June 15, 2003
Now that smoking is as deliciously illicit as it was in boarding school I have taken it up again after fifteen years. One a day. It was always the only vice I could control. Besides, it makes for the best restaurant break. I’m in the bathroom stalls again, I’m behind the bicycle shed, I’ve found something I can join. I’m standing with the bar back on the street, his brother is getting out of the big house after 41/2 years, the same age as his son. The bar back says he’s never going back to the big house; he has five jobs. He is surprisingly small for his physical strength and volume of character. His arms and face are cut up but his skin color makes the scar tissue a cappuccino color, not the pink pig color of my own scars. When I am close to him I find myself examining his skin and his profile and thinking of Velazquez, one of the more handsome subjects, perhaps with a ruffled collar. A beautiful woman sits at the bar and he says to the bar tender, “I’d fuck her like she stole something.” I’m not quite sure what he means but I relish the idea.
misc restaurant trivia: Titanic had one of the first ala carte restaurants on a ship. Ran by Luigi Gatti, famous for his restaurants at the Ritz in London.
Gatti, last seen standing holding a blanket, waiting for a place in lifeboat, drowned. Entire kitchen brigade, including entree cooks, roast cooks, carvers, fish cooks, larders, pastry cooks and coffee men, about twenty all together, drowned. All forty waiters drowned.
Only the two female cashiers and the kitchen clerk, Paul Achille Germain Mauge survived. Mauge was standing with the chef, Pierre Rousseau when he decided to jump about twelve feet into a descending lifeboat. He urged Rousseau to follow. Rousseau said, "I am too fat to jump!" He was lost.
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Now that smoking is as deliciously illicit as it was in boarding school I have taken it up again after fifteen years. One a day. It was always the only vice I could control. Besides, it makes for the best restaurant break. I’m in the bathroom stalls again, I’m behind the bicycle shed, I’ve found something I can join. I’m standing with the bar back on the street, his brother is getting out of the big house after 41/2 years, the same age as his son. The bar back says he’s never going back to the big house; he has five jobs. He is surprisingly small for his physical strength and volume of character. His arms and face are cut up but his skin color makes the scar tissue a cappuccino color, not the pink pig color of my own scars. When I am close to him I find myself examining his skin and his profile and thinking of Velazquez, one of the more handsome subjects, perhaps with a ruffled collar. A beautiful woman sits at the bar and he says to the bar tender, “I’d fuck her like she stole something.” I’m not quite sure what he means but I relish the idea.
- rachael 6-15-2003 7:27 pm
misc restaurant trivia: Titanic had one of the first ala carte restaurants on a ship. Ran by Luigi Gatti, famous for his restaurants at the Ritz in London.
Gatti, last seen standing holding a blanket, waiting for a place in lifeboat, drowned. Entire kitchen brigade, including entree cooks, roast cooks, carvers, fish cooks, larders, pastry cooks and coffee men, about twenty all together, drowned. All forty waiters drowned.
Only the two female cashiers and the kitchen clerk, Paul Achille Germain Mauge survived. Mauge was standing with the chef, Pierre Rousseau when he decided to jump about twelve feet into a descending lifeboat. He urged Rousseau to follow. Rousseau said, "I am too fat to jump!" He was lost.
- aharp 6-18-2003 10:16 pm [add a comment]
nice
- rachael 6-19-2003 7:00 pm [add a comment]