10. Stay Alive

In my way of thinking, there are two basic strategies for dealing with the problem of existing in the world. The first is to change the world, to manipulate the situation into something more lovely and pleasing to exist in. This strategy belongs to great inventors, revolutionaries, politicians, crusaders, social workers. If there is injustice, right the wrong, fix the problem. My wife much more adept at this than myself. If there is a problem, she isn’t content until she has solved it. This is one of the reasons she is a master’s student at one of the most elite art history institutes in the country and I am a lowly host at this batty restaurant.

The other strategy involves manipulating your inner condition so that you are acclimatized and evolved in such a way as to make your difficult situation pleasing or rewarding or at least livable. This strategy belongs to messiahs, optimists, philosophers. It comes in handy, especially with regards to situations which cannot be solved or fixed, like growing and old and dying, for example. An enlightened spiritual being like Jesus could turn inwards, sublimate an experience like being tortured and turn it into a triumph celebrated for millennia. The Buddha could see through the suffering of this plane of existence and realize that by changing his mind and his heart, he could be set free. Perhaps a messiah is someone whose worldview is so supernaturally malleable that anything can become anything else to the point that it actually does change the world.

I bring this up because it is 4:30 pm and it is time for me to go work the night-shift. Can I find happiness in the midst of this shitty job? We shall see.

I can only imagine and only suppose that to an enlightened soul or to a genius, every detail is doorway, a slumbering poem or symphony, an entire encyclopedic history, a window into the center. We mortals however (and I am, perhaps incorrectly, assuming that you are a mortal, dear reader) have to use a number of little tricks to sustain the heart through the burdensome trials of toil and time.

My manager Gabriel, as I have noted in an earlier entry, takes bribes. Another manager has observed that Gabriel can, not only spot who will “tip” and who won’t, but how much. Working a shift with Gabriel is akin to being on a fishing expedition- the patient banter of drinking buddies during dry spells, the thrill of the bite, the satisfaction of landing a whopper. Even more than for extra profit, I think the game helps Gabriel pass the time. To get through the day, he plays the sportsman.

The general manager, Tanya, gets by on anger. She told me once, “I thrive on stress. I love stress. It’s like a drug for me.” And it’s true. She charges around Zemblanity in a perpetual state of emergency, high as a kite on the urgency of her position, constantly in crisis with the sky always falling. Her role is important. This is survival of the fittest.

The reservationist, Zach, plays the drums in his head. Zach is a very mild mannered kid from Bloomington, Indiana who is helping his sick mother pay off her mortgage. To hear him answer phones all day- “Hello, this is Zemblanity. How may I help you?” – you would never suspect that this dude shreds at the drums. But that he does. I could not believe my eyes and ears when I saw him play at a crappy bar on the Lower East Side. He was transformed. Now, all the time, I notice him tapping his pencils and pens for a spell and then transcribing the notation for the elaborate beats in his head.

Big gay Sam sings show tunes while he works. He has been in musical productions for twenty years and knows more show tunes than anyone I have ever met (by far). From Oklahoma to The Little Mermaid, every time he passes by, the song is different. Actually, lots of the staff sing a bit at work but none as prolifically as Sam.

Music always helps. Some of the best music ever written in America was written to pass the time under intense labor. When I first arrived at Zemblanity, I was astonished by the quantity of Santana and Rob Thomas that the employees ingested and endured, almost subconsciously. And for all the talk of Andy Warhol, we never heard the slightest peep from the Velvet Underground.

So I began smuggling in mix CDs. As a musician and knowing as many musicians as I do, I know that it can be difficult at times to believe in the worthiness of this pursuit. But let me tell you, at work, music can make all the difference in the world. A good song can transform the entire environment. When Beirut or the Cure or Paul Simon or David Bowie are bellowing their beloved guts out, I literally start dancing around the restaurant as I seat guests. Many of the diners laugh at my buoyant flailings and I laugh right back at them. When Neutral Milk Hotel is going full tilt, the petty doldrums of labor seem to fade like a silly and unimportant joke.

For this reason I have taken it upon myself to completely reshape the musical landscape of Zemblanity. Many of my musician friends in Portland will be happy to know that their efforts are in heavy rotation in one of the strangest places in New York.

Often times, in the evening, my wife and I will watch episodes of The Office. We are on season four. It is somewhat surreal to come home from work to watch a show about work but it is also entertaining and instructive. The likeable hero, Jim, is a hero in a very modern sense. He is able to stay affable and humorous and amused even in the most banal and soul crushing work space imaginable. This is what makes him heroic. Part of what makes this possible for Jim is the camera, the fact that others are in on the ludicrousness of his everyday life. He looks at the camera all the time as if to say, “See? Are you seeing what I deal with? Can you believe it?”

The camera is important. Imagining that you are an actor, a character in a play, is important. Even the most frustrating characters become characters worth watching. This is the real reason for this blog. I am now a character and by god, my shining soul will stay alive. You, dear reader, whoever you are, are helping to keep my inner life intact.

One reason that working a job a fourth grader could manage is nice is that there is plenty of left-over brain space to think. While seating customers, a whole part of my mind is free to wander over vast landscapes and to compose lines of poetry. I wrote this about the walk home after work over the course of two shifts at Zemblanity.

Sleepwalker

Walking home

through a dark city

after the graveyard

shift, the old brakes

of garbage trucks

sing whale songs

in canyons of skyscraper.

Discarded plastic sacks

are spirited like doves

in circling gusts

around haloed street lamps.

No, not doves-

the ghosts of children

playing tag

in the air.

This is the city

that never sleeps

but it sleepwalks.

Take this hunched,

toothless vagrant:

his cart, a museum

of rubbish, clattering

aimless blocks

in endless circles.

When he glances at me

I notice that his eyes

aren’t even eyes

and who’s he talking to?

Obviously, someone

who is invisible, who startles

the gatherings of cats,

someone with a scent

but no shadow,

someone made of memory

who hears everything-

The distant sound

of a human voice barking

at something unnatural.

And closer, a whistled tune,

off-kilter and eerie.

And closer still,

the cold clap of footsteps

on an empty street.

9. The Dungeon

A restaurant is a chaos of intensity, primarily because it involves large quantities of humans feeding. Sometimes I chuckle to myself and shake my beleagured head- all of this trouble just to get food into people! But, like sex, eating is one the primal necessities and sits at the lowest, foundational eschelons of Maslow's heirarchy of needs. When we eat, we are no more than beasts.

That said, one can pay various amounts of money to disguise this carnal truth in clever ways. One can spend a pretty penny to pretend that actually living creatures have not been slaughtered for the feast, that living plants have not been torn from their roots to sustain your moral vessel. And the reason you tip your waiter is so that you don't have to enter the kitchen yourself.

