Part Time Bartender

Well, it’s the first of the month of a brand new year and I am home. I guess this is why they call it “part-time work…” Meaning, part-time work and part-time, no work. I am currently experiencing the no work part and it’s making me rather nervous. Nervous, because I got caught between pay periods on my last month’s part-time work, and now I am 50.00 short on my rent. Add that to the phone bill that I need to pay by tomorrow if I want to still be receiving calls for more “part-time work”, a tooth that need to be root canaled, hair that is in desperate need of a cut,  no where to turn to for help, and you get….well…nervous.”

When I’m nervous, I clean. I guess somewhere in the back of my head  I  believe that  if everything is just straight and orderly, my life  will fall into place. So, I vacuum the carpets, I scrub the floors, I wash the dog, and clean the patio. But, I’m still nervous. “Maybe I should just start the new year  fresh and throw everything out! I mean..How can something new come into my life if there’s no room for it !” So, I throw out everything in my closets and drawers that I haven’t worn for a year! Boots, shoes,  sandals, old sneakers.“ For heaven’s sake ,I’ve been holdin onto these red cowboy boots for 10 years and I haven’t worn em’ in 8!”  Out!...Blouses , socks and pants ,”Oooh, honey..this  fanny ain’t never fittin’  into these britches no more!” … “Ski pants? I don’t even know HOW to ski! “

And right when I reach for the telephone to call  the Salvation Army for a pick-up ,it rings. And the  voice on the other end say, “Hey, girl! You wanna be a bartender with me this Saturday nite?” (Wow! This cleaning up thing really works fast!) It’s my friend Christopher. He’s a well known caterer. “I have  this last minute “gig” and figured I’d  just do it myself and remembered you said you were looking for work. You  want to help me?”   

“Sure!” I reply,  “But I don’t know much about bartendin.”

”No big deal, ..you can just follow my lead! I’ll pick you up Saturday nite!”

I hang up the phone and raise my arms to heaven, ”Oh,thank you, thank you, thank you Lord! There’s the rent!” Ahhh . Now I’m not quite so nervous.

It’s 8 o’clock on Saturday nite. Christopher calls me on his cell phone,”Hey girl! I’m out front! Let’s go pour some drinks!” I give my doggie a biscuit , rush out front , hop into his caterin’ truck and we head on down the road apiece to the place in  Santa Fe Springs. On the way over, Christopher gives me last minute instructions. “OK…It’s a party for the employees of a big restaurant/bar. Thrown by the owners. It’ll probably be mostly whiskey and beer. Just follow my lead! If you don’t have any idea how to fix something, yell the orders out to me.“ “Ohh-kay.” I reply. He looks at me and says,  “Hey..You’re an actress. Act like you know what you’re doing.” (“I can do this.”)

We arrive at the restaurant. It’s very big with two huge bars and a big dining area. We’re led by the owner, this very nice lady, into the back bar where the party’s gonna be.  There’s lots of  tables set up with a dance floor and karaoke screen, and they have a  DJ that’s playing this really  bad disco music to test the  speakers. The nice lady owner asks,

“Where’s the other bartender? I thought there was going to be 3 of you. We’ll need three. There’s 60 people on each bus and they’ll all be arriving all at once.” (“Oh…my.. God.”)…. Christopher sees my eyeballs get really big, elbows me and says confidently, “Oh, we can handle that many easily! We do this all the time! Don’t worry! Bring em on!” I smile confidently and nod my head in agreement.(“Oh, my God.”)

 She leads us to the bar. It’s huge. And incredibly well stocked. She quickly goes over the inventory, “Here’s all your beers,bud lites, coronas,millers , heiniken…here’s the whiskeys,Jack,Canadian , Southern Comfort,.. (“Boy, could I  use a shot of that right about now!”)  the scotches over here, the brandies and liquors over there, here’s your vodkas, tequilas and and gins….the wines..merlot, cabernets, pinot grigio, chardonnay.. Your margarita mixes, tomato juices,cranberry juice, soda,cola,diet cola, gingerale dispenser..onions,limes,cherries,  etc. I tell you what, let’s  make it easy.Tonight, just  use paper cups for all drinks.”

