I had my book launch party a few weeks ago. So caught up in the Middle East tragedy, I haven’t shared about my event.
Invitations received. Helium balloons inflated, Name tag labels printed.
Showtime.
I kept trying to remind myself, “These are your friends. Relax.”
Nevertheless, I was anxious.
My daughter flew in from L.A. My teaching mentor from South Carolina. Even my ex-husband came to celebrate with me. (With his 4th wife-or 5th?)
After greeting folks, mingling a bit, my former teaching husband, my “MC” began with one of the many raffle drawings. Katie, a dear former colleague, tiara in place, drew from the bowl.
Then it was my turn. I chose a passage I thought would hold attention, Here is a taste:
Entering the legendary Palomino Club on the fringe of North Hollywood was like stumbling onto a B-grade spaghetti western set. Walking past the bouncer, “Tiny,” a 300-pound Hoss Cartwright doppelganger, into the dark, musty club was like time-traveling back to an era when men were men and women were unimportant. It seemed it had been that long since the floors had been swept. Dusty signed photographs of every country-western star imaginable crowded worn imitation wood-paneled walls. There were so many leftover staples in the wall from removed posters, I couldn’t lean back. It was the perfect hole-in-the-wall for a rowdy evening of great music. But it was the kind of place where you peed before you went and prayed you didn’t have to again until you got home.
Weeks later, I reentered the legendary Palomino to see the Everly Brothers on their reunion tour. I was with Jimmy. He had misinterpreted my move west as a commitment to him, which made me uncomfortable. But I wasn’t confident enough to move on yet, so we shared a grubby efficiency apartment off the Hollywood strip.
Immediately I thought, Yes, I really could work here. It would be fun. Yes, grungy, raucous fun! The San Bernardino mountains seemingly within arm’s touch, there should have been a marquee flashing: “Lousy food, expensive drinks, great music.” Indeed, I could indulge my closet fantasy here to be a cocktail waitress.
A few years before, in Cleveland, I was sitting in a back tier at a Friday happy hour with teaching colleagues, in front of a trio playing good jazz. My dear old friend, Joanne Lockley, was serving a tray of cocktails. I hadn’t seen her in a few years. She was smiling and partying along with her tables—at least that’s what it looked like to me. How fun to help people have a good time. No responsibility, no teacher anxiety following you home each night.
Three days after the Everly Brother’s rousing performance, I returned for their weekly Monday-morning cattle call. Hired to serve cocktails and overpriced, undercooked dinners by maniacal owner Tommy Thomas, I chose my requisite two free Palomino T-shirts, one pink, one powder blue, both V-neck. Jenette, a tattoo-covered waitress before tattoos were the cultural norm, had walked me to the T-shirt closet in Tommy’s cramped office behind the front bar.
In the weeks that followed, I regularly picked up Jenette on the way to work. The first time, she was still getting ready in her squalid one-room studio. As she changed into her tight-fitting Palomino T-shirt and jeans, I discovered that Jenette, quiet and statuesque, was covered with tattoos from her collarbone to her toes. There were psychedelic swirls, skulls and crossbones, tigers, a veritable plethora of tattoo regalia. (This was before tattoos became the cultural norm.) Another “What’s a nice Jewish girl” moment.
I’d bet all my Saturday-night tip money that I am the only server in Palomino history who went to the public library to research names of cocktails before showing up for work my first night. I had lied—and expected my mother to swoop down from the heavens and strike me—when writing on my application that I had cocktail-waitress experience, not that it ended up mattering. Of course, I was outed the first night by Frank, the Palomino head bartender, who was as misplaced as I. He should have been lecturing in front of a college classroom, not behind the bar where they had filmed the Clint Eastwood orangutan bar scenes in the Philo Beddoe Every Which Way and Any Which Way films.
Frank disdainfully corrected me when I, trying to act experienced, called a chimney a brand of scotch when giving him my order.
“A chimney . . . is a glass,” he sneered, under his elegant mustache, as he set the tall glass on the pouring tray.
Busted.
Picking up his cigarette from a black polyurethane ashtray, he took a dramatic drag and exhale. Pulling at his fourteen-carat gold cuff-linked sleeves, he waited for me to slink away, shamed.
In four brief months, I was one of the three senior waitresses. Turnover was endemic. I had a blast despite Tommy Thomas’s mood swings and despite returning nightly to a shabby efficiency on Cherokee Avenue behind the Hollywood strip where Jimmy jealously waited, imagining in his paranoid mind I was screwing every customer between tray runs.
While carrying a full tray of Coronas and Dos Equis, while the trumpet section of Jack Mack and the Heart Attack kept a steady beat, I thought fleetingly of my old friend Joanne, the elegant arm of her dancer’s body raised, tray extended, winding her way through the hip Cleveland crowd. No responsibility. I thought about how in a few hours, I, along with all of the other Palomino girls on duty, would be cleaning all of the dirty glasses in the two squalid sinks behind the bar at 1:00 a.m., while the male bartenders counted their tips and drank beer—courtesy of owner Tommy Thomas—at one of the dilapidated red Naugahyde booths.
Then and there, I resolved that the next fantasy I would play out would not involve a musician or a serving tray.
A good time was had by all.