The kitchen at Zemblanity is a riot of angry, desperate, animalistic carnage. I have heard that more sophisticated establishments employ what is called an "expeditor," who fuctions as an intermediary buffer between the frenzied world of cook and waiter. At Zemblanity, no such veil exists and the exchanges between the cook and waiter are raw and sound like the screams of warfare. They bellow at each other in cuss-heavy pirate tongues and there is a sense of impending murder lingering in the air like bacon grease. Twice, I had to alert the manager that a physical altercation was preparing to break out. I have seen actual pushing and shoving, actual violence. "Where's my motherfucking Icy Hot Chocolate you monkey's penis hole!!?" But when the food arrives at the table it's "And here is your food sir and madam. Please let me know if everything is to your satisfaction.

However, The morbidity of the kitchen is nothing compared to the dungeon. Like many restaurants in Manhattan, much of the kitchen is on the basement level to conserve real-estate. I call it the dungeon because that is how it looks and feels. The ceilings are only about six feet tall and dank, dripping pipes hang at about five feet. To walk around down there, you have to hunch down and squeeze through the cramped, ill-lit alleys of machines. The kitchen manager, Jim, says that over the years he has employed a number of military men, all of whom attest to the fact that Zemblanity's kitchen is more claustrophobic and dismal that one on a submarine. Like a submarine, the men who work in the dungeon never see the light of day during their shift in that miserable hole.

All of the people who work in the kitchen are men. A feminist might argue about inequality in the work place but in this case, the inequality is a blessing for the fairer sex. No woman, or human person for that matter, should have to work in that bleak prison. Furthermore, most of the men that work down there are Africans. There is still screaming but it is in African languages that I do not understand. I get the gist though. Ostensibly, this situation is due to the fact that the English of these men is too broken to work on the floor. But the racial implications of this arrangement make a white, middle class, suburban-bred dude like myself very uncomfortable.

One time, I ventured down into this primordial pit to fetch some rags and witnessed something beautiful and heartbreaking. Amongst the vats of boiling chicken, chopping blocks, dangling pots and ladles, enormous freezers, fiery ovens, way back amongst the steaming hot dish washing machines... I saw Abdul when he thought no one was watching. He is a bus boy from Bangladesh, much further from home than myself. I heard Abdul, very quietly and sweetly, singing a song from home in Bengali.

And two floors up, the south room sings Happy Birthday to an eight year old girl as she is presented with a flowery sundae with a candle in it. And two floors up, the PR director of Zemblanity plots the next publicity stunt in the quiet office. And up the crooked, warped and slumping staircase to the fifth floor, a very old woman hangs a wreath upon the front door of her apartment. It is the only apartment in the five story building. None of the employees at Zemblanity seem to know the old woman's name.

8. Reality

On a (relatively) slow day this week, Mr. Charles was telling me about another slow day that he remembered several decades prior. Greta Garbo happened into the store all by her lonesome, drawn in by the splashy window display. Mr. Charles and Miss Annette tactfully pretended not to recognize her, much to her relief. These were the days when Greta was perpetually hounded by the media at every turn and it was nice for her to pretend to be a normal person. They chatted about the cheeky merchandise and laughed together. Ah, I can see them now- the three of them, young and in their prime, at the height of New York society, their laughter as light and sparkling as a thrown fistful of golden glitter. But then some waiter, “some little tart,” as Mr. Charles put it, walked by with a tray of dishes and screamed “OH MY GOD! IT’S GRETA GARBO!” and dropped the tray, everything shattering and deafening and poor Greta ran out of the store. It’s so hard to be a movie star.

Today’s special guest at Zemblanity: Katie Holmes (Mr. Tom Cruise’s wife and supposedly soon-to-be ex-wife) and her daughter Suri. She came in at a time when the restaurant was a real mad house and my managers were nowhere to be found. I was piloting this ship of fools on my own and took her and her friends in to the table where Andy Warhol always sat. She looked tired but Suri, truly one of the most beautiful little girls I have ever seen, was amped up and seemed to be having a ball in our sparkly Christmas dreamscape. Children love Zemblanity. I felt sorry for the poor little thing. After all, her father is Tom Cruise. Can you imagine? No. No you can’t.

As would be expected, a large milieu of dastardly paparazzi gathered outside. These dudes really are as douchey as they are made out to be. They all pulled up on their douchey mopeds with their douchey helmets and douchey cameras. Like I said. Douches. They all knew each other too. When a new one would pull up, they would all exclaim, “Well look who decided to show up late to the party! It’s douchey Johnny!” And douchey Johnny would smile and crack wise about some of his other predatory assignments. Listening to these guys talk outside was gross. They are the scabby symptom of a sickness in our culture, I sickness I am now often forced to confront.

Katie’s bodyguard was pretty cool though. I’m probably in no way qualified to be a bodyguard but, so far, they all seem to be real swell guys. I showed him the side door from which to make a furtive escape. He shook my hand and thanked me for my help and tipped me a fiver. Top notch guy.

By the time I got off work, there was a gigantic semi-circle of photogs (an aptly disgusting term) surrounding the entrance. I walked out onto the sidewalk and it was like walking out onto a stage. The douches took pictures of me and so I decided to take pictures of them with my phone. Then, on my walk home, I counted 34 magazine covers with Katie Holmes and Suri on the front with disgusting titles. I stopped and examined these magazines featuring the person I had just talked to and watched eat. These photographs were probably taken by the same douchebags.

Looking at these magazines gave me a strange feeling. It is one that I have felt before at work: a slight vertigo induced by the muddling together of fiction and reality. A lovely example of this awkward position is to watch a reality show being filmed. So far, this has happened to me twice.

The first time was a reality show for MTV. Table 51 was reserved for a reality show and, per usual, two or three tech guys showed up first. They scouted out the premises and made preparations for the arrival of “the stars.” Soon, a bratty and grotesquely attractive couple arrived. I don’t mean to imply that they were very good looking, I mean to imply that they were grotesques, distorted exaggerations of the concept of good looking (which isn’t actually good looking at all). First the couple comes in, looks around, waits to be told what to do, then exits the building so that a shot can be taken of them entering the building. Then a shot ascending the stairs. Then a shot sitting down.

It was strange so watch this… reality being staged. They sat upstairs and spoke (fought) with each other very loudly although I doubt this was necessary. Some of the other patrons were amused by this unseemly spectacle and some were bothered and asked to be moved. Now, as I was working, I ought to admit that I didn’t see the whole business filmed. But here’s what a know. The couple’s waiter said that the couple was completely calm when the cameras where off and completely angry when the cameras were on. Is this acting or an effect of the all-seeing gaze of a national television audience? Also, said the waiter, the cameramen prompted the girl when to leave by asking “Do you both just want to hang around here all night?” It was in the cameraman’s best interest to encourage movement.

