The Same Suit Every Day

A Malady of Imperial Quality

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Tue, 28 May 2013 20:20:00 +0000

The bar at Beaumarchais is full of models ordering drinks that will go straight to their heads. The bartender makes kir royals by the pitcherful and smiles broadly with row upon row of perfect teeth. Packed into the bathroom, the Walker party of six is snorting cocaine off the toilet tank and do not hear the maître’d calling, “Walker party of six!” at the hostess podium. Their table will be given to five actors who were shooting a Sprite ad at multiple locations in the Meatpacking District and walked in without a reservation after they wrapped the final shot on the Highline.

We are sitting at a banquette by the potted cherry blossom branches in the back and Cameron is trying not to smoke from a crack pipe that he not-so-secretly loaded under the table. Carter is taking off his hat – and putting on his sunglasses – and putting on his hat again. He exhales from a cigarette and nudges Melissa and says, “Go ahead… tell them.”

Melissa sits there with her shoulders slumped and shakes her head no. She looks at her friend Eve with a look that says I’m so bored – but she grabs Carters hand and gives it a not very assuring squeeze and says, “If you think it’s so great, you tell them.”

“C’mon, lady-lady. Pony up. It’s a story best told by the person it happened to. I may have the facts straight – but you’ll give it that… air of authenticity. I mean – this shit happened to you.”

The way Carter says ‘happened’ makes Melissa lean away from him and withdraw her hand from his. She checks her text messages and motions to the waitress for another drink.

“C’mon boo. We ain’t got all day. Get crackin lady.” He leans in and plants a sloppy kiss on her cheek. “I wanna hear it again,” he whispers.

“Ew. Gross,” she says and her eyes fill with tears for an instant – but she pulls a pill bottle out of her purse and puts what looks like 20mg of Haldol on her tongue and she seems fine again.

The waitress comes by with food that we didn’t order and stands there looking confused until she puts it down in the center of the table and walks away. I grab a fork and stab at the cold avocado and shrimp salad until I remember that I’m not hungry.

“Fine,” Carter says, lighting another cigarette. “I’ll tell them.”

“Tell them what?” Cameron asks, visibly shaking and clicking his lighter. “Tell us what?”

“Shut up and listen,” Carter says reaching for Cameron’s glass stem. “And fucking put that away. Idiot. We’re in a restaurant. Have some decency.”

“Well – there’s no cigarettes allowed in restaurants either,” Melissa says. Eve, with her bleach blonde hair and $5,000 Manolo Blahniks, high-fives her and Carter looks at the table with disgust.

“I told you this was a bad idea,” Carter says, looking at me like it’s my fault that he suggested we all go out for drinks with the 18 year old he’s been seeing for exactly two weeks that he calls his soul mate – and demanded we bring Cameron, even after it was learned that he had holed up in the Hotel New Yorker and already had a healthy start on his once-yearly crack jag.

I move some of the beef tartar from one side of the plate to the other and say, “I’m glad we came. The food here is so good.”

Eve puts her hand on my leg and I don’t move away.

Carter takes his hat off and says, “OK. Now I’m going to tell you about a little experience my girlfriend had last year – and I’d appreciate your attention. This ain’t no made-up bulls…”

“It was two years ago,” Melissa says and finger combs her jet-black hair.

Carter sits there in stunned silence, his jaw hanging open.

“Two years. Not last year,” she says.

“Fine. Fuck,” Carter says. “Two fucking years ago – what does it matter? It happened to you two years ago.”

Melissa recoils slightly.

“What happened two years ago?” Cameron asks, his knees jumping – making the table bounce. His eyes dart wildly around the dining room.

“Dude, just go to the bathroom,” I say.

Cameron says, “Cool,” and bolts from the table, bumping into the chair at the next table. “But I wanna hear this. Wait for me.”

“Yeah. We’ll wait,” Carter says and flips him off. “So – two years ago, my lady was dancing at Tenjune and she meets this guy. Dashing, handsome Dutch guy. Rolex, all Prada’d out – jaw line like David Beckham. Three-day stubble and piercing blue eyes. The shit. He’s been sending drinks over to Melissa and her friends all night – dancing close to her, but never saying anything. She gets the idea that he’s shy and wants to introduce himself, but can’t work up the nerve. So she takes the initiative and goes over to where he’s at and thanks him for the drinks. The guy is not only handsome and obviously loaded – he’s also really easygoing and charming and armed with a great sense of humor. Cracks jokes without coming off like some stand-up comedian retard.

“They laugh, dance, start making out – they have a connection it seems. Lots in common. They are both hugely in to each other. And though it pains me to say this,” he says putting an arm around Melissa, “I’m inclined to believe it wasn’t just one of those club connections where you do a bunch of E and spend the rest of the night finding common ground with losers you’d never usually talk to… like: you like stuff?… oh my god – no way… I like stuff too… that’s so crazy that we’re both into stuff,” he mimics for the table. “They hit it off so much that they started making out on the dance floor and looking all intense into each other’s…”

“He seemed really cool,” Melissa says, cutting Carter off. “He said he owned a Rolls Phantom.”

Carter’s jaw falls again and he says, “You wanna tell the fucking story?

“No – it’s just that I saw a picture of his car on his phone that night, and you know how I feel about luxury vehi…”

“Shut up – god. You’re fucking up my flow.”

“Whatever,” she says and takes a bite of the calamari we didn’t order. “I hope there’s not fish in this. I’m allergic to fish.”

Carter says, “She is so fucking stupid,” under his breath and tries to find my eyes.

I keep my head down.

“So – she’s at the club, talking and kissing with this guy – who by all accounts is a goddamn Adonis – probably grinding her vagina into his leg since she can’t dance for shit; and suddenly he gets a text message that freaks him out. He tells her that he’s sorry, but he has to go. Something came up and an important business interest is in danger of being compromised or blablabla – whatever… They exchange numbers, he promises to call and gives her an amazing, tonsil dredging kiss. Then he leaves with a bodyguard right behind him.

“He had three bodyguar…”

“Whatever,” Carter says and puts his hand up and says, “Face.”

There is a line growing at the bathroom.

“So, after that magical night, she is all in love. She calls and leaves like a bazillion messages and doesn’t play it very cool… but I guess she was only – fuck – sixteen at the time, so it’s forgivable. Three days later he finally calls and says that he’s sorry – but he was in Sweden or France or something, and had a ton of shit going on... but would she like to come to his weekend home in Rotterdam for a few days at the end of the week and spend some time with him? Of course she says sure – I’d love to, and starts packing all of her sexy underwear in a bag immediately, even though there’s six days till the limo…

“It was a Phantom…”

“… comes and picks her up at her high school. She goes to bed that night with dreams of what her wedding will be like with this amazing guy who apparently had a Rolls fucking Phantom, and she’s texting all her friends that dreams really can come true – making them all jealous. I mean, she’s thinking about giving him her ass-cherry – she’s fucking head over heals.”

Melissa nods to the affirmative and checks her text messages.

“So when she wakes up the next day, she’s horrified to see a cold sore breaking out on her upper lip. She’s all OMG and WTF and whatever the kids are saying these days – and goes to Duane Reade and gets some Abreva… thinking at least there’s a week before she’s supposed to see this guy again. She uses like triple the amount you’re supposed to, but it gets worse. The next day she wakes up and it has spread to her bottom lip. By the end of the day it has spread to her chin and is creeping up her nostrils. The next morning, her mouth is covered by these red and black sores that are oozing puss that smelled like… what did you say it smelled like?” he asks turning to Melissa.

“Um…” she says, searching the air for the right words. “Like vomity tampons. Old vomity tampons.”

“Seriously?” Carter says. “Ew.”

“Yeah – it was like that… but way grosser. I mean, it smelled like tampons and stuff – but also kinda like the nursing home my grandma died in.”

I push the plate of beef tartar away from me and open a piece of nicotine gum.

“Jesus,” Carter says and puts on his hat. “So she goes down to breakfast that morning and her nanny takes one look at her and demands they go to the doctor. They pile in the car and Maria…”

“My nanny’s name is Luz…”

“…drives with the windows open even though it’s January because it smells so bad. They get to the doctor and he doesn’t know what the fuck it is. He takes some swabs and prescribes some cream and puts her on a whole fuck-load of Prednisone. He says he’ll call her as soon as he gets the labs back.”

