Fried & True (29 page)

May 2006

LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

SPILLING THE BEANS

No coffee beans were injured in the making of this story.

Let's face it. There are jobs people can and cannot do. My career is talking and writing. I seem to be able to direct plays. But I flunked algebra and probably still hold the New York State SAT record for the widest split ever recorded between Math and English. And I'm a complete bust at anything requiring eye-hand coordination.

I learned this once at a dinner theatre where folks drank Kahlua and Cream and Brandy Alexanders with their comedies. One night we were short a cocktail waitress and some genius suggested the director pitch in.

Now I know I got good tips. I used my talking skills to let my customers in on scurrilous backstage gossip and despite my spilling a Sloe Gin Fizz down my pants (eye-hand thing), people had fun. Good tips.

But by evening's end, my tip pocket was empty thanks to my fuzzy math in making change. I was the first person in dinner theatre history ever to make more money in show biz than waiting tables. So food service was not a career path for me.

Fast forward thirty years. A friend, who shall remain blameless, is part owner of a coffee shop. One morning her co-owners went to a coffee convention while she stayed here to hold the fort. At 8 a.m. I got an S.O.S. call asking me to make an emergency run for capers and cream cheese.

By the time capers-r-us delivered, it was clear that the lone barista was in deep Cappuccino. A line of customers stretched out the door into the alleyway and toward the street. These folks didn't seem unruly but it was just a matter of time, as they hadn't been caffeinated yet.

To thwart potential civil disobedience I figured an unskilled barista was better than nothing. In hindsight, perhaps a tactical
error.

I fought my way around the counter and into the coffee business. “I can help for a few minutes,” I said to no one in particular as you couldn't hear squat over people shouting for double skinny raspberry chocolate Macchiatos.

“Here, can you rinse the spout of this bottle?”

How hard can that be? I unscrewed the cap, withdrew the spout and shot Ghiradelli chocolate syrup straight down the inside of my shirt. I fought the urge to bow my head and lick.

From there I followed orders to wipe crumbs off the sandwich and bagel station, identify empty coffee urns, joke with the customers and keep out of the chocolate brownies.

“Fill this container with San Francisco Blend beans and pour them into the grinder.”

Okay Frisco Blend, Frisco Blend. I located it on the top row. I held the cup under the wide-mouthed spout, reached up and pulled the handle, releasing a torrent of beans into the cup. Did I mention the eye-hand coordination thing? By the time my cup runneth over and I lunged to close the floodgate, coffee beans flew at my face like buckshot. And Dick Cheney wasn't even there.

I got to San Francisco alright, but instead of flowers in my hair I had coffee beans.

It was only 10:30 a.m. and I longed for a breakfast blend: vodka and ice. A friend walked into the shop, spied me juggling a pair of drooling coffee filters in one hand and a pot of hot java in the other and burst out laughing. “Now what????” he sputtered.

“I'm helping,” I said. At least I hoped I was helping.

“I have a feeling we'll read about this,” he said, and I had a feeling he was right. After all, column deadlines come up fast around here.

Besides, I feel an renewed obligation to uphold the ancient art of memoir—unlike author James Frey who, after a spat with Oprah, has been charged with inventing much of the outrageous material in his best selling memoir
A Million Little
Pieces
—or, A Million Little Lies, which apparently would have been more accurate.

I know people sometimes don't believe me when I swear that all my column stories are true. Which is why, with a deadline coming up, I figured I could get a thousand words out of a day in the life of a coffee peon.

So, truth is, I continued my tour of duty trying not to slip on the splattered coffee beans and trying equally hard to reserve the luscious pastries for the general public.

“I'll have lox, on a sesame bagel with cream cheese,” said a customer.

Hey, here was something I actually knew how to do—although cutting and shmearing a bagel with my paws in surgical gloves felt more like
M*A*S*H
than haute cuisine. Then I discovered that capers have a propensity to roll off the lox and bounce all over the floor. In food service, the 5-second rule does not apply, so capers bounced were capers lost. While an open-faced bagel with capers symmetrically dotting the smoked salmon may look professional, these customers got their capers embedded in cream cheese sockets secured by a lox blanket so the little suckers stayed put. Function over form.