Thus, while all the staff was downstairs, debating whether or not the frat boy “star” was gay, the heroine of the reality show ran down the stairs in tears, screaming on her phone while running out the door. A cameraman ran after her down the street. We all laughed.

Some minutes later, the dude protagonist trudged down the stairs, looking at his Blackberry with a bored expression. Either this dude was not really just broken up with, or he did the breaking or it was all arranged in advance. I wanted to know and so I went outside to smoke with him and interrogate him. “What is the theme of the show?” I asked. The response was magnificent and ludicrous.

“Ah shit braw,” (no I’m not making this up this is how he spoke) “it’s about how I’m all playa’ and she can’t take it.” I should mention that this dude is as white as a cloud and has the dumbest tattoos and clothing I have ever seen worn by a human person. “The show’s all about how I just don’t give a shit. Like upstairs, all those people were looking at us and I just didn’t give a shit. I act all crazy and shit. I couldn’t even give a fuck. See, I’m trying to get a reality show of my own. And all you got to do is get on tv and act all crazy and shit and they give you your own show.”

I stared at the foolish baffoon, baffled by his stupid stupidity. How in the world can someone operate under such a worldview? And while I should have quickly dismissed his heinous outlook on fame, people as or more stupid that this absolute monkey have become famous on reality shows and have, I assume, made a fair chunk of change in the process. By the way, while the two of us were on the sidewalk, it turns out that his “girl” had just ended up in the parking garage across the street, soliloquying into her phone and into the camera.

As I left work that evening, this dude was still out on the sidewalk, texting on his Blackberry. I nodded to him and said, “good luck with your televised misadventures!”

He put his fist in the air and said, “Fucking A right I will!” Neat.

7. Bribery

Since starting at Zemblanity, my coworkers have spoken of the approaching holiday season in hushed and foreboding tones. Any time I believed I had just witnessed the perfect maelstrom of Manhattan dining forces, the waiters would make casual and ominous predictions about what lay in store for our young protagonist. "Just wait. Wait until the holidays,"they would say. "You haven't seen anything yet."

I'm beginning to understand that this wasn't simple hyperbole designed to frighten the new guy. Things are really going to come apart at the seams. Things at Zemblanity are going to get out of control.

Today the wait reached three and a half hours. Three and a half! Looking at a list of that many names boggles the mind. Why would anyone do that to themselves? Staring down and the rows and rows of Michelles and Johns and Stacys and Peters, it has begun to dawn on me that I do not understand the human animal and am suspicious of of his ways. Three and a half hours!?

At a certain point, it becomes abundantly clear that none of the 36 tables will be empty for more than five minutes from opening until closing at 2 am. At that point new customers become somewhat irrelevant. It benefits us to deter or scare off new patrons. But what could be more of a deterrent than a three hour wait? We put a sign up on the door that says "THE WAIT IS NOW 3+ HOURS" and yet still they come. I've considered barking at them like a dog or when asked what the wait time is, opening a Bible and reading the scariest parts of Revelations.

There are, however, certain advantages to working in what one of the waiters calls the busiest four square feet of Manhattan, namely... bribes. Firstly, let me say that we hosts have no moral qualms about taking bribes. Zemblanity pays us eleven dollars an hour and we are not tipped (although industry standard is 2%). In Manhattan, the most expensive city in the country, this is a slave wage.

Now, let me introduce you to my favorite manager at Zemblanity. His name is Gabriel and he was born in New York, has always lived in New York and is about the New Yorkiest New Yorker I have ever met. He is stalky, Hispanic, a diehard Yankees fan and paces the restaurant with his head lowered like a general. He has worked for Zemblanity for eleven years and is a fucking hilarious dude. It is Gabriel who is ushering me into the secret arts of bribery.

One day, Gabriel took me out into the hallway and put his hand on my shoulder. "Listen, if you follow my lead, I plan on making us a little extra loot. You see what I'm saying? You'll see. When the holidays roll around, we'll be putting together a nice little bit of dough by the end of the day. "

I, like most of our customers, have never before offered a bribe of any sort. It never crosses my mind as an option. Now, looking back, I wonder how many sold out shows I could have gotten into with a mere 20 dollar hand shake.

Some of our customers are real pros. Confidently, they march in, ask to see a manager, shake hands with a twenty and ask when their reservation will be ready. Boom. Done. Three and a half hour wait averted. Other patrons need a bit more prodding. If I see that they're overly stressed or need to get to a show, I'll use Gabriel as my foil. I'll say, "You could talk to my manager. Sometimes he's known to...[dramatic pause]... make arrangements." Then I'll wink or perhaps shrug as if to say "whatever goes on between you and the manager is your business. He's the boss." This is an ideal set up because the customer has nothing to lose.

I've noticed that many first time bribers are intimidated by the idea but are truly thrilled by both the results and by their own bold audacity. They are now members of an exotic guild with its own secret handshake.

Times like this, when we're raking it in, can be really fun. Gabriel's cracking jokes about the futile jibes of frustrated customers, whose little cuts and comments are meaningless now that there are 50 people behind them waiting for a table. The restaurant will make oodles of cash on overpriced food and at the end of the day, we will split up "the loot" and double our hourly wage.

At one point during the day, I went outside to call in a table. Next to the door there were two people promoting some sort of nasal spray. One lady was dressed in a large box of the nasal spray and passing out pamphlets to the multitudes outside the restaurant. The other person was dressed in a purple elephant costume (I don't know why) and was swaying in some sort of sad, despondent "buy nasal spray" dance.

"Yes sir," I thought. "My job could certainly be worse."