A guy in a striped shirt and jeans is pounding on the bathroom door, shouting, “C’mon man! I can hear your lighter in there.”

Eve is trying to unbuckle my pants and I sort of try to make her stop.

“So – she stays home from school and Maria brings her soup and some issues of… I dunno – Tiger Beat and Vogue or something – and she waits for the meds to start working. But it gets worse. One of the sores breaks open and she said she saw something moving in there.”

I look at Melissa who nods sagely and looks in her purse for something. She finds whatever it is and puts it in her mouth, dry-swallowing.

“That night, she’s thinking – shit – I may have to cancel this trip. What a fucking drag to find this foreign, rich white-god and have to bail on a romantic weekend of shopping and ass-sex in Holland.” Carter takes off his sunglasses and puts on an entirely different pair. “She falls asleep to Maria – er… Luz… doing some Guatemalan witch doctors séance with incense and candles and shit. She wakes up in the middle of the night to this intense itching – and she realizes she’s been scratching her face raw with her nails. She has a fever. She hallucinates that her parents, who are in Aspen, are fighting in the other room – and that her pillow is crawling with worms.”

“My parents don’t go to Aspen,” Melissa says, her nose all scrunched up in distaste. “They go to Tellu…”

Carter raises a fist up and goes to hit her, stopping just inches from her face. Melissa reacts slowly and there’s a full three seconds that passes before she flinches.

“Jesus dude,” I say. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Yeah,” Eve says. “You’re a dick.”

“Don’t worry,” Melissa says, her eyes tearing up as she touches Carter’s face gently. “He’s never actually hit me before.”

They kiss each other without their lips touching. It’s all porn-tongue.

Carter wipes his chin off and continues. “So the next morning at 6am the doctor calls and says she needs to come into the office immediately. It’s an

emergency and he’s cancelled all his appointments – so get in here fucking right now. Melissa kinda freaks out and she and the nanny hustle over to the docs to get the bad news. They pull into the parking lot and think – that’s weird… two cop cars and an unmarked Crown Vic with a batshit amount of antennas everywhere – but whatever. They walk in and the receptionist isn’t even in yet. They call the doctor on his cell and he comes out, looking all pissed off and disgusted – and says, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself young lady.’ That’s what he called her: young lady. And she’s all, ‘waddaya mean?’ with her puss filled lips that are now necrotic and rotting away. And the doctor says, ‘I know what you’ve been doing.’”

The bathroom door bursts open and Cameron comes out, shirtless and breathing heavily, his eyes bulging and wild. The line of people waiting for the toilet backs off collectively and Cameron walks by the table looking like he’s having a heart attack and says, “What did I miss?” He doesn’t wait for an answer and says, “I need to go.”

“Where are you going?” I ask and realize that all sound in the dining room has ceased and a thousand eyes are trained on our table. Eve stops groping me and laughs nervously.

Cameron shrugs and murmurs, “Somewhere safe,” and walks through the dining room towards the front door, breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth.

People slowly return to their drinks and fillets and conversation picks up. After thirty seconds its like a shirtless man never walked through the dining room having a crack-induced stroke.

“Dude,” Carter says and takes off his sunglasses, squinting against the low light of the restaurant. “I think I lost my appetite.”

I stand up to go find Cameron, but sit back down a second later, realizing that I don’t think I want to find him at the moment. Nothing good could come from being anywhere near my wasted work colleague right now.

“Are you going to finish your story baby?” Melissa asks while banging out a text on her Blackberry.

A second later Eve’s phone buzzes and she checks her messages and says, “I know, right?” They both start giggling.

“So, they’re in the waiting room and the doc says, ‘I know what you’ve been doing,’ and Melissa is all like, ‘whatchew talkin’ bout Willis?’ – and then four cops and two detectives come out of the doctor’s office, into the lobby, and say ‘We would like to ask you some questions.’” Carter motions to the waitress for another round and continues. “So – needless to say – she’s freaking out. The nanny is all, ‘Dios Mio’ and crossing herself and demanding an abogado. Again, the doctor says, ‘I know what you’ve been doing’. Finally she says, ‘What? What have I been doing?’ The doctor looks at the cops and then back at Melissa and says, ‘Those sores you have… you only get those from contact with dead people. Necropheliacs get them from – ahem – having sex with dead people.’” Carter’s eyes are shining brightly. “Fucking dead people… can you believe it! That’s what the doctor said to her. You get those sores from fucking dead people! Oh man…”

Melissa is staring vacantly ahead as if in a trance.

“Baby – what did the doc say you had?”

“What? Oh – um… I don’t remember the exact word for it, but it was some bacteria that was eating my skin… and – ah… corpse worms.”

“Fucking corpse worms, dude,” Carter says and tries to hi-five me.

I pretend that I’m not looking. He finally lowers his hand.

“So, long story short: the cops interrogate her about the past week – and they hear about all kinds of banal, teenage garbage – but one thing triggers their interest… The rich European Little Lord Fauntleroy from Tenjune who she’s supposed to visit the day after tomorrow. Aha! So the cops call the Dutch police, who in turn call Interpol and plan a raid on the guy’s fucking weekend home in Rotterdam. When they break the door down and start nosing around, they find four dead women in the basement. They’ve all been – um – fucked… post mortem.”

“What?” I say, finally looking directly into Carter’s darting eyes. “Really?”

“Yep. Really. You’re looking at number five here,” he says and rubs a hand over Melissa’s breasts. She doesn’t react.

“Oh shit,” I say.

“Yep,” Carter says and lights a cigarette from the votive in the middle of the table, blowing the smoke towards the heavens with a flourish. “That’s the real deal. The crazy thing is that the guy never did a day in prison.”

“He escaped?” I ask.

“Nah man,” Carter says and stubs his cigarette out in a forkful of steak tartar sitting on the plate in front of me. “The fucking Dutch thought he was altogether too crazy for prison. They sent him to be rehabilitated at some mental hospital.”

My jaw drops and I look at Melissa for confirmation. She is rummaging through her purse. Once she finds what she is looking for she suggests a trip to the bathroom to Eve.

Eve’s eyes light up and she says, “You know it girl.”

I stand up to let them out of the banquette. When I sit back down, I look at Carter and say, “Whoa. Where do you find em?”

He takes a sip from his martini and says, “Facebook.”

“What’s the story with Eve?”

“Yeah,” he says, “I saw that… she’s obviously into you.” His eye that isn’t obscured by the brim of his hat goes dark and he says, “You could definitely tap that.”

“Sure she’s old enough?” I ask.

Carter does a double take and looks at me like I’m crazy for asking.

“I mean… it’s just that Melissa is 18 – and, like, I’m sure her friends are too – but…”

“Wow,” Carter says like he just made his mind up about something. “You really don’t know then, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Jesus, Sean…”

“Jesus, what?”

“Eve is Melissa’s little sister,” he says and adjusts his collar.

“Wha… you mean…”

“Yeah, dude,” Carter says chuckling. “They’re blood.”

I’m standing and grabbing my jacket and tossing a handful of bills on the table before I even realize I’m doing it.

“Nah – Sean, don’t go. It’s no big deal,” Carter says.

“Fuck it isn’t,” I say.

As I walk off towards the exit, I hear Carter say to himself, “Fine. More for me.”

The cool night air seems like a betrayer. I walk three blocks, giving a half assed attempt at finding Cameron, and jump in a taxi.

“Where to, boss?” The driver asks.

It takes me forever to reply.

The Place to Bury Strangers

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:24:00 +0000

Reception extends the reservation for a sixth day, even though there is no head-print on the pillowcase. Housekeeping notes that the toiletries remain untouched and the bags are still packed in the corner with the white envelope on top of the small LV valise. The credit card goes through for $639.84; another night's room and tax. Room 2515 is largely forgotten.

The phone on top of my desk – the one that never stops ringing – beckons me to pick it up with its flashing red lights. “Gate concierge, this is Sean.”

“Yes, hello - this is Heather from American Express Centurion Concierge Services...”

Oh fuck.

The hacks from Amex call us when there's a task they can't accomplish themselves for one of their billionaire clients. Stashed deep with in a bunker in Islamabad, these call-center-concierges represent guys who own yachts and a fleet of Rolls Royce limos and buildings so tall they rape the sky, yet have a hard time getting past the doorman at Double Seven.

“Please hold,” I say.

