At 6 a.m. this morning, donning my wool blend navy jacket and polyester tuxedo pants, I walked home from Cortelyou Road awash in iceberg light and hors d'oeuvre crumbs. I fell into bed, tucked in with back-stings and feet-sores, the proud spoils of my current rite of passage. This summer I have (at long last) made my food industry premiere.
I have entered into the distinguished world of catering. In 5-9 hour shifts, I am shipped from one New York institution to the next (the Natural History Museum, the Intrepid, Rockefeller Center, to name a few), clothing tables, placing silverware, pouring wine. As with any new environment, there is a whole new folk-language to learn:"plate sweep," "pour and go," "crumbing." And with my new vocabulary, there is a shift of position. I've found myself alienated from my familiar seat at the table, re-located in the backstage of the dining experience. Working as a server is a true lesson in this, in being "the help." The faceless figures who transform the Temple of Dendur room at the Met from an exhibit installation to a chic Middle-Eastern lounge for 600. Setting the scene is more than just a spatial transformation, we are actors in the performance. We are told, by Umberto, the staff captain and duke of refinement, that we are to "blend in with the scenery." As you can probably guess, my first few nights were rough. "Blending in" was easier than expected. Unless you pour beef gravy into their coffee cups, the guests only very selectively reward you with eye contact or a syllable. Yet, you still have to have serve their plate with the meat at 4 o'clock, replenish glasses endlessly with red wine and stay an hour over my end time to serve a select table extra cups of coffee, and then extra extra cups of coffee. My first few nights, I left tainted with bad lower back pains that stung with resentment.
So, instead of contemplating my [lack of] rapport with guests, I've started my own personal solidarity movement with the rest of the staff. The rich variety of individuals whom I work with is the highlight of this job. I work with Broadway stars (and less than stars), comedians, an ex-wall streeter, advertising and law students, an interior designer, new mother, old mother, a friend of Junot Diaz, TV extra, a man from the hills of Ireland, a recent immigrant from the Dominican Republic, another from Malaysia, a budding writer, a child of homeless parents, a saxophonist, pianist. As most are artists of some form, I feel as though I've unearthed a pot full of New York's dreamers, those who came to start lives of endless restaurant gigs to support hopes of "making it." I fill my nights with their stories of coming to the city, their first breaks, the trials of the life they've chosen.
As I rode the train back home this morning with the late-night partyers and early morning workers, I thought about what the girl working at the K-mart told me as I tried on a hideous pair of slip resistant restaurant loafers. "I could never leave New York," she said, "I love the struggle, I can't get enough of it." I have been thinking about my own sort of struggles these days. About graduating from school and trying to find a ground for my next step. I've had this conversation over and over again with friends who have also recently graduated from college. We run in circles around questions that seem too complexly grandiose to fit into our mental space-- questions about doing, about wanting. Maybe there is something to learn from my fellow butlers, to have the strength to believe in what we do. Without knowing what to do or want, maybe all we need is to have the strength to believe in this struggle, in this unknowingness.