Who were these customers? It was a cold day in March (as opposed to a cold day in hell, which is when I pictured myself doing this kind of work) but town was packed. While honcho barista was pleased, she wished the crowds hadn't come on a day when she was stuck dealing with the sorcerer's apprentice.

Hour by hour, Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz (why does my life continue to mirror those broads?) raced to keep espresso orders from backing up. My premier attempt at actually brewing coffee was a tragic pot of brown sludge (flavor of the week: Nuclear Waste), but I improved as the day went on. Sumatran, Nicaraguan, Guatemalan, Costa Rican, customer orders sounded like the blue questions from Trivial Pursuit.

When business slacked off mid-day, Ms. Barista took a moment to duck next door for refills for the soda case. The second she left, thirteen people appeared (this is true; it's a memoir),
requesting things like Mocha Macchiato and double shot vanilla chai espresso grande. My face surely said I didn't know Chai Tea from Tai Chi.

I explained that the real barista had left me holding the tea bag and would be back momentarily. I offered to get cups of plain coffee or tea for anyone wanting something so pedestrian.

Hours passed. Gee, the last time I'd spent this much time in a coffee house we were singing “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Eventually, my mate came to help vacuum the floor. “You've spilled the beans before, but never like this,” she said.

While I am now retired from my fledgling career in food service, it was really a major buzz. I'm proud that I sliced bagels all day without slitting my wrists (accidentally or on purpose) and I now know the difference between an espresso shot and buckshot (does the Vice-President? Sorry, I cannot help myself.)

And I did not, during my tenure, violate any health or food handling rules (happy, Pam?). When I got home, I found capers in my shoe laces and my tits covered in Ghiradelli chocolate. Same s**t different day? Not in Rehoboth.

May 2006

LETTERS FROM CAMP REHOBOTH

RENEW, RECOVER, REBUILD NOLA

I hope New Orleans is coming back. While there is still misery everywhere you look (I saw shiny blue tarps on every third rooftop from my airplane window), and tales of insurance and FEMA horrors, there are great signs of life, too. Especially in the French Quarter, which was spared the water, but not Hurricane Katrina's winds and the eventual evacuation of almost all restaurant, hotel and shop employees—many of which are still not back because they have nothing to come back to.

But New Orleans is making lemonade, spiked with bourbon of course, out of their Category 5 lemon.

I was in NOLA for the Saints and Sinners GLBT Literary Conference, where I was invited to read, along with many others, from our recently published works. Two days earlier, I'd packed a carton of books and dropped it off at my friendly UPS store. The books flew first class, non-stop, but I had to take an economy class puddle jumper from Philly to Charlotte to New Orleans. The City might be the Big Easy but getting there isn't.

I'm sitting in the airport, ready to board when I get a frantic call from my UPS man. He tracked my books and they were refused at the hotel and sent back north.

“What the…???”

“I will try to intercept them on the way back and get this straightened out,” he said.

I had the reading copy of my book in my carry-on luggage, but no others. Naturally, the point of showing up and reading is to sell books. No books to sell and I'd be up the Mississippi without a paddle-wheeler.

When I got to my French Quarter hotel—a wonderfully shabby-chic B&B half a block off Bourbon Street, complete with a steamy, tropical-plant filled interior garden—I checked in and inquired about the book snafu. I got a stricken look from
the clerk.

“Oh, I hope it wasn't my mix-up,” she said, with an expression that told me it was. “You see, the FEMA people stayed here until last week, and they were forever getting packages. I might have thought your box was for them and declined to accept it.”

“But here,” she continued, “I'll upgrade your room.”

Whoopee.