“But I’ve been hol…”

The pm rush descends and I book Mr. Kovich from the penthouse into La Esquina at 8:15pm. The guest in room 1202 wants a table at The Box or Le Baron - whichever will have, “more coke in the bathroom.” A man from Toronto calls for flowers to be sent to his young girlfriend in room 810, however our florist is closed for the day. The man on the phone then suggests we forget about the flowers and just take a quick look in her room and make sure there isn't any guy stuff in there.

“She says she’s there on business, but you can never tell.”

I pretend there is a connection error.

“Sir... Hello, sir?”

“I can hear you fine,” he says cleanly over the pristine wire.

“Hello? Sir? Hello? Hmmm… I guess he hung up,” I say and make a mental note not to pick up any more calls from the 416 area code.

I faintly hear, “No! Wait... I know you can hear m...” as I slam the receiver down. Even after all these years of emerging communications technology, hanging the phone up on a turdcollector like this is such a simple, satisfying thing.

Cameron walks in from his two-hour break and stands around for 20 minutes looking anxiously at his emails – and then leaves his shift an hour early with a half assed wave saying, “Later days, better lays.”

I put six calls on hold and finish copying Japanese text from an email into a handwritten note for the guest in suite 3116 that says:

羽田さん。

すぐに大阪に戻ります。

あなたの愚かな行動は多くの死者をもたらしました。

あなたは偉大な恥を感じるべきである。

I am told by the person who emailed it that it should be handwritten to make it seem more personal, but I can't help thinking that my shaking, poxy writing looks more like a third grader on lots of speedy, ADD meds. Or a serial killer.

Notes are nice though, I think while stuffing it in an envelope and sipping cold coffee from a to-go cup so old it has started to fray.

The DJ in the lobby bar starts his set off with a Skrillex track at full volume. The crowd of people waiting to wild-out to some deftly mixed dub-step recoil at the sudden noise, and the DJ has to pull the knobs all the way down. The lights come up and there is a collective groan. Complimentary shots are passed. The engineers will later say, “blown sub.” They poke around the sound system with their pen flashlights like coal miners from the Midlands.

It is Thursday.

The Olympics have begun.

I take a call off hold. “Gate concierge, this is Sean.”

“Don’t hang up,” she says. The voice is frail and French. The tone is pleading.

“Of course miss.” I hope this isn’t American Express again.

“You have to helps me.”

“I hope that I am capable, Madame,” I say in a posh, Victorian voice, wishing someone else was around at the desk to witness my amazing wit.

“It is my father,” she says, gulping air and straining for the words. “I think he is dead.”

My brain quickly indexes all the people who might think it was funny to fuck with me.

“Um…”

“I need your help,” she says and I realize that her voice isn’t frail or weak. It is very, very young. “His name is Guillaume Aubert. He comes to New York on the business one weeks ago. His fly home is yesterday, but he is not arrive. Two day ago, in the post, I get a letter from him. My sister gets one also. The letter is a goodbye one.”

A flash of lightning detonates behind my eyes when I realize that she is serious.

“And you’re sure he’s staying here at The Gate?”

“Yes,” the small voice says.

“How do you spell his last name?” I ask, pulling up the SUN terminal in my computer. As she spells, I type and hit return.

Aubert, G Mr.

Room 2515.

No bar charges or room service. No phone calls.

This is the room housekeeping sent those emails about.

Something explodes in my gut.

“I’m sure he’s fine miss,” I say slowly. “What I’m going to do now is put you on hold so I can call our…”

“No,” she says. “No holds. Please.” She is whimpering now, and in the background I hear an even younger voice say something in French. The only word I understand is papa.

“Ok,” I say. “Ok miss.” I take a deep breath and hold it for a second. “I’m going to keep you on the phone, but I’m going to put my hand over the mouthpiece, so you won’t hear anything for a minute. Is that Ok?”

“Oui,” she says. “Yes.”

I pick up a second handset, put it to my left ear and dial Mike, our director of security. As I relay the info to this hard-boiled Korean War vet and ex-NYPD Lieutenant, I can hear the girls on the other phone glued to my right ear having a conversation amongst themselves that I don’t understand, but makes my throat close up with rocks anyway.

“Shit,” Mike says dismissively into my left ear. “He might be holed up with some broad in another hotel or something.” Then he admits, “Guy mighta offed himself though, too.”

I hold my right hand over the mouthpiece on the other phone like a barricade, in the irrational fear that the girl might hear Mike’s words.

Some drunken douche in boot-cut jeans walks up to the desk and stands there, mimicking me with a phone up to each ear. He says, “How are things at the Stock Exchange, buddy?”

I mouth the words fuck off and he wanders away with his jaw on the floor looking for a manager to complain to.

I explain to Mike again in a measured, even tone that I’ve got two girls, who can’t be more than like eleven or something, on the phone from France looking for their dad.

“Ah, shit,” he says and lazily clears his throat. “I’ll send a guy to the room.”

I mention to Mike the email from housekeeping about the packed bags and the envelope. He says, “Yeah, I seen it.”

The music blares to life again in the lobby – but it is all treble and mid range. The bass is gone. It shuts off again, as abruptly as it started. Another groan goes up from the crowd, and people start to leave the bar en masse.

“Hello?” I hear from the phone in my right ear. I uncover the mouthpiece for a second and say, “I’m here. Just one more minute, ok?”

“Ok,” she says. My throat seizes up completely when she starts to cry softly. The second voice in the background says something pleadingly.

Mike dispatches a guard to the room and tells me to hang tight. I hang up with him and grip the handset in my right fist with white knuckles. Fuckfuckfuck. My hand involuntarily uncovers the mouthpiece and I say, “Hello.”

“Oui, Yes?” The voice says.

“Um…”

“You have the news?”

“I’m… um, just waiting for, ah someone who is looking in the hotel for your father.” Shitfuck, I’m bad at this. “My name is Sean. What’s yours?”

“Mirielle,” says the small voice on the other end of the phone.

“Where are you from, Mirielle?”

“From France.”

“I know from Fr…” I start to say. “Where in France?”

“Orly-sur-Morin.”

“Oh,” I say and cringe.

I am strangely devastated by what she says next.

“Where are you from Sean?”

“Um…” I see Nelson and Patrick from security walking towards the concierge desk with purpose. Nelson has a piece of paper in his hand and says something into his radio. “New York,” I say. Lightning detonates behind my eyeballs again.

“Oh,” she says. “I would likes to see New York one time.”

“Hmmm.” Patrick has a grave look on his face – and Nelson keeps looking down at the piece of paper. “It is a nice place,” I say and almost start bawling.

I see the second phone is ringing from the security extension. I pick it up.

“Hey kid,” Mike says. “Hang up and call the cops.”

Copyright © 2012-2013 by Winston T. Bentley. All Rights Reserved.

The Interloper

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 04:24:00 +0000

“Um,” he says and fingers a massive, volcanic pimple on his chin, “The West Coast oysters are more, um… they… uh – taste more like the ocean.”

Nika squeezes my knee underneath the table and bulges her eyes at me as if to say ohmyfuckinggod.

The waiter at the new Pan-Asian monstrosity in the Meatpacking District, pleased with his description, goes on. “The East Coast ones are less…” He chews the tip of his pen, looking for the right syntax, “…oystery? I guess. Or whatever.”

Not that anyone asked.

I say, “Thanks,” and he shuffles off to the table across from us and tries to hard sell them on the $24 bottled sparkling water instead of tap.

One Direction comes blasting over the sound system and I feel so old.

“Sorry,” I say to Nika, who is snapping pictures on her cellphone, trying to make the best of it.

“What for?” she asks.

I motion around to the bright plastic tables and spray-painted walls and say, “This.”

She shrugs and touches my hand. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I suppose,” I say.

But I should have fucking known.

When the email invite popped up in my work inbox, it read like a press release promoting turd polishing. The new, trend-setting Pan-Asian restaurant they were flogging was a replacement for the old Pan-Asian hot spot that had just closed six months before in the same space. Never mind that the second spot was a replacement for a previous iteration. Yep – I was invited to a third generation opening of a restaurant, sure to lose the short attention span of the clientele they court within a couple of short months.

Even though, in theory, the menu sounded good: scallop nigiri with sea urchin mousse topped with pickled jalapeno and lobster ceviche and on and on and on – it read exactly like the menu before it had. They probably kept the same chef and just had a design team come in to change the space up enough so they could call it new and trick legions of people who confuse bottle service with acceptance into coming in for dinner. In the back of my mind I knew what we were in for, yet allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of ‘this-might-be-good’ at the prospect of a schmancy meal where the check disappears at the end.