 (“Oh, that’s a relief! Like I wasn’t already on overload after the beers alone!)..

Then, suddenly the doors fly open, the DJ blares out Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and 120 thirsty people stampede towards us for drinks!

“Hey, honey.  You wanna  give me two “Alien Solutions and one blue Hawaii?”

“Scuse me, Could I have a jagermeister and red bull?

“ Hi! I’ll have two margaritas, one jack and coke, 3 millers and a glass of pino greege! No, make that 2 glasses of pinot greege and Jim, there,  wants a vodka martini.”

(Did she say, alien solution?)

 Christopher pokes me.”You go girl! You heard the man, That’s 3 millers and 2 pino greegios! …I’ll mix the drinks! Let’s party!”

Well,honey,for four hours straight, we pour up so many Jacks and  cokes, shots of tequila, millers and buds, cabernets and peach brandies ,we’re the only ones standin’, cause our feet are stickin’ to the floor! We hear every off key version of “If I Could Turn Back Time” , help them workers spell out

 “Y-M-C-A” from behind the bar, and watch in awe as 120 tipsy employees cut-loose and  jirate  simultaneously to the Macarena ! By the time midnite strikes, our tip jars are overflowing with gratitude and the owner lady is so  pleased, she adds another hundred to the pot and insists we take home the leftover cheesecake!

As they all say their good-byes, their regular house bartender stops by and says to me on his way out, “Wow. It must be hard. Mixing drinks in a strange bar every night. I don’t know how you do it.” I reply non-chalantly, “Oh..you get used to it. You’ve tended one bar, you’ve tended em all.

 (Oh.. my God..)”

Christopher and I talk and laugh all the way home about what a crazy evening it was. As I wave goodnight to Chris and put my key into the gate, I think to myself, ”Geez! That wasn’t so bad. Then it occurs to me, oohhh. Would if I’m  becoming some kind of “ part-time work” junkie! That can only “get off’” on being in new situations that make me…well… nervous? Nahhhh…. I’m just one of our new breed of workers.

I.. am the Part-time American.”

Part Time Off American

No part time jobs for a while. My Daddy’s dying so I’m going home. He’s already in the “Hospice” stage and mostly just sleeping his days away on his living room couch. We’re all here…my older sister, my brother and myself. Just waiting. That’s pretty much all one can do. It’s not an impatient kind of waiting, because “impatience” connotes you want something to hurry up and happen. When your Daddy is dying…you’re not in a hurry…everything stands still.

You can’t control death. You finally realize after much struggle that it’s strictly between itself and the person going through it. Maybe that’s the way all of life is, and we just thought it was different. And all that anxiety and push and pull and manipulation we went through was nothing more than a big ol’piss in the wind. For Life was living us all along, no matter what we thought we were so busy doing or changing.

Before he retired, Daddy was a Bird Colonel in the Air Force. A big strapping man and a fighter pilot since WWII. .A real “man’s-man” as they say. He loved to hunt and fish and was always the life of the party. Momma had died when she was just 49.Which shocked Daddy cause he always thought he’d be the first to go. And, now, Daddy had outlived his second wife and was having to deal with death, again. He wasn’t afraid, though. Being a fighter pilot, he always looked everything right in the eye and dealt with it…. He had already made all his own funeral arrangements and gotten all of his finances in order. Even called the funeral parlor two days earlier asking them, “How much is it to be cremated? Is it cheaper?” . He had waken up, asked for the phone, made the arrangements, hung up, said “Don’t look at me that way! I’m not  gonna give death an extra penny to promote itself!” and fell back into his coma-like sleep on the couch.