6. The Lavish Gluttony

And here, dear reader, is a very, very abridged list of some of the notables who have frequented Zemblanity 3:

Meg Ryan, Dennis Quaid, Susan Lucci, Babyface, Chelsea Clinton, Rosanne, Michelle Pfeiffer, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Catherine Deneuve, Prince, Paul Anka, Francis Ford Coppola, Alec Baldwin, Nan Kempner, Naomi Campbell, Candice Bergen, Jim Carey, Marilyn Monroe, Warren Beatty, Don Johnson, Bette Davis, Gloria Vanderbilt, Barbra Streisand, Andy Warhol, Diana Ross, Diane Sawyer, Dudley Moore, Parker Posey, Susan Sarandon, Daryl Hannah, Bruce Willis, Ivanka Trump, Melanie Griffith, Antonio Banderas, Joan Rivers, Nicole Kidman, Brooke Astor, Glen Close, Mia Farrow, Vanessa Williams, Jack Nicholson, Tyra Banks, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, John Cusack, Kate Beckinsdale, Brooke Sheilds, John Travolta, Jodie Foster, Cher, Brittany Spears, Paul Newman, Calista Flockhart, Ron Howard, George Lucas, Sharon Stone, Lisa Kudrow, Steven Spielberg, Farrah Fawcett, Gretta Garbo, Marlina Deitrich, Liza Minnelli, Tatum O’neal, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Linda Evangelista, Kim Cattral, Mariah Carey, Anderson Cooper, Michael Douglas, Francesco Scavulto, Danny Devito, Reah Pearlman, Kim Basinger, Molly Ringwald, Jaclyn Smith, Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, Caroline Kennedy, Taylor Swift, Oprah…

The actual list could be its own blog and would be truly overwhelming. One of the eldest waiters, Phil, has worked at Zemblanity for over twelve years (!). He is a very amusing fellow and looks like one of the Three Stooges. He has a hunched back and walks quickly through the hurlyburly of the restaurant with his arms straight down. Phil is one of the nicest fellows every and speaks with a formality that seems to reside somewhere between the true politeness of an old school waiter and the subversive mockery of the oppressed. He cocked his head toward me in a bird-like way as he often does and said "I sometimes believe that I have seen every famous person ever born."

One of those celebrities, Alec Baldwin, refers to Zemblanity on the show 30 Rock. His character is describing the $1000 Lavish Gluttony sundae as his favorite desert in New York. In the show Zemblanity is called "Plunder" and a good deal of the show is about how hard it is to get in. Plucky Miss Lemon gets in right away though because her boyfriend is that Donald Draper guy from Mad Men who is so good looking that "he looks like a cartoon pilot."

The Lavish Gluttony Sundae has gold leaf on it, is served on a golden plate with a golden spoon in a crystal dish (which is lined with gold leaf), has three scoops of expensive ice cream, chocolate from all over the world, nuts dipped in gold and so on. I have seen one served with my own eyes. It was presented to an older woman from Los Angeles as a present from her Middle Eastern boyfriend. They sat at a table with this ridiculous looking desert and the whole time she frowned and complained. It was the most surreal thing- our nation is in a recession and I am watching a rich, unhappy person frown and literally eat gold. Everyone else in the restaurant seemed to enjoy it more than this opulent miser.

Stephen Colbert has actually spoofed the desert as well. On his show, he did a bit about dining and dashing on $1000 meals. At one point, he takes some of the gold dust that is used as a topping and cuts it up with a credit card and pretends to do lines of it. Then he asks if he could pay an extra $1000 to have a poor person watch him eat it. Finally he sticks sheets of gold leaf to his face and dashes outside to puke in the doorway where I have my smoke breaks.

It is somewhat less known that Zemblanity offers a $25,000 hot chocolate which has a diamond bracelet on it and actual diamonds in it (along with the gold and all the golden accoutrements). Supposedly, a good deal of this money would go to charity if anyone ever bought it. Zemblanity seems to always be pulling wild publicity stunts like this.

Take this for example. One morning I came in, expecting to clean everything like normal but there was a large crowd of news cameras, photographers and reporters, standing around in well pressed and serious suits. The place was almost dead silent. I asked my pal Chris what everyone was up to and he replied that "they're all waiting for four gallons of milk to boil." You see, on that particular morning, Zemblanity was attempting to break the Guinness Book of World Records mark for the "largest hot chocolate" ever. There were reporters from the Daily News and CBS and NBC and of course, a number of Guinness Judges.

I couldn't believe that all these people, with more respectable and better paying jobs that myself, were just standing around solemnly for such a ludicrous reason. I couldn't help laughing. It was so magically stupid! But pretty soon they brought out the milk and poured it into a custom made, four gallon mug (with a handle!), mixed in the chocolate and poured a giant vat of whipped cream onto the top. This was filmed and photographed extensively. Then Mr. Charles was presented with a certificate which certified the world's record for biggest hot chocolate and all the reporters clapped an embarrassed sort of applause. I did get a small mug out of the world's largest hot chocolate and... it didn't taste like record breaking cocoa, it just tasted like regular hot chocolate. Is there a lesson in that? No.

After everyone was done taking pictures of this monstrous monstrosity, all the waiters stood around it, taking pictures of each other with their iPhones. Three or four of them have it as their Facebook pictures. As the time neared for the restaurant to open, two of the waiters had to hoist it up to dump out in the kitchen sink. Carrying the four gallons of chocolate in a four gallon mug, they looked just like Oompa-Loompas.

There was a rather startling and hilarious newspaper article I found recently. It was all about how, a few years back, the restaurant that serves a $25,000 hot chocolate was shut down for a couple weeks by health inspectors due to infestations of rodents and cockroaches! Huzah!

5. Aura

In its time Zemblanity has played host to an astonishing number of celebrities. Just this morning, Mr. Charles was telling me about Paul Newman. He came in from time to time before he and his wife moved out of the city. “He was a very impersonal man,” explained Mr. Charles. “He would say ‘Hello Mr. Charles. How do you do, Mr. Charles?’ and that’s about it.” This was back when movies like Cool Hand Luke and Butch Cassidy were coming out. Back when Newman was Newman.

And Marilyn Monroe: "Well, you know I was a designer back when. In fact that's my design on the cover of Vogue there," says Mr. Charles, gesturing to a framed 70's magazine on the wall. "She would come in, wearing nothing but a trench coat and I would bring out a few numbers for her. She would point at one and go into our tiny bathroom to throw it on and walk out wearing it."

In my very brief time at Zemblanity, I have seen a bunch of celebrities and will describe some them for you. The first was not really even what you would call a celebrity. A couple of body guards came in, gigantic dudes in suits who meant business. They asked to see the layout of the building. They cased the place and left. Soon a whole bunch of body guards came in with a family and I led them to the table we had specially reserved. After everyone had been seated, the biggest of all the bodyguards gave me an ornate coin on which was written, ‘Ray Mabus- 75^th Secretary of the Navy.’ “So you know who you’ve helped out tonight,” said the bodyguard.

Hmm. I didn’t know that my tax dollars were going to making ornate coins with people’s names on them. Did you? Outside, late in the evening I started talking to all the bodyguards. I told them that when Oprah was in she had way more bodyguards (this is supposedly true, although the last time she was in was a month before I started working). The bodyguards said that hers probably got paid better than they did. They asked if she left a big tip and I said “As big as Oprah” (which I think is triple entendre) and they all laughed.

Anyhow, this fellow Mabus had just been on the Daily Show and was out for deserts with his family afterward. They all seemed very nice and as “Ol’ Ray” (as I call him) was exiting I said, “Bon Voyage mon Capitan” and saluted him and he laughed. He probably went out and blew some shit up that very night.