I slipped the key into the aged lock on the 12-foot high, many paint-layered door and entered the stage set for
A Streetcar Named Desire
—two ancient Victorian sofas, an imposing bed with ornate wooden headboard, a dramatic chandelier and, I bet, Tennessee Williams in the closet—so to speak.

Like Blanche Dubois, I careened around the room soaking up the Southern charm and steamy atmosphere, until I was jarred by my cell phone. It was my UPS man. “Can I get more books to pack and send overnight?” he asked.

What can Brown do for you, indeed. Taking only a small leap of faith, since Mr. UPS seemed like a good guy, I revealed my hidden house key location and where to find the books in the garage. That would be everywhere. Overnighting them might make it in time.

After the call, I marched myself down the street to the conference hotel to meet the other Saints and Sinners. First, I finally met Carol Seajay, the San Francisco legend who has worked for over three decades promoting lesbian literature, most notably with her publication
Feminist Bookstore News
. In the 70s and 80s, when independent women's bookstores thrived and served as community lifelines for lesbians all over the country, it was Carol who pulled the network together.

As giant bookstore chains and the internet squelched and shuttered many of our independent bookstores, Carol's publication closed shop, too. But now, seeing a need to reconnect readers, Carol has a new publication, called
Books to Watch Out For
. (You can check it out at
bookstowatchoutfor.com
).

Talking with Carol was so fascinating I didn't dwell on the
UPS man sprinting through my house, rooting through my garage. I wasn't worried about anything sinister, mind you, but I hated to have him see the mess I left.

A cocktail party followed, where publishers, authors, publicists and New Orleans literati chatted it up. Mid-cocktail my cell phone vibrated. “Good news!” says UPS guy. “I intercepted your package and it will be back at your hotel by 8 a.m. tomorrow. I didn't even have to go to your house!” Saved.

Finally able to relax, I schmoozed with the Sinners, since by that time the Saints were all back at their hotels, brushing their teeth. We trolled Bourbon Street, watching balconies full of drunken straight boys calling for the women below to show their bosoms—and tossing beads to them if they did. We sampled Po Boys—the sandwiches, but that's not to say that some of the literary sinners didn't sample other kinds as well—and sipped Hurricanes in souvenir glasses, to the tune of live jazz from almost every storefront on the block.

I suspected New Orleans' sense of humor was returning with shops selling tee-shirts announcing “Show me your tits and in 8-10 weeks FEMA will send you your beads,” or “Katrina Gave me a Blow Job I'll Never Forget.” And then there was the all-purpose shirt “I Got Bourbon Faced on Sh*t Street.”

I stopped short of that.

The next day at 8 a.m., as I walked to the actual conference, a few people were still in the bars, and the sound of trash trucks scooping street debris replaced the previous evening's sound of music.

I attended a panel discussion about on-line publishing and a talk by
The Hours
author Michael Cunningham. I listened to a lesbian read the male erotica she wrote, thinking what's up with that? And when it came time, I read a couple of my columns to an assembled crowd, followed by some actual book sales. I also learned from the pros, that GLBT publishing is a tough game.

That night, post gumbo, I chose sinner again, for in lieu of early to bed I attended my very first drag king show. It was
adorable, which is probably not a review the kings would appreciate. But they were puppies. Skinny little gender queers, with spirit gum whiskers on their faces, butching it up, lip synching to macho songs. The cast was energetic, with stage names like, forgive them, Lick Draw McGraw. I guess the kings' aim was titillation and/or humor, but adorable was what they were. Drag queens are intrinsically funny. Not so the kings, but they sure tried.

On Sunday morning, after a breakfast of beignets and chicory coffee at Café du Monde, I noticed more signs of New Orleans rebirth. Store windows displayed shirts saying “Make Levees, Not War,” and “Re-Cover, Re-Build, Re-New Orleans.”

I really hope they can.

As for this author, her weekend was saved by that dogged UPS man, who spent the better part of three days plastered to his computer, tracking my miserable carton of books.

As Blanche Dubois surely said one day in my hotel room, “I have always relied on the kindness of strangers.”