Not to sound ungrateful.

I love getting invited to amazing meals by venue managers and PR firms. There’s nothing quite like shoveling several hundred dollars worth of food and liquor in my face that I won’t have to pay for; food that, if left to my own devices, I couldn’t afford. I feel kind of slick eating at Michelin starred restaurants surrounded by people who make salaries well into the six and seven figures. But I am an imposter – an interloper.

Let’s get this straight: no one is inviting me because I’m such a great guy.

My personality isn’t getting me comped at Ai Fiori or invited in for gratis bottle service at No.8.

Nope. These places just hope that I will send guests once they’ve had me in. And – chances are – if I have a good experience, I probably will. That’s how it works. I walk away from each experience with a vocabulary – an intimate understanding of what a venue is doing. When Mr. Andrade from room 1456 asks me about Scarpetta, I can tell him that the savory, creamy polenta with fricassee of truffled mushrooms completely changed my mind about polenta just being cornmeal for poor people. When Ms. Neiman from room 2622 tells me she is looking for a great piece of fish, I can tell her with confidence that the grilled branzino with lemon, olive oil, capers and sea-salt at Milos is transcendental.

I’m not looking for handouts – and, of course, there are places that will never need a concierge to help pack them to the rafters with transient hotel guests. Hell – sometimes a restaurant manager invites you in for dinner but wires get crossed and a massive bill is dropped at the end of the meal. Nothing to do but swallow that rock in your throat, get the plastic out and pay up chump.

Thems the breaks.

And a comp doesn’t necessarily mean guaranteed future business.

Good is good. If the experience is worthy, I’m going to tell people about it whether I pay for it or the maitre d’ says, “Fugghetaboutit,” when I ask for the check.

The tray of oysters comes out and is dropped on the table by the child-waiter with his low-rise jeans from Top-Shop who obviously had a go at his chin pimple in the bathroom mirror since we saw him last.

“These are the oysters,” he says and makes creepy eye contact for way too long.

Nika mumbles, “Go away David Blaine,” while pushing a pathetic sliver of grey lemon-wedge through the ice that has already half-melted.

Apparently, here at this place no one will talk about (or come to) in eight-months – whether you order the East Coast or West Coast oysters – they are all filled with the same amount of grit and broken shell.

Blame It on the Rain

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 01:48:00 +0000

“What do you mean Balthazar is closed?” she asks and takes a second look at her German guidebook, sure there must have been a mistranslation. “We will go this night,” she insists and taps a gnarled pointer finger on the page that shows a photograph of the sensible yet trendy atmosphere at Keith McNally’s flagship bistro with a caption below that reads Der Geschmack von Soho!, and gives it a rating of two and a half forks.

“No, Miss. Sorry. Balthazar is closed. They have no power,” I say mimicking screwing in a light bulb. “The entire neighborhood has no power.”

She looks at me like I may be insane.

“The storm knocked electricity out below 39^th Street,” I say and take a map out, drawing a line and marking a huge X over the entire lower third of Manhattan. “No subway, no electricity… No Balthazar.”

This upsets her greatly and she blows a huge puff of air that smells like she’s been licking rancid assholes all afternoon in my general direction. I can tell she thinks I am either lying or not very good at my job. But I also see the resignation that registers in her face that she may not be equipped linguistically to argue the point with this dumb American GI Joe concierge.

“Fine,” she says, relenting. “We will go to Pastis.”

“Miss,” I say through gritted teeth. “Pastis is closed as well.” I show her on the map where the West Village is in relation to the huge, foreboding X I already drew on.

“All of zis is closed?” she asks like an accusation.

“There’s no power there,” I say. “You are free to go – but there is nothing open. The restaurants and shops can’t…”

A quick glance behind this gray, wrinkled Greta von Bismarck reveals a line at least 25 people deep – everyone with their own storm related questions; impossible quandaries to attempt to solve and it all makes me wish I had called in sick like my dickhead colleague Cameron (who planted the seed two days before Hurricane Sandy hit with tepid, little coughs and pathetic hints dropped about how he better take his vitamins because he could feel the flu coming on). I shake my head and take a deep breath, preparing myself for the herculean task ahead of crushing vacation plans as if I were the Mayor of Fucktown. I almost walk away, thinking how great it would be to pull a Bobby Fischer and just never come back – but stop short remembering the last time I got stuck staying at the hotel during a natural disaster and bedded two cocktail waitresses at different points of the same night*.

“Well,” she says, cutting my explanation of why NY State health code prohibits restaurants from serving food without access to refrigeration short, “we will make ze reservation at Balthazar for tomorrow.”

I stop short of ripping my hair out when I reply that this will be impossible – while a dark little thought invades my brain and I catch myself drifting, unable to shake the cold chill that works its way down my back…

Maybe we should just end the farce that people in the service industry are all just biding their time until their dreams come strolling along and whisk them away. There’s no massive action role for muscular, bald waiters that will be their big-break into Hollywood. That fat guy with laser-eyes who says he does A&R for Sony while he orders yellowtail tartar and sake-tinis at the Asian bistro you work at (only until your band – who slugs it out playing local shows to mostly empty bars – makes it), is just looking to blow you. And maybe he’ll blow your bandmates too, if they’re game. Not much of a big-break, huh? We fool ourselves into believing we’re soooo on top of the lazy dreams we pursue with half-assed zeal so we can wake up and look ourselves in the mirror before going in for a soul crushing eight-and-a-half hour day making soy, double half-caff skinny-whipped pumpkin spiced lattes at Starbuck’s. Ask any bartender when the last acting roll he had was. He’ll probably look around and pretend he didn’t quite hear the question properly… as he tries to figure out how much to pad the truth – or full-on lie, as the case may be.

My blood runs cold as I hear myself say, “How can I help you sir,” to the next person in line after the angry German woman skulks away.

“I am aaahhhh…. Libeerty Eestachew,” the small Italian in the shiny Moncler jacket says, letting me know he is the Statue of Liberty. “What times is eehhhh…. makes open?”

I draw a finger across my throat. “Sir, unfortunately the statue is closed today.”

“Eeehhhh…..why?” he implores, lips pursed as if he’s hoping to win the Oscar this year for best question, and shrugs his shoulders like a caricature of the over expressive Italian tourist he already is.

“The hurricane,” I say, rolling my eyes – but almost can’t blame people for asking. Almost. The day after Hurricane Sandy leveled the entire shoreline of New Jersey and managed to make Breezy Point, Queens look like a bad day in Benghazi, Midtown Manhattan looks pretty tranquil and approachable indeed. No rubble, no downed power lines… same as it ever was. And that’s the fucking problem. Tourists are walking around, wondering why the zoo isn’t open, and waiting at bus stops for the Gray Line that will never come. And why shouldn’t they be able to get an opulent dinner at Asiate? I mean… they have power right?

Just one problem Giuseppe: the people who work there are stuck in the Stone Age** in their Lower East Side apartments, fighting off the emboldened roaches that normally only scramble away when you turn the lights on, and trying to figure out how to charge their fucking cellphones.

That’s why.

The next guest is furious she can’t make a phone call. I explain to her that none of us can. For some reason our lights were spared, but our phone service was not.

The next guest wants a car service to JFK tomorrow. When we check the status of his flight on the iPad, I am relieved that it is cancelled so I don’t have to explain that our phones don’t work in order to call our car service to line it up anyway.

The next couple slinks up to my desk, skipping the wait in the line that is now almost thirty deep and demands my assistance in booking a room at another hotel for them. I motion to the queue they just skipped and begin assisting the cute, old Korean lady with a stack of postcards who keeps saying, “For mailing please,” over and over while bowing slightly. I take the postcards – and, again, motion to the couple that cut the line to go stand at the end of it.

The woman, in an emotionless Scandinavian accent says, “Another unhelpful American,” to her weirdly muscular Indian paramour, who looks like he should be making Bollywood films with his bushy moustache and hairline that nearly meets his single eyebrow.

“I’ll be happy to help – but you’ll have to wait your turn,” I say loudly – more for the benefit of the people waiting behind them***.

The flaxen haired Swede says, “We are not staying here – so we will not be waiting in line here either.”

“Then,” I say firmly, “I will not be helping you with anything at all. Good day.” I motion for the next person in line – a four foot tall Peruvian – to come towards the desk and greet him as if he were the Duke of Windsor.