The next celebrity was Raven Simone. She was the youngest daughter on the Cosby Show. She apparently also had a show on the Disney Channel but I never saw it. One of my co-workers got so excited that he could barely speak but to me, she just seemed like some random lady who vaguely looked like someone I vaguely remembered. She bought lots trinkets from the store as she left and was happy to take pictures with customers.

The guy after that was some dude from the show Gossip Girl. But as I’ve never seen that show or know anything about it, who cares? Apparently the waiter Patty, who was all a-twitter and took a picture of his credit card receipt with his iPhone. Chase Crawford, I think was his name, and his family was a bunch of wild, likeable hillbillies.

Then I saw Mario Van Peebles. That was neat. He came right up to the host stand and there was some weird visual discombobulance as my brain tried to register why I knew this face. I asked for his name and he said “Van Peebles.” I actually didn’t register who he was until I wrote down “Van Peebles.” You see, there seems to be a good deal of visual and cognitive discord upon seeing a celebrity at first. Your mind is trying to place a make believe character into a setting you have come to believe is cold hard reality. Once realizing that this was a famous person, my manager quickly ushered Mr. Van Peebles and (I assume) his wife and daughter in. When sneaking celebrities in, we just pretend that they had a reservation and we didn’t have it on the list for privacy reasons.

Mario seemed like just about the coolest person I had ever seen. He was kind enough to take a few pictures with patrons and I myself took a number of these photos. My favorite moment was when he was waiting in line for the bathroom. Apparently, no amount of fame will allow you to cut in line for the bathroom. As he was leaving he gave me a little high five and all day I thought “Mario Van Peebles gave me a high five!” I hope he washed his hands in the bathroom.

The Steinbrenner family came in a day or two after the Yankees won the World Series. They are regulars at Zemblanity but there seemed to be nothing extraordinary about them (other than that they own the winningest sports franchise in history). Truth be told, they looked just like a rather bored family dining at Applebee’s.

Danielle Steele came in a couple of times but this was unimpressive for two reasons: (a) The thrill is not the same upon seeing an author because their image is so rarely seen. I don’t think I would be all that surprised to find out that I have seen John Grisham three or four times in my life but never realized it was him. And (b) it’s Danielle Steele and I never read one of her trashy books so who cares?

In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin discusses what he calls “auras.” An aura is the magnetic wonderment that a work of art gains when we know it’s history, have proof of its authenticity, know it as being famous and understand the myriad of social relevancies it has gained within the context of its history. This is why people at the Louvre line up to look at and take pictures of the Mona Lisa. They don’t necessarily have any personal understanding or emotional affinity for this little painting but they are drawn by its aura. Here is the singular work from which all of those other images of the Mona Lisa (on billboards, on posters, on pizza parlor signs, etc.) have been manifest. The people at the Louvre get a thrill from the aura, from standing near the singularity, the one source of the great river.

When my friend Nick Jaina was in town from Portland on vacation, he stopped by to pick me up after work. He walked in, had a quick look around and walked out, unimpressed and I think marginally disgusted. I found him outside after my shift was over and he asked, “Why would a celebrity ever want to go there? If I was a celebrity I would want to go somewhere quiet, away from crowds that had the best food.” Well Nick, I gave some thought to your question and this is my best guess-

Like original works of art, places can have powerful auras as well. A place (like the Empire State Building or Wrigley Field or the Hollywood sign) gathers historical significance throughout the years because of what has happened there, famous people who have visited it and so on. While a place is harder to replicate that a work of art, just think of how many times the image of the Empire State Building has been copied or filmed in shows or in movies. Think of how the Hollywood sign is replicated for every Hollywood Video store. Think of all the posters and jackets with Wrigley field on it. These reproductions are without aura. In fact, buildings and structures are subject to replication as well. Without considering replicated constructions like Disneyland or Las Vegas (these places have their own auras), think of the repetition involved in a Starbucks or a McDonald’s. These places also have no, or at least very little, original aura. But let me tell you, standing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building was the real deal. After five and half decades, Zemblanity has very powerful (if odd) aura.

Like art and locations, people can also have auras. If we have seen a celebrity in the news or on TV or in Movies, all of those countless associations become attached to the singular body of that celebrity. So were I to see Sean Connery walk in, I would not only see him, I would see James Bond, the submarine captain in Hunt for the Red October and someone who had a cameo at the end of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. I would also have personal associations attached to those works, like how I played Robin Hood as a kid and recently read some of the original books that were given to me by my friend Parker (they’re actually pretty rad). So the singularity of the famous individual constitutes a social nexus for everyone who sees them.

My idea is that aura seems to be a sticky substance. The stronger it is, the more associations it picks up so that it gets stronger and stronger through time. It is a sort of conceptual magnetism. It could be that the magnetism of celebrity aura is drawn to the historical aura of the restaurant. The aura of each is increased by the other.

The other theory is that most celebrities are just astonishingly dumb.

Which brings me to Jude Law. He’s been in a few times since I’ve been working, I suppose because he’s in town to play Hamlet. The first time was at the tail end of my shift and he was in to look for trinkets for his daughter. Miss Annette immediately began doting on him and trying to remember what his daughter seemed to like the last time they were in. You should have seen how the mood shifted inside the lobby. Where usually it is packed solid with people, it had now become a maelstrom.

The second time he came in was for his daughter Isis’ birthday. It was curious to see Jude Law with his family and family friends. There were about twelve of them up at table 54 and 55 (the long table). He didn’t seem to want to sit still, always up and walking to the other end of the table, always very animated. He asked me for a pen, asked to see the waiter, told me they were ready for cake.

Well, Miss Annette is the queen of birthdays. She remembers everyone’s birthdays, even the busboys and makes sure they are appropriately sung to and get their free sundae. She takes birthdays seriously, maybe because she’s had so many of them. Anyhow, the Laws went home happy, Isis’ birth having been appropriately celebrated.

The last one was strange. I was told to reserve table 32 because Bob someone was coming in and he might be bringing Barbra Walters. I didn’t care. I was hungry. So I went back to the kitchen and got my lunch. I sat down to eat at table 37 which faces table 32 and when the table was filled, it wasn’t Barbra Walters at all. It was Sarah Palin and her daughters and her publicist. I started laughing to myself. Here was the person I had so reviled and ridiculed during the campaign and now she was sitting a couple of feet away from me, eating a hot dog (which is coincidentally what Oprah ate when she was in). I don’t think any of the staff actually liked her and so no one tried to protect her from the people trying to take pictures with her. In fact, one waiter actively tried to tell his customers to go over and ask for a picture. It turned into a messy traffic jam around her table and I had a front row seat. It was probably the least peaceful meal anyone has ever tried to eat.