Several of his old Air Force buddies had come to visit him. Just… sitting with him as he slept on the couch. They were all in their 80’s, too. They told me stories about Daddy’s bravery during WW II and the Korean War. They said that when Daddy spoke about his combat missions at their monthly “Bird-Man” poker parties, they all listened quietly with great respect . “It’s not braggin’ when you’ve lived it.” One of his buddies said, “ And, honey… your Daddy’s lived it.” As I listened to their war stories , you could feel the strength of those men… it was both touching and bittersweet. For, somehow I sensed that they, too, knew they were a dying breed.

My little brother, for whom I think this has been the  most difficult had to get back to his dental business in Texas. He said good-by to Daddy. They both tried to hold back the tears, but you cannot ignore the hurt and pain of a last good-by. You just can’t. And maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should just wail a great wail and let it all out. For the pain of a last good-by runs deep. The tears flowed down both their cheeks, they hugged quietly and my little brother left. It was hard. But what else can you do? Letting go is the only answer.

After my brother left, something changed in my Daddy. He seemed more peaceful, somehow. Like a decision had been made.

It was October the 5^th. My birthday and I was doing the breakfast dishes. Daddy had joked with me earlier and said, “Now, lookee here. I’m not gonna die on your birthday cause you’ll  never forgive me!”  Either way, I wouldn’t be celebrating.

Then, as I was washing the last dish, I suddenly felt this cold breeze go past the back of my neck. I turned to see who had walked behind me, but no one was there. “Oh, my God.” I thought to myself, “It’s the angel of death .” I quickly walked over to Daddy who was sleeping peacefully on the couch and watched him for a moment. He was still breathing. So, I shook it off and went back to drying the dishes.

My birthday passed rather uneventfully, which was fine with me. My sister bought me a cake and lit one big candle for me to make a wish on and blow out. I wished that his death would be quick and painless. No suffering. My sister and I had our cake and went to bed.

Around  3 AM my sister woke me up.  “Daddy wants to go to the bathroom!” She said frantically.  “He refuses to use the porta-potty that Hospice brought. What are we gonna do?” I thought a moment. “What else can we do? You know how stubborn he is!” I said.  “Let’s help him onto his walker.”

We looked at each other in astonishment as it took every ounce of strength he had left for him to lift his big 6’2” frame onto the walker. His whole body was shaking. But, he was determined. We helped as best we could, but we were thinking the whole time that he’d never make it and would probably die of a heart attack before he even reached the bathroom door. But, he did make it and slammed the door behind himself.

My sister and I sat quietly, looking at each other. Wondering if he’d ever make it out. Then, with a great sigh of relief, we heard the toilet flush and he emerged from the bathroom booming, “God Dammit, you girls! Here I am dyin’ and you haven’t written my obituary! Get a pen!”

Well, my sister scrambled to find a pen and paper as I helped him back to his couch. And for the next 30 minutes, Daddy sat straight up on the couch dictating his obituary. Revealing times and places he had never told us about. Names of all the medals of honor that we had seen for years in the cases, but never asked him about. Why hadn’t I ever asked him about those medals and what he had done to receive them? How many battles had he fought? How many times had he gone down with his planes? How old was he when he went to Burma? What was it like when he first met mama? A million questions were racing through my mind like the tape on an old recorder rewinding faster and faster as it gets to the end.

When he was done, we just sat there quietly.  He said he didn’t want to lie down. He’d sit up for a while. So, we sat with him as he closed his eyes to rest. I actually dozed off in my chair, too. Death is an exhausting thing.

Suddenly, I was awakened by the sound of my sister’s voice as she was frantically calling the Hospice people. “I think he’s dying! What do we do? What do we do?!” I ran over to Daddy who was sitting straight up on the couch , eyes looking toward heaven. He was  gasping for breath. He looked at me. It was not a frightened look, but a kind of “ridin-the-wave”, stay-the-course,  May-Day  kind of look. Then he made this awful wheezing sound like the air going out of a big tire. Then, suddenly,  he seemed to look past me. Like he saw something. And then he was gone. That was it. He was gone.

