him to the floor. ‘UR-HUR!’ said Ur-hur as he leapt over his table and sunk the boots. We dragged the Fucker out to the kitchen and made him into a frittata.
The End.
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