A picture was taken with Sarah Palin and Mr. Charles, arm in arm and smiling with the bizarre nouveau swirls and Christmas decorations behind them. Admiring the picture, Mr. Charles said with his devilish little slanty smile, “Look at us. Two darling little media whores.” Mr. Charles is funny.

Only ten minutes after she left, I seated a nice family of four at table 32. “Sir,” I said, “you wouldn’t believe it but ten minutes ago, Sarah Palin was sitting right where you are now.”

“Oh, really?” said the man. He squirmed uncomfortably. “Do you think I could change seats?”

4. Tanya

Here is a list of ten things that are almost as gay as Zemblanity:

A box of birds

A piccolo solo

A unicorn named Fernando

A pink, sequined leotard

Nude wrestling

Most of San Francisco

Most of the audience at a Cher concert

The cast of Rent

Frosted Hair

Two men having sex

As far as I can tell, Zemblanity has always been this way, which is impressive as the restaurant has been open since 1954, long before Stonewall and all of the advances made in GLBT rights since the 60’s and 70’s. Mr. Charles looks like a gay Walt Disney. His very effeminate affectations took some getting used to but he seems, overall, to have a good heart and to be a very sweet man. Now and again, something will startle him and he will gasp and hold his hand to his heart just like my mother does. He has always lived and dressed very neatly and conservatively. For 77, he is very healthy and full of life. I do not know if he was “out” back when the restaurant was opened. Everyone knew Andy Warhol was gay and Mr. Charles talks wistfully of the parties at the Factory and Studio 54 but Zemblanity opened almost two decades before all of that. Mr. Charles is certainly the oldest gay man I have ever known.

It may well make me seem like a young, naive, bright-eyed, small town boy in the big city to be so effected by such an openly out environment but, by god, that's pretty much what I am. And while New York has always been a decade or two ahead of the times for the queer community, it certainly isn't that way in much of the country. I remember this gay fellow in Boise describing his upbringing in rural Idaho. He truly believed he was the only person in the world whose gate swung the other way. At night, he would retire to his grandparent's trailer out behind their house. He liked it because it was lit by lamps instead of the florescent lights of the house and because out there, his radio got reception for This American Life. He felt that it was his only connection, his only lifeline to anything or anyone remotely like himself.

What would he have thought of Zemblanity, this absolutely faboo gay wonderland? In the "general store" (I use quotes because the "store" is really just the entry way and there isn't anything "general" about it) there are kitschy items like "gay accent breath spray" and a gay "choose your own adventure" book. It's called Escape from Fire Island and is all about a deadly and sparkly romp through one of the most fabulously gay resorts in the United States. Twice, I have ended up being abducted by Puerto Rican drag queens. Actually, now that I think of it, Mr. Charles has a vacation home in Fire Island.

The younger gay waiters are flamboyant and funny fellows. Perhaps because we straight employees are often in the minority, it is safe environment but the talk before opening reminds me of a locker room. I suppose I never realized that gay dudes are just dudes and make jokes as filthy and sexual as the straight set. But the talk always turns to blowjob technique, hot Brazilian boys, anal-sex innuendo, etc. It’s interesting how the straight waiters just roll with it, unbothered and unimpressed. I suppose being comfortable with this dynamic is a prerequisite for working at Zemblanity.

The gay boys tease me a bit but only in good spirit. They’ll wink at me and make dirty puns and flirt with me in harmless ways. It’s their way of including me. I have a great fondness for those boys.

I also find it somewhat amazing that the general manager, the true ruling power of Zemblanity, is about as dyke-y a person as I’ve ever met. Her name is Tanya and she doesn’t take shit from anybody. Each morning she struts in wearing her Yankees jacket and always looks like she’s ready for an all-out fistfight. Just about everyone is afraid of her, myself included. This is partly due to the fact that she sort of looks like a troll. This is also partly due to the fact that she usually seems so angry that she’s about to fire everybody (and she could).

Tanya is famous for being a total, hard-ass bitch. Everyone knows this and she does too. The most upset I’ve ever been at work was when she castigated me for five minutes in front of employees and customers alike for moving a chair away from one table to another, thus disturbing the carefully crafted feng shui of the restaurant. Then, about five minutes later she called me into her office and gave me a dressing-down for an equally minor detail. As I had been seating a group of women, I had said, “Well here we go guys. The perfect table reserved particularly for you.” She reamed me for another five minutes about calling women “guys.” She told me that she would hate for some lady to call in and complain about being called a guy, in which case she would have to fire me.

Fuck! I was so angry that it took every coiled up fiber of restraint to simply say, “Yes ma’am.” I could have murdered. Instead I went and got a double whiskey right after work.

On the other hand, there is a hidden aspect to Tanya and I sometimes get the feeling that I would really like hanging out with her if she wasn’t my boss. Old Miss Annette has about five decades worth of gossip percolating in her suspicious brain and she sometimes tells me secrets. One of the secrets was that Tanya has an enormous collection of dolls. Another of the secrets was that about 20 years ago, Tanya had my job as host.

The only time that I catch glimpses of Tanya’s interior life is when we are both on a smoke break at the same time. When she smokes, she bites down on the filter with her teeth and keeps it clamped there while she talks like a ventriloquist. She had been complaining about how legally complicated the restaurant business had become and I told her that it probably takes a double doctorate to run an operation of this size these days. “Honey,” she says, “the only school I ever went to was the school of hard knocks.” I had always wanted to hear someone say this in earnestness and there it was- a cliche come true!

Actually, Tanya had been pre-med before becoming involved in her father’s nightclubs and says in her very New York-ish accent, “That was fun. That was really, really fun. But now I wish I had the financial leverage to make everyone at this restaurant follow me around for a day. You would not even believe the shit that I have to put up with. It is unbelievable.” I suggested that we trade jobs. “I would love to trade jobs with you. I would truly love that,” she said in her harrumphing sort of laughter.

As we were walking in from our respective smokes, she told me that she had just killed a yellow jacket in her office. I asked if that was one of the job requirements. “No,” she said, coughing a smoker’s cackle. “That’s one of the perks. I get to kill things.”

3. Seating

The food at Zemblanity is not particularly good. It’s not particularly bad either, it’s just food. The deserts are flashy but were one to read reviews of the place, one would not expect there to be over an hour wait immediately upon opening at 11:30 in the morning. However, almost every day, there it is: a Disneyland-ish cue stretching down the block toward the East River.