My sister lost it. “What do we do? What do we do?” frantically pointing to the body sitting straight up on the couch. His mouth was wide open, and with his face all contorted looking, with eyes staring blankly into space. It was not a pretty picture. He was gone and nothing was left but this empty carcass with it’s mouth wide open and eyes all bugged out. I closed his eyes and put the throw over his body and said to my sister, “Come on. It’s all right. He’s gone. We’ll go outside. We’ll go outside and smoke one of Daddy’s Cuban cigars that cousin George left. We’ll wait outside for the Hospice people to come.”

Daddy was gone. My sister and I  were out back smoking an expensive and illegal Cuban cigar and he was gone. It was over. Or so we thought.

Hospice finally arrived around 4AM and the woman made all the necessary calls to the funeral parlor as my sister filled out all the endless paperwork, ignoring the fact that  Daddy was still sitting straight up on the couch covered with the throw. Finally, at 5:30 AM, the funeral parlor men arrived. It was a Father and Son team. They were both dressed in black suits with matching red ties. You could see that the old white-haired father was turning the business over to his young son. The old man brought in the gurney to put Daddy’s body on and signaled for his son do all the talking.

“Now, of course, ya’ll will want our intimate service at the funeral home for your last

good-byes.” The man’s son said in a rehearsed, pseudo-sympathetic hushed tone. But, for some reason, his voice began to fade away into the background , as my eyes became fixed on his big hands that he had clasped in front of him, in some gesture they must have taught him in funeral school. They were absolutely mesmerizing.. Huge. “Like Liberace’s!” I thought.  I had met Liberace backstage, once, after a performance and I couldn’t get over how big his hands were, too. More suited for a mechanic than a piano player.  And he wore this big ring in the shape of a grand piano, covered in diamonds, on his pinkie finger.  And, now, here was this funeral parlor son with the same huge hands with this huge diamond ring on his pinkie finger that seemed so …I don’t know…wrong. I mean, you expect to see a diamond ring on Liberace’s finger, but what the hell was this big fingered funeral parlor soon-to-be owner/son doing with it on his? In Panama City, Florida?

Then, as he continued talking to me in his rehearsed, hushed tones about “loved ones” and “how hard it can be at a time like this”, I glanced over his shoulder, and in the background, his rather small, white-haired father was falling all over himself trying to single-handedly hoist daddy’s 6’2” stiffening body which was still in a sitting position onto their gurney.  The whole thing looked like some crazy scene from a Monty Python movie! 

Once the old man finally managed to get him onto the gurney, his tie got caught under Daddy’s body and it almost jerked him to the floor! And all the while, the son with the too-big diamond ring and huge hands, kept right on talking,  trying to sell me the benefits of having their “viewing” service at the funeral parlor before the cremation so everyone could say “Good-by.” To which I uncontrollably blurted out, “My Daddy just croaked, Liberace ! And his body’s still in a sitting position on your friggin’ gurney! I think we’ve done “Good-bye!”

Well, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me like I was crazy. Which, I think, at that very moment, I possibly  was. The whole “death thing” seemed so ludicrous. Daddy still lying on the gurney in a sitting position, the old white-haired man, shirt half out and tie askew from hoisting him up, the hushed-toned funeral son with his fat fingers and gaudy diamond ring, the Cuban cigars, the hospice lady matter-of-factly going about her work, my sister crying hysterically, “Thank God he’s gone!” All we were missing was Liberace in his mink cape, being flown in on wires for the big closing number! …Dear me. Death is, at once, an awful and ridiculous thing.