As I explain in my limited Spanish that the Staten Island Ferry has shut down entirely, I hear the Swede off to the side complain loudly that Americans are the most unhelpful people on the face of the blablabla – and something inside me snaps.

“Miss,” I motion for her to approach.

“Finally,” she says and exhales loudly, closing with a snap of the fingers and motions for her silent partner to obediently follow. “Harjinder – come.” The people in line groan collectively. She says to me, “We were looking for a room here, but there is nothing under $1500 per…”

“That’s because as soon as the airports re-open we will have people who booked rooms for the marathon arriving,” I say sharply, cutting her off. “Rates throughout the city are outrageous this time of year.” I lower my voice. “It makes me happy to know that you probably won’t find a room in Midtown that’s anywhere near your budget. Most hotels are gouging people without reservations because of the storm. Most of the time that makes me sick – but in this case, I’m proud that we have priced you out of a warm bed. I think there are some hostels uptown that might be more in your price range. But I think you might have to share the bathroom with the other patrons.”

Her jaw hangs open.

“Now – get the fuck out of here.” I whisper.

The Bollywood hunk pumps his chest out – but I have security on the line before he can complete saying, “WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK…”

I don’t sleep at home for the next three days. At the end of my brutal, nightmarish shifts I go up to a small hotel room called a Deluxe Single and drink whiskey and act in ways that will later be described as ‘beastly’ and ‘appalling’. At one point a girl from the front desk says, “It’s kinda like Lord of the Flies in here,” as she eyes me nervously and looks for a spot to put her purse down.

At the end of my 75^thwork hour in a week I shut my computer terminal off. Cameron, my newly revitalized and healthy relief, comes strolling out to the desk calm as a coma. I want to tell him to get ready for the murderous onslaught of miserable, no-win customer service situations sure to befall him – but he will find out soon enough. Besides, fuck him for calling in sick all week.

Before I have time to step off to the side and make my escape, I see a tall, thin stick of a man in Asics gear from head to toe barreling through the lobby, eyes trained on me. I immediately assume he wants to book a group of 25 runners into an Italian restaurant (which have all been fully booked for days now) so they can carbo-load before the big race on Sunday. When he gets to the desk, he thrusts his iPhone in my face and, in a heavy Dutch accent says, “This is a fucking joke, right?”

On the screen is a blurry still image of a CNN ticker at the bottom of a TV screen that reads NY MAYOR BLOOMBERG CONFIRMS MARATHON CANCELLED.

I pretend I don’t speak English and motion to Cameron who is trying to get logged in to his computer. His eyes dart from his computer screen, to the guest’s phone and then to me for help. As I walk away, I see Cameron’s brain begin to register the horror.

*Something about getting stuck in a situation that deviates from the typical doldrums of life really seems to bring the slut out in certain people. Disasters and wanton sexual behavior tend to go hand in hand. Dean, a former colleague and current bouncer at SL, once confided in me that, “Dude – I got soooo laid on 9/11.”

** Let’s face it – without electricity, we’re useless. It is, for all intents and purposes, the year 800 BC until ConEd gets their shit together.

***Want to bask in the rare support of the masses? Chastise someone for cutting a line in front of the people who have been waiting in said line. You will never receive such ferocious backup as when you are leading the charge against a line cutter. They are the social equivalent of a baby killer in Attica.

Shock and Awe

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Sat, 13 Oct 2012 01:45:00 +0000

The Most Disgusting Man in the Universe bobs and sways as if in a trance, his mouth slackjawed and his eyes in a faraway galaxy, staring into the vast abyss. I notice him as soon as I open the door to the employee spa. The second thing I register is the smell. It is the reek of a latrine amidst a Typhoid outbreak under the blazing sun in a sub-Saharan AIDS capital.

The Most Disgusting Man in the Universe says, “Somebody make kaki, papi,” with a voice that grinds like gears in an ancient pick-up with a shot transmission. He then resumes swaying and staring at nothing, his unibrow knotted in concern and awe.

I gag and immediately commence mouth breathing. I would go somewhere else, but this is important. I run to the urinal and unleash a river that threatens to breach the levee. While I manage to choke out the words, “Courtesy flush please,” I don’t think the main offender in the stall behind me hears me. He is too busy having a phone conversation with a prospective renter for his downstairs apartment in Bensonhurst. The pooper says, “Nah, son…ugh… $650 is mad fair,” into his cell phone from atop his throne. I am always surprised that so many people use the hotel’s employee restroom to conduct business.

Zipping up, I take note that both sinks are in use. Min from the linen room is washing his armpits and Shahid from the kitchen is doing a pre-prayer foot scrub.

My eyes are watering from the stench – and I realize a shot of Purell in the hallway will be better than catching Hep C from the sink. I make a dash for the door – in desperate need of a clean breath.

As I pass The Most Disgusting Man in the Universe, who continues to sway like an Asperger’s kid with a huge forehead, he grunts in a voice not un-appreciative, “Smell like beef and broccoli, papi.”

A Boy Named Sue

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:30:00 +0000

She wears her blouse like a basketball jersey.

She has a broad legged gait as she approaches the concierge desk; her long hair, four-inch heels and smart business pantsuit are in sharp contrast to her strong jaw, long arms and angular Adam’s apple. I’d peg her at about fifty.

As soon as she opens her mouth, there is no longer any doubt.

She is a he.

No queeniness – no massively affected head flips or limp-wristedness. S/he simply says in a deep baritone, sans lisp, “I’m looking for a restaurant for my son and me to go to. Something in the neighborhood; French or Italian. Preferably a place my son can wear jeans and not feel out of place.”

“Sure,” I say. “If you’re looking for French, there’s Bar Boulud about a ten-minute walk from the hotel.”

“Ooh. That’s the restaurant by that guy… um…” He snaps his long fingers, searching the air for the name.

“Daniel Boulud.”

“Yeah – he did Daniel and uh…”

“DB Bistro Moderne and DBGB,” I say.

“Expensive?”

“Not particularly. Pretty moderate and definitely more casual than Daniel and DB Bistro. Same ethos from the kitchen – just a bit more laid back.”

“Done,” s/he says. “Let’s book it.”

“Sure – I’ll give the maître d a call. What’s your room number here in the hotel?” I’m curious to see if this is a William or a Helene standing 6’4” in stilettos at my desk.

“1931.”

I type it in to the computer.

Stevie Fallon is the name that pops up in the system.

I think Stevie Nicks. I think Stevie Ray Vaughn.

I think about the pre-op Brazilian named Glamour who made it obvious to the world that he wished to be addressed as Miss Glamour when we made the reservation for a table at Death+Company.

Stevie’s demeanor is about as flashy as a real-estate lawyer who has a handball court at 3:30 and a mani/pedi at 6:15. Stevie has a five-o’clock shadow and has reproduced a son who probably still calls him dad. His behavior is masculine and I see hair on his knuckles. So what if he happens to dress in women’s clothes? I think, pleased with myself for my powers of deduction and vast acceptance of the complexities of humanity.

Conclusion: Dude. End of story.

As I place the call, I print out a menu for Bar Boulud and present it to Stevie, who mutters, “thanks,” and checks his Blackberry.

“Bar Boulud – good evening,” says the voice on the other end of the line.

“Hey – this is Sean from the Gate. How are you this evening?”

“Very well Sean, sank you. It’s Victor. Ow can I help yew?”

“I was hoping you might be able to sneak a party of two people in tonight at around…” I look at Stevie who mouths 7:30 or 8 is fine, “…7:45 or so. If you’re not to busy.”

“It’z always busy. But for yew, Sean, I will take it. Under what name?”

“Fallon,” I say. “First name Stevie.”

“Steeevie?”

“Yep. You got it,” I say. “Thanks a lot Victor.”

“No problem Sean. By ze way… I need to talk to yew about somesing…” he says and then starts to yell at one of the busboys in French accented Spanish. From what I gather, there is a dinner roll that hit the floor at table four and Jose needs to go replace it tout de fucking suite! Or, Victor wants the busboy to drop a dinner roll on the floor and then serve it to table four. “Sorry, Sean. I will call you back,” Victor says and abruptly hangs up.

I say my goodbyes to a dial tone.

“All set,” I say to Stevie and write the address on the back of a hotel business card. “I really hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think.”

“Thanks, I will. Great service by the way,” he says and hands me a bill that I slip into my pocket.