It is the humble opinion of this host that New Yorkers (or people visiting New York) are drawn and titillated by lines and crowds. Often, when I inform a hopeful patron that the wait is three hours, they will respond, “Well then, it must be exceptionally good!” I bite my tongue and do not argue that this logic may not be sound. Many of these people just want to be “in on” something and it doesn’t much matter what they are in on. I have only been in the employ of Zemblanity for three months but the worst wait I have seen upon opening has been two hours.

Reservations are called in first, although most of the reservations for weekends in November and December have been filled since June. Then the manager walks the line, taking names and breaking the bad news about the obscene wait. Small parties are then sent in manageable numbers and I lead them to their tables.

Upon opening, seating must be staggered artfully. If every table was filled immediately, a vast deluge of simultaneous orders would overwhelm the kitchen and people would wait for their food as long as they had waited in line. This necessary pacing upsets many patrons, hungry beasts that they are, because all though they have been told to wait for two hours, they can clearly see (with their own eyes!) at least six empty tables inside. Chill out dude, you don’t have to wait two hours if you don’t want to.

But now is the time that I, as a host begin to practice my illustrious art. Here, briefly, is a taste of my genius in three scenarios.

Scenario One: I am taking in the first table of two. I decide to go upstairs to table 44. “Well my God who art in heaven, how on earth did you get to be the first ones in? Under which lucky star were you born? What good deeds did you perform in a previous life? Well, right this way, we’re going upstairs. And, it being so lovely a day and you being so lucky a soul, let’s put you right in this glorious window seat. (Actually, I take them to this table because from here they can see the ghastly line waiting desperately to enjoy what these customers are now enjoying. The German word for finding pleasure in the misfortune of others is Schadenfreude.). Here are the menus. Bon Appetite and God bless (yes this is how I actually talk at work).”

Scenario Two: I am seating a party of nine at table 21. A party of this size usually takes a frustratingly long time to seat, arranging and rearranging themselves according to their own idiosyncratic social matrix. This gives me a long time to soliloquy. “This table we are seating you at is called Pink because of the little pink flowers in this original Tiffany lamp above you. This table is famous because the artist Andy Warhol used to sit here every day. As you can see we have a small Andy effigy hanging from the ceiling here. Once a year, after the restaurant has closed, the employees gather at this very table and hold a séance to conjure Andy Warhol’s ghost from beyond the grave. I tell you this in case the spirit of pop art possesses anyone. This has also been the favored table of Oprah, Barbra Streisand and countless other notables. Everyone is successfully installed? Yes? Then enjoy yourself, indulge yourself and may your meal be remembered forever.” (The actuality of the historical claims made in this and the following scenario will be addressed in a future entry when we begin to explore Zemblanity: Fact vs. Fiction).

Scenario Three: I am seating a table of three at table 64. They have been waiting for an hour and a half and this table sucks. It’s uncomfortably small and is right next to the ruckus and confusion of the busser station. “Let me tell you something that I learned just the other day. This is the table that was most often frequented by Jackie O. She would bring John Jr. and Carolyn Kennedy here when they were little kids. Jackie came here when JFK was Senator but never while he was president. Still, they had plainclothesmen securing the building. Well, Carolyn still joins us from time to time and she always requests this table. I never knew why but I just recently learned that it’s because this is the table that she sat at with her mother when she was just a little girl.” (Note: almost all of this story is pure bullshit).

Most of my managers agree that the restaurant should be full to capacity by 12:30. Hopefully this hour has given the cooks and the wait staff enough time to develop a pace that can be sustained, more or less, throughout the day.

Now my job is to man the host’s stand (or podium, or lectern or pulpit) and take names and seat parties as appropriate tables become available. The two aspects of this are (a) not seating three tables simultaneously in one section, thus giving that waiter a conniption fit and (b) estimating the wait as people add their names to our ludicrously lengthy list. Estimating the wait 15 to 30 minutes out is easy. It becomes an infinitely more complex proposition to guess two or three hours into the future. It would be like asking a meteorologist to predict the weather on this day next year. Because we are attempting to predict the behavior of large numbers of humans, we are in the realm of political complexity or the stock market or traffic patterns. However, I doubt most weathermen are confronted so directly with the undisguised ire of those he has accidently misled. Both an overestimate and an underestimate can lead to unpleasantness.

New York can be a fucking blistering frenzy of intense people. On my way to work today, a man was cut off by a taxicab as he was crossing the street. He stopped in the intersection and began hollering at the very top of his lungs, “FUCKER! ASSHOLE! BITCH MOTHERFUCKER!” Another dude who passed me looked at this wild display of outrage and bemusedly said, “Express yo’self!” That intensity of anger and resentment is what makes my day troublesome, emotional and epic. I feel like the little Dutch boy holding his finger in the hole in the dyke to keep the country from flooding.

2. Cleaning

In the morning, I wake up tired, sometimes hung over and my feet hurt and my legs hurt. I sit on the edge of my bed and take somber stock and wish I could get back under the covers. Then I take a shower and shave. Then I put on my clothes and kiss my wife and go to work, stopping at a bodega on the way for a cup of shitty, bitter coffee.

Luckily my only duties upon arriving at ten are cleaning duties and these are non-social. First, I clock in, dropping my time card into one of those old school punch clocks. For some reason this pleases me because it makes a nice, heavy thuck and there you are. It seems honest. Then I retrieve a clean rag from the basement and, sit at one of the tables (usually table 32) and begin to clean the menus.

The menus are vast. They are at least two feet long and one foot wide. But they open up to about two feet wide. They’re like black and white murals covered from corner to corner in strange squiggles, clip art and stories. The main feature on the front of the menu is a long, rambling, barely comprehensible history of the restaurant. Alongside is an enormous drawing of the Twin Towers made out of sandwiches with a big sign that says “THE WORLD TRADE SANDWICHES!” This menu was made up before 9/11 and although I do not know, I imagine that they left the drawing as some sort of bizarre homage. I am disturbed by the World Trade Sandwiches.

There are a ludicrous number of menu items, one of which is the $1000 ice cream sundae (but that story is for another time). Often when I hand patrons their menus, they say “Wow!” or “Oh my god!” or “Whoa, do you think the menus are big enough?” Then I respond with a little joke of my own like, “Actually, today is small menu day and unfortunately we only have these small ones.” Upon receiving his menu, one person actual said (and I quote) “fuck me in the ear, that’s the biggest fucking menu I’ve ever seen in my fucking life!” Yup. That pretty much sums it up.

So I have to clean these expansive monstrosities. Then I clean the check books and the little centerpiece advertisements. I am mostly looking for bits of chocolate. At Zemblanity, I and all my co-workers are awed and troubled by the quantity and location of chocolate splatters that we find. It can only be caused by sheer animalistic carnage on a scale that would astonish and confound even the most brilliant of forensic examiners.

Then I repeat this upstairs.