I don’t know if they ever straightened Daddy out. I guess it doesn’t matter, really. He was cremated, after all. At the funeral, the preacher kept referring to the brass box with the ashes in it whenever he mentioned Daddy’s name, which seemed absurd.  And I sang a special hymn that they always ended each church service with, on Air force bases all over the world. The verse was,  “Lord guard and guide the men who fly. Through the great spaces of the sky. Be with them traversing the air. Through darkening storms and sunshine fair.” Daddy’s Bird Colonel friends cried.

I cried, too. Not that day. But the following Christmas I cried. I cried for days. I couldn’t stop crying. It was the deep and mournful cry of a child who suddenly realized for the first time …she could never go home again…. Even life is a part time job.

Who am I this week?

“Identity.” Now, what the hell does that word mean, anymore?  Is “Identity” who we are? What we do? Can your identity change over time? Maybe crazy stuff happens in your life (it sure has in mine)that bring you a new identity? And, can you outgrow your sense of identity if it  cramps you? Then, love it, if it fulfills you? Is identity the way you see yourself? Or is it the way others see you?

Hey...I'm blond…Let’s see what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary has to say. (And, by the way, when did this “Merriam” get into the act? When I was growin’ up, it was just plain ol’ “Webster.”) OK…

Identity:
a sameness in all that constitutes the objective reality of a thing : as in oneness

Well, that tells me nothing…my “objective reality” is in a constant state of flux these days…besides …do we  really know this “Merriam” person? Let’s check the Oxford English Dictionary.

Identitywho a person is, or the qualities of a person or group which make them different from others:

Well…that’s a little better…Wow… you want to hear something interesting? Guess what the next word in both dictionaries is?

Identity crisis

a state of confusion in an institution or organization regarding its nature or direction.

You got that right! So, my identity,  by Bobbi Jo Lathan: I am an actress. I’ve acted on Broadway, off-Broadway, in Las Vegas and in various regional theaters across our great country. I’ve done network television, a couple of national commercials and a few feature films. Then, came the divorce. And since my ex-husband was my manager…this brought me to my next identity. I am now an author. I wrote my own musical. A Food Musical, to be exact. Then, to go with that musical, as a promotional item, I wrote my very own cookbook …and my own cooking DVD. I’ve also written lyrics to songs. Love songs. I love, love songs. Oh, and food songs, too. I wrote this funny song about corn for my musical…oh…sorry… where was I? I’ve also been a teacher. Taught Middle School when I got out of college. And recently… needing to pay my AT&T bill, I saw this ad in the paper and began teaching adults from foreign countries how to speak English. So, when you hear that Iranian gal speaking with a Southern accent at Macys cosmetics counter…you’ll know she was a student of mine.

Then, I figured, “Well, shoot, Bobbi Jo. You’re a published author…You could teach cooking classes in several venues!” So, I did! … Then the transmission in my car went out.  And I came up with the idea to teach classes at various colleges on how to create your own cookbook. And, by doing all of the above, I guess I’ve taught myself that… I have something of value to teach…and one way or the other, the rent can get paid. 

The other seemingly less creative identities I have assumed over the last year in this insane economy (And I say, “seemingly less creative” because I suppose when it gets down to it, I have learned valuable lessons from them all)...and I say "insane" because we seem to be in some state of mutation in this country...  are, bartender, hostess, salesclerk, jewelry merchandiser, cookware demonstrator, private chef, auto dealer receptionist, voice-over artist and twirling instructor. OK. That was a rather brief identity. It is rather amazing how creative you can get when you need to keep a roof over your head.

You know what? It occurs to me that maybe it’s time to drop Mz. Merriam-Webster and Mister Oxford a note…for I believe their definitions are totally out-of-order. I think “Identity crisis” should come first in the dictionary, because it’s the crisis that seems to bring about one’s new identity.  And, now, to compound things… some new identity seems to be emerging from within me that some how wants to define itself by including all my other identities?

Well, until I can scour ol’ “Merriam” and find that she has a better word to “identify”this mutated me, I think I’ll just call myself… the “ Part-Time American.”