“Thank you. Let me know if there’s anything else I can assist you with during your stay Mr. Fallon.”

“Um…” he hesitates and scratches the stubble on his chin. “I… uh…”

“Yes?” I say. “Would you like to get something set up for tomorrow night while you’re here at the desk? There is a fantastic new Pa…”

“No. It’s fine,” he says and spins around lumbering off in his size 11 Jimmy Choos.

The next person in line is wearing a ton of cologne and wants to charter a helicopter to the Hamptons for a party tomorrow night at AXE Lounge at Dune. He looks like James Spader in Pretty in Pink, except for the lame Christian Audigier print t-shirt and $600 boot-cut jeans. He says his name is London, but I somehow don’t believe him.

“Hopefully you can use a company that has lax views on consumption in the chopper,” he says putting air quotes around consumption.

I am almost positive what his next inquiry will be.

As I relay the difference in rates and luxury for the trip in a Bell 407 versus a MD Explorer, I see Stevie out of the corner of my eye. He is back at the desk and hovering impatiently, drumming his fingers, mouth twisted in indignation.

I excuse myself from London and address Stevie with, “Hi Mr. Fallon – was there something else you needed?”

“It’s not mister,” he hisses. “Never mister.”

My gut drops a little. “I… uh… I’m – um – sorry?” I stammer. “Sorry about… that?”

“It hasn’t been mister in a long time,” Stevie says and adjusts his hair with a flourish.

That hair-flip alone, at the beginning of our conversation, would have been enough for me to come to the conclusion that this wasn’t just some married guy who plays dress up whenever he comes to the city. As Daniel (a weekend drag queen performer) from the reception desk would say: “Dick-and-balls or not, this bro sees herself a ho.”

“Miss Fallon. It’s Miss Fallon. Say it with me… Missss Fallon.”

“Miss Fallon,” I repeat stupidly.

“Better,” Stevie says and, seemingly vindicated, saunters off into the lobby, shaking her ass, all femininity and estrogen and gorilla arms.

“Damn dude,” London says looking up from the helicopter brochures. “What’d you do to the tranny?”

“Called her ‘sir’,” I say and raise an eyebrow.

“Wait,” London says. “That… thing got all twisted cause you called him a Mister?”

“Yep.”

“He might want to – I dunno – shave before heading out in public.” London shakes his head and says, “I’ll take that one,” pointing to the McDonnell Douglas Explorer with the tinted windows, blood red rotors and all black interior.

As I pick up the phone to call the charter service, London leans in and whispers, “Hey. Dude, can you get any coke?”

Stay Thirsty My Friends

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 19:23:00 +0000

“Hi ya!” she says, moving her sunglasses down her nose and looking all around me with wet eyes that quake and waver like a river-barge overloaded with insanity. “Are you Sean?”

“Yes,” I say with the trepidation that comes out whenever somebody walks up to the concierge desk and knows my name before I give it to them. There’s always something they blurt out of their mouths next that hits me wrong like…

“Amaaaazing. Your services come highly recommended by the doorman, Antonio.” Her face doesn’t move when she speaks. “He says you’re the King of New York. Is that true?”

Great.

Her hair is feathered and she keeps tossing it back with great sweeps of her neck – like a 45-year-old female Justin Bieber with a center part.

“Antonio is being too kind,” I say gritting my teeth. “I’m not even the Duke of Midtown. What can I help you with though?”

“Hmmmm,” she says trying to level those eyes at me, but they keep swimming away from her. She makes an effort to reel them in, but can’t. It looks like she’s nervously scanning for predators. “Well my question is twofold. One: I need a restaurant for my daughter and me to eat at,” she says and motions to a sullen thirteen year old with ratty hair sitting in a lobby chair, arms crossed, playing with the string on her Panic! At The Disco hoodie. “She’s a very picky eater. She only likes Michelin starred restaurants – but ones we don’t have to get…”

“Something cool,” the daughter shouts from the chair.

“… too dressed up for. I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything but skinny jeans and sweatshirts for the past six months.”

“Any type of food in particular?” I ask.

The eyes attempt to glare at me as if to say weren’t you listening? – and she says, “Michelin food.”

“Sure. You’re looking for a Michelin starred restaurant,” I say. “But what type of cuisine? Because there are some laid back spots that have Michelin stars in the…”

“Maybe this will help,” she cuts in with a whisper. “Part two of the question is that I’m looking for a club I can go afterwards.”

Shit. Any nightclub I recommend to her is either not going to let her in – or hate me forever for sending her to them. This is quickly becoming a conversation that makes me want to pull a Nestea* and drown myself. As she mumbles vague descriptions in my general vicinity, she strikes me as one of those people who talk a circle around themselves, negating the very thing they just said, then get frustrated when you don’t follow their logic.

“A proper nightclub for dancing – or a lounge?” I ask.

“Something like that,” she says with a tone that is supposed to mean something, but I can’t be sure of what.

“Something COOL,” the daughter reiterates and pulls out her shitty phone so she can bang out a three-letter text to somebody.

“Hmmm. Unfortunately, your daughter won’t be able to go to the club with you. Were you maybe looking for a restaurant with a cool lounge that you could both g…”

“Jesus, no.” She coughs, wet and deep, into the crook of her arm. “I’m looking for a place to let loose. A place to really just let go and be free.” She gets caught up in the moment and begins to sway back and forth to the faint Dum Dum Girls track playing over the speakers in the lobby. I catch a glimpse the daughter who looks mortified. “Nope,” she says, breaking out of her reverie. “I’ll need a sitter for her after dinner. I’m fixin’ to play.”

The look that comes across her face is the equivalent of the aunt who tries desperately to prove she’s still cool and relevant, but, in the effort to seem young, says things that make you cringe – like, “kewel beans broseph,” or ends her emails with LOL because she thinks it stands for lots of love.

Just as I’m about to call a promoter friend and beg him for a mercy comp so some old broad can go out and rub up on some young abs while pretending she knows who Tiesto is, she leans in and whispers something. She is mealy mouthed and swallows her words. I hear nothing but the muffled sounds of a well-insulated torture room coming from her throat. Her eyes float away.

“I’m sorry, miss. Didn’t quite catch that.”

She looks at me like I should be ashamed.

She mouths what looks like the words Sets Glove.

“Sorry – one more time,” I say and note that her daughter is rising up out of the chair in the lobby with an inquisitive look on her face.

The eyes roll into the back of her head as she leans in and utters the guttural words, “Sex club,” killing me with breath that reeks of rotten ocean and salty garbage.

“Oh,” I say, trying not to register my disgust. “There’s a place called Le Trapeze by Madison Square Park that might be…

“What are you talking about?” The woman’s daughter demands, pulling the strings of her hoodie down to her waistline as she charges up to the desk. “What the hell are you asking for?”

The woman remains in stunned silence as if she’s just been busted by a headmaster smoking weed in the bathroom and instead of playing it cool and tossing the joint in the toilet, just freezes up and gets all deer-in-the-headlights – waiting for the hammer to fall.

I print out the address for the swingers club from the website, remembering the guy in my old band who said going there was like going to a nude beach in Boca Raton where you could penetrate the retirees.

“Here’s the address, miss,” I say and settle in for the show.

The face off between mother and daughter is kind of ridiculous. A ratty emo kid, scolding ol’ mom for perving-out again. “Gawd, mom! You’re so effing gross! What do you do this every time we go somewhere? Ugh! You promised… I’m gonna have to text dad again!”

The eyes swim insanely as she is drug by the wrist towards the elevators by a girl in a crusty hoodie whom the ad guys at Dos XX Beer would likely refer to as The Most Embarrassed Daughter in the World.

* Nestea - [AKA: Nestea Plunge] a move where you fall backwards into a body of water (preferably a swimming pool), body rigid and arms outstretched. Kind of like a Jesus Christ on the cross pose while doing a back-flop. Popularized by the Nestea commercials from the 70s and 80s. If you pull a Nestea, you are making a grand exit from a situation with maximum splash.

FNG

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 03:00:00 +0000

The new guy says he's never heard of Jean Georges. Or Quality Meats. Or the Gray Line. He sent an Irish couple to the corner of 72nd Street and Columbus Avenue for the Empire State Building before I could get off the phone and stop them. He claims to have once eaten at a great seafood restaurant in Times Square called Red Lobster.  