Now I Windex the front door windows, which are oddly shaped. The nouveau windows were specially designed and created for Zemblanity. Old photographs, like the ones with Andy Warhol and Jackie O. show normal square windows, which would be easier to clean. Then I clean the front display windows, which always houses a very post-modern installation of the most colorful and glittery of our “general store’s” tchotchkes. Passersby on the sidewalk often frown in confusion as they catch a glimpse of it. Or they freak out because of the sheer, delirious cuteness of it all. I am actually a fan of the window displays.

Then I do the mirrors. There are a lot of mirrors. This morning I counted 14 upstairs; some small, some from floor to ceiling and as wide as I am tall. One is in the shape of a butterfly and hangs from the ceiling. I don’t clean this one because I would need a ladder to do so. Next, I clean all the mirrors downstairs. One of the mirrors is a fun house mirror and rubbing its curved glass makes me a little dizzy. Some of the mirrors are so old that they look scratched but it fact, it’s the silver showing through. You can actually see the brush strokes on the eldest of the mirrors where the silver was painted on by hand. During this part of the morning, I spend a good deal of time looking at my reflection and watching myself work.

My favorite cleaning comes at the end. Let’s call it discretionary cleaning. I pick random objects and corners of the restaurant and run a wet rag over them. This aspect of my cleaning regimen was initiated at the urging of Mr. Charles who wants everything to be “tidied up” for the 55^th anniversary. This is a sort of exploratory cleaning. I dust the Edison Gramophone, which doesn’t work but is a beautiful artifact and the huge metal Gramophone bell. I clean the actual Tiffany lamps (there are four actual Tiffanys in the place, the rest are knockoffs). I dust the enormous key hanging from the ceiling and the red chair hanging from the ceiling and the mounted bull horns and the Andy Warhol effigy that dangles above table 14. I clean the face of the enormous clock and the tiny wind-up clock that has a car that spins on the hour (if it worked, which it doesn’t). I clean the large red Mobile gasoline Pegasus emblem and the odd cupboard with the Mardi Gras doll in one of the drawers. I dust the little birds, the ancient café signs, the plaster swirls, the empty jars, the statues, the ugly paintings, the pipes and the broken fan blades. I stand on a chair and clean the indescribable mirrored object that hangs by the kitchen, which looks as though it might belong in a dentist’s office but could also be considered (I suppose) some kind of art.

Always at the end of this exploration, my rag is so filthy that it’s mostly black. I like to think of it as famous dirt and I’m a little proud because only I have found it. I also get to look very closely at these quirky historical objects that no one gives a second thought to except, perhaps, Mr. Charles.

Now it is 11:25 am and there are five minutes until opening. My last duty, now that the busboys have mopped the floor, is to roll out the red carpet. Sometimes it is unsatisfactorily dirty but every now and again it is bright and red as blood. Then it feels special. I straighten it out a bit and step back behind the host’s podium.

It is time to let in the customers.

1. Charles and Annette

After returning from my sister’s wedding in India, selling most of my meager possessions, getting married myself in late July, and moving away from my hometown of Portland, Oregon to Manhattan, I was desperate to find a job. I dropped off my application at over seventy bars, coffee shops and restaurants all over the length and breadth of this colossal city of cities. It was my lot to be hired at the very strangest of any of these establishments, a restaurant and general store by the name of Zemblanity 3.

Zemblanity was opened in 1954 by three friends. Of the three, Mr. Charles is the only left living and he is (I think) seventy-seven. It started out in the basement of a tenement on East 58^th before moving to a much larger space on 60^th between 2^nd and 3^rd avenues. They cooked a strange mishmash of foods and served a signature desert called the Icy Hot Chocolate, which is sort of like a Frappaccino. They had an espresso machine before the drink was known outside of fancy Italian restaurants. In no time they were a wildly popular hotspot. Pretty much every celebrity ever born has been in. Andy Warhol used to stop in almost every day and would pay for his meals with drawings (Mr. Charles owns a collection and was recently interviewed the BBC for a Warhol documentary). Marilyn Monroe frequented the place and Jackie O. tried to buy the recipe for Icy Hot Chocolate. Mr. Charles turned her down but showed up at one of her parties with the mix and made them up for the guests. Buzz begets buzz and the whole thing snowballed. Now Zemblanity is a landmark.

I did not know this. I had never heard of the place but my wife had and saw on Craigslist that they were hiring. With my best shoes on (my wedding shoes in fact), I waded in the jam packed lobby, elbowed my way to the front and asked for a manager.

This was my first introduction to Miss Annette. Her age is a mystery but she seems older than Mr. Charles and has worked almost as long as the place has been open. She has, in her day, been a runway model, a drug addict, the wife of a concert pianist, the daughter of an opera violinist, a disco queen, a Bloomingdale’s makeup girl, a matre ‘d and is now Miss Annette is very old. She walks hunched and slowly, is hard of hearing and has poor vision. She speaks with the voice of a lifetime smoker, with a deep, raspy monotone. She was obviously very elegant in her day and that aura still lingers around her sly smiles like the smell of her heavily applied perfume. Think worn and beleaguered movie starlet.

When I handed her my resume, she took an enormous magnifying glass and stared at my measly accomplishments (some entirely made up) with an enormous, magnified eye. Then she led me to a small table in the middle of the restaurant and sat me down with an application and hunched off. I filled out the form and waited.

This was my first opportunity to take the place in. My first reaction was to the staggering crush of customers, tangled waiters, full tables smooshed together, an unsettling number of Tiffany lamps, knickknacks, doodads, what-have-yous, whatsits, and antiques. The place was like the inside of a Dadaistic subway car or perhaps the interior of the Yellow Submarine. The whole freaky nouveau landscape of it screamed epileptic seizure, an absolutely bombastic flim-flam globbed together over the course of fifty-five weird, weird years.

What in the hell is this place?

When Miss Annette returned she hunkered down and asked me the questions I have now heard her ask hundreds upon hundreds of applicants (she must have asked these questions tens of thousands of times in her life). “Are you available days and nights?” Yes. “Are you in school?” No. “Do you have any prior commitments?” No.

“Okay. I’m going to try you out. Be here tomorrow at ten in the morning, cleanly shaved, no sneakers, no ripped up pants, combed hair, you get the picture. The job pays ten dollars an hour, you okay with that?”

Sure, yes. Absolutely. I had dropped off over seventy resumes and was desperate.

Miss Annette raised her eyebrow and smirked her little movie star smirk. Thinking back, I can’t tell if she thought it was funny how dumb I was to take such shitty pay or if she was thinking “kid, you have no idea what you’re in for.”

Who cares? I have an apartment in Manhattan and a job to pay for it. I’m going to make it! Anything is possible!