“I'm still learning the ropes,” he shrugs and takes a 45-minute coffee break. The line backs up while he checks his shitty Yahoo! email on the iPad (there are some boner med ads in his inbox and he interrupts me while I'm speaking with Ms. Piccolo from room 2009 to ask me how to transfer them to spam). It must be him that ripped the fart earlier that smelled like Indian food and hippie-feet soaked in fish sauce and left in a plastic bag in the Sub-Saharan sun. He's the fucking new guy; barely qualified to push a mop in the employee bathroom, but somehow up in my space wearing a suit from Sears and recommending Cats on Broadway.

Let me get this out of the way: We don't cure cancer at the concierge desk. I say that emphatically. No Jonas Salk types end up in hospitality. But even though our work may not be as important as eradicating Polio or prosecuting the gang rape of malnourished babies with AIDS in the Sudan, we take it seriously. It's a mighty pissy wind that blew this varmint into town. Mr. Bag-of-Dicks got his job because he knows the general manager. And he won’t let you forget it.

He says things like, “What's it like working with Eames?”

This is supposed to remind us that he is tight with the big boss. It's a pretty genius move. I didn't say he a total mouth-breather - just unqualified.

Travis, the new Front Office Manager, totally backed off when the new guy got flippant about not taking flowers to room 1669 before he got his (2^nd) lunch-break in. Travis is usually a pit bull, but when he meekly said, “Well you could do it later I suppose,” he looked more like a skulking professor trying to keep order in the lecture hall after getting busted for plagiarizing his latest dissertation in The New Yorker.

“So where did you work before this?” I ask.

“First job,” he says and smells his finger.

I make a mental note to Purell everything after he leaves for the day.

The Things They Did

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 19:35:00 +0000

The boy met the girl at the job he worked at. He didn’t care much for his job and, aside from the occasional funny story when something weird or stupid happened, every eight-hour shift was basically the same.

That day he woke up as usual – around 1PM – ate some bowl noodles, watched CNN out of the corner of his eye and then locked his apartment door on the way to work.

Top lock first.

Bottom lock last.

The backpack he carried, with his drumsticks and kick-drum peddle, dug into his ribcage. He wondered when the band he was in would make it.

The girl, that same day, packed a few final shirts into her brown Ralph Lauren suitcase and loaded a make-up bag on top of the pile of clothing. She wondered if she really needed all of this for a weekend. Angela, the girl’s friend, was only bringing a small carry-on. However, the girl figured it was best to have options. With the right attire, the weekend’s possibilities were endless.

If she read the road report right, traffic to the airport wouldn’t be too bad. She had time for another cup of coffee – and for a final email check. Shooting off a cursory, two-word reply to her boss at the internet content provider she worked for, she shut the computer down for good…

“Fuck,” she muttered.

She realized that she would have to bring it with her – and placed the Sony Vaio in a shoulder bag she hated carrying with her because it dug into her ribcage.

The girl wondered when her phone would ring and her modeling agency would tell her that she booked the Clinique job. Or the Prada print campaign.

Or Singapore Vogue.

The boy was helping an endless stream of hotel guests with issues he was indifferent to. A dinner reservation, a call to engineering for a leak on the 12^th floor, a car service to the Meatpacking District.

These were things he did, but did not care to do.

His friend from the package desk made a joke and they both laughed very unprofessionally.

The girl waited in the check-in line at the hotel. She had stayed here before with a different friend – a photographer who came to New York to accept an award. This trip with this friend would be much more fun, she assured herself.

As the receptionist gave her the keys to her room, the girl inquired about internet access. She would have to work while she was here, providing online technical support and member registration for the Brazil based company with the boss she had only met once.

These were things she did, but did not care to do.

Her friend made a joke as they stood in the lobby and they both laughed because it was going to be a good weekend.

The girl approached the desk that the boy worked at. She asked about wireless internet and he answered the question.

She thought to herself, he’s a little bit rude, and took the wireless card he handed her.

He thought to himself, she’s more than a little bit stunning, and asked her if there was anything else he could assist her with.

“We’re looking for some bars,” she said. “Somewhere they will play Nine Inch Nails, Muse, Queens of the Stone Age. Somewhere they will play Death From Above.”

He liked that she was specific about what she wanted because nobody ever was. Most people were vague and that bored him. While writing out a list of places for her to go that night, the boy asked the girl where she was from.

“Toronto,” she replied.

The girl liked that the boy knew how to respond when she asked her question about bars. Most people had lousy taste in music and that bored her. She was here in New York to get drunk and dance and forget about how painful being at home had been recently.

The boy handed the girl the piece of paper with six addresses scribbled on it.

She took it and said, “Thanks.”

As she walked away, the boy watched the girl intently to see if she would turn back.

“She’s fuckin hot,” the boy’s friend said.

“Totally,” the boy said.

As she walked away, the girl’s friend said, “He was cute.”

The girl said, “yeah – kinda.”

The girl looked over her shoulder to see if the boy was looking at her.

The boy got back to work, booking spa services and checking flight departure times. He got a text message that band rehearsal was canceled for tonight and that the studio was re-booked for the same time tomorrow night. He could feel his future slipping away.

Taking a five-minute break, he popped a piece of nicotine gum and tried to get his breathing under control. A terse, two-word text message was the only response he could give the band’s lead singer.

Ok – fine was what he sent.

He wished the two words were fuck you.

Or I quit.

Something would have to change.

The girl went upstairs and plugged her laptop in to process the new members information before the list grew into a monster. She could bang this out and be dressed and ready to go in 45 minutes. Maybe an hour. Her friend applied eye makeup in the small room’s bathroom and sang the wrong words to the song coming out of the stereo.

The girl could do this work in her sleep.

Control C.

Control V.

F10 to save.

An instant message came in from her boss asking why she hadn’t been online for the past four hours and the girl nearly hit the roof. She lit a cigarette and tried to stop her foot from tapping up and down as she indignantly processed the final two member’s subscriptions. A terse, five-word IM was the only response she could give her fat boss in Sao Paulo.

There was an internet outage was what she sent.

She wished the five words were checking up on me huh?

Or you are so fucking pathetic.

Something would have to change.

The boy would wrap up his workday in 15 minutes. Taking a slip of paper from the drawer, he decided to go through with his idea from earlier.

As he filled the amenity form out, he wondered if he could get away with sending Dom Perignon to the room without getting fired. Deciding that the girl probably already had a boyfriend, he sent Moet Chandon instead.

And chocolate covered strawberries.

And a lame note that said Hope you had a kick-ass time.

He dropped the form off with the tired room service attendant who barely looked up from his game of online poker. The boy changed out of his work sweater and put on his leather jacket that he hoped made him look dangerous.

The girl sat in a bar called DARKROOM and nursed another rum and coke. She resented the fact that bartenders always said, “Oh – you mean a Cuba Libre,” whenever she ordered them.

This guy was no exception.

He comped them nine of the ten rounds the girl and her friend had that night.

The tenth round consisted of two shots that the girl’s friend stole off a waitress’ tray as she walked past.

“I love vodka,” the girl shouted at her friend and downed the shot.

“I know!” the girl’s friend replied.

They both made a face when it seemed like that last shot might not stay down.

Two guys asked them if they wanted to get out of here. The girl and her friend made faces that said thanks but no-thanks and stumbled their way towards the door. The girl was pleased that she still looked good enough to go out and not have to buy a single drink.

The boy returned home and turned on the stereo. He couldn’t decide what to listen to and played the first quarter of fifteen different songs before forgetting it altogether. He ate bowl noodles and watched the BBC out of the corner of his eye. He tried to sleep for hours before giving up.

Shower, read, repeat.

Sleep came at 5:42AM.

The girl returned to her room and headed straight for the bathroom.

As she gulped water directly from the faucet, she heard her friend say, “Awwww… Champagne.”

“Stay out of the mini bar,” the girl said and started to wash her face.

“Awwww – strawberries.”

The girl wondered when they started putting fresh fruit in hotel mini-bars and put a robe on over her t-shirt and jeans.

“Hope you had a kick-ass time… Awwww.” The girl’s friend walked into the bathroom holding the note between two fingers stained orange from nacho-cheese Doritos and said, “It’s from that guy. The concierge.”

The girl took the note and looked it over.

She wasn’t crazy about the idea of him coming in here while they were out.

His handwriting was atrocious.

She tossed and turned for an hour after drinking the champagne.

As her friend snored, the girl took a long shower and couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

Sleep came at 5:42AM.

The boy dreamed of walking unfamiliar streets, looking for something he had lost. The item was illusive – and he never found it.

When he awoke at 12:20PM, he was sweating and disturbed. A feeling of restlessness followed him until he left his apartment at 2PM – after a late breakfast of bowl noodles and CNN.

The girl dreamed of being followed through the streets of the small town she grew up in. At least it wasn’t one of those dreams where you’re being chased and your legs won’t work. This dream wasn’t unpleasant. She was being pursued and admired. Flashbulbs detonated at regular intervals.

When she awoke at 1:44PM, she had no recollection of the dream at all.

The boy settled into his work routine. A dinner reservation. A bus tour. Theatre tickets for a group of seven. There was a pleasant, numbing familiarity to these tasks.

He did the things he didn’t care to do, but it bothered him less.

The girl ordered room service. Eggs, toast, coffee and a beer.

She processed 53 new memberships on her laptop between bites of overcooked eggs on wheat bread. Then, she sent eight replies to tech related email inquiries. The replies were worded kindly and she even put a smiley face at the end of one.

She did the things she didn’t care to do, but it bothered her less.

The boy found himself drifting and wondered if the girl would come back to the desk he worked at in the hotel. Sending something to her room was about as far as he could go without risking it. The girl could be married for all he knew.

He hadn’t seen a ring.

The girl found herself drifting and wondered if she should go by the desk that the boy worked at. It wasn’t too long ago that she had taken off her wedding band.

How soon was too soon?

She found it equal parts sweet – equal parts creepy that the boy had sent something to her room.

The girl’s friend insisted that it was sweet.

She had said, “He probably didn’t even come himself. It was probably room service. It’s cute.”

The girl supposed her friend might be right.

But she wasn’t sure.

The boy almost didn’t recognize the girl when she stopped by. He was in the habit of looking through people and giving a uniform hello to whatever figure approached.

The girl walked up to the boy and smiled. The way he said hello twice was strange, but he smiled as he said it the second time. The way he did this somehow made her trust him a bit more.

“Just wanted to say thanks for the champagne and strawberries,” she said.

“Oh yeah… sure,” he said with a practiced cool. He did not feel cool. “Did you have fun last night?”

“Yeah,” the girl said. “We were mobbed by guys though. Didn’t buy a drink all night.” As soon as it came out, the girl wondered why she was saying this.

“Oh,” the boy said and wondered why she said that.

The boy’s friend from the package desk jumped in and said, “He’s in a band.”

“Oh really?” the girl said. She and her friend seemed interested.

The boy’s friend said, “Yeah. And they’re good too.” To the boy he said, “Go get them a cd.”

“Yeah,” the boy said. “I’ll go get you a cd.” He disappeared for what seemed like an eternity, up to his locker to retrieve his band’s 12 song lp and a glossy flyer. The elevator took forever and his movements seemed to take place in agonizing slow motion. He was relieved to see that they were still there upon his return.

“So… um,” the girl said, “we’d like to take you out for a drink if you’re free after work to… um, thank you for the champagne.”

“Uh… I’d love to – but… I… uh… I’m not allowed to hang out with hotel guests. There’s this stupid rule that…” he trailed off. As soon as it came out, the boy wondered why he was saying this.

“Oh,” the girl said and wondered why he said that.

“When do you go back to Toronto?” the boy asked.

“Tomorrow at 7AM,” the girl said.

The boy made plans to meet the girl at a bar in the Village after he finished rehearsal at 3AM. He hoped he wouldn’t be too sweaty.

The girl made plans to meet the boy at a bar in the Village once he finished band rehearsal at 3AM, though she wished he would have invited her to the studio instead.

The boy checked his phone for messages between songs. He didn’t play the drums like an animal because he didn’t want to smell like an animal afterwards.

The girl checked her phone for messages at the bar. She bought a little envelope of powder to go with her drinks because she didn’t want to be too drunk afterwards.

The boy and the girl spoke with each other like people who have nothing to prove. The bar was loud, but it didn’t bother them.

She was impressed and relieved that he was 30 years old.

He was impressed and relieved that she was a model with a brain.

And a soul.

It surprised each of them pleasantly that they were holding hands.

A Whore for the Door

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 19:20:00 +0000

“Wait, the minimum is how much?” he asks and gulps.

“Two grand,” I say. I think he's waiting for me to try to sell it a little bit, but I have no interest vested in him going to Provocateur. “That's...” He seems to be looking for the proper words, “…expensive.”

“Yep,” I say and hope he will leave soon so I can close up early and get some carnitas tacos from the truck in Union Square before they run out.

Call it pork belly or tongue and some people get all weird... But give it shmancy (actual) names like carnitas and lengua and the truck is sold out by 10:30; the Beckys and Bobbys of the world swarming all over that shit - bragging to their friends about how they tried sea urchin once and might have (accidentally) eaten tripe... “But, like, it wasn't all that bad - even though it tasted like poop.” Thanks, Andrew Zimmern, for making it seem like it is ok for people to be even more annoying than they were before seeing your flaccid show. It is not ok. You are a dick.

“Why is it so much?” he asks. “We’re just three people.”

He seems somewhat reasonable, so I level with him. “”It’s because you’re all guys.”

“Huh?”

“You would have a more reasonable minimum if you brought girls to the club,” I say and hope the food-truck hasn’t run out of radishes and lime like last time.

“That’s… um – bullshit?” he says like he might not be sure.

Bottle service is bullshit. It forever ruined going out in New York. The fucktard who came up with the idea of making entry to lounges and clubs all about who could afford massive Magnums of Cristal sold at a thousand percent mark up was the first nail in the coffin. The death rattle was loud and resonant – as most places followed suit soon after the original trailblazer. The venues now make untold fortunes on liquor sales, and legions of investment bankers in their boxy H&R Block suits get to throw up gang signs from the VIP booth when DJ Whogivesafuck spins a Lil Wayne track. Who wants that?

Unless you’re an investment banker.

Or a girl looking to be showered in endless, already paid for booze.

Or a club owner who likes counting stacks of fresh money.

OK… maybe I’m the odd man out here.

“Why should it make a difference if it’s all guys?” he asks, but his expression tells me he worked that riddle out halfway through the question. He shuffles his feet. “Sausage fest,” he says. “Shit.”

I drum my fingers for a second, and then hit ctrl+alt+del, assuming the conversation is over and it is safe to shut the computer down and make my escape from the concierge desk without the PM manager actually seeing me leave.

“You know any girls?” he says suddenly.

“Huh?” My newspaper is already under my arm.

“You know any girls? Um… ones that might be looking to, uh – go out?” He levels his eyes at me to erase any doubt as to what he might be talking about. It is similar to the look one gives when he is looking to get a massage at 1AM, without actually saying ‘where’s a good rub-and-tug spot?’

“Um…” I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah – I mean, uh… yeah. If you really want to go that route, I can… make a call.” As I dial the number that I now know by heart, I find myself hoping the Buddhists are wrong about that whole next-life business. I’m sure my karma is a complete fucking disappointment to the universe.

“Sweet,” he says and starts to text his buddies. As he types on his iPhone, I see a white spot on his tan left hand where his wedding ring is supposed to be. “Fucking autocorrect,” he says. “Not bookers…”

Let’s be clear about this: I make a phone call to obtain a service that costs this guest no less than $3,000 to save him maybe $500 on his table minimum at the club.

“They take Visa, right?” he says.

The taco truck has only chicken and pig-ear left when I finally make it.

I save the pig-ear for Zimmern.

At the Speed of the Future

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:04:00 +0000

“Gimme your phonebook,” she says on final approach, lumbering up to my desk like an ancient hunchbacked Russian airplane that lost rudder control 30 years ago, but is going to attempt a landing anyway. Her cane bumps into the desk and she putters to a halt – dangerously close to tipping over.

“I don’t have a phonebook, miss. But maybe I can look something up for you.”

She levels her milky, red-rimmed eyes at me and says, “Waddaya mean – you don’t gotta phonebook? That’s a first.”

I gently explain that I haven’t seen a phonebook since the internet got good – and that the hotel hasn’t ordered them in years.

Her look tells me that my head is on fire.

“You are the concierge right?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she says and pulls a used tissue from the sleeve of her baby-blue housecoat. “How the hell are you supposed ta look anything up without a phonebook?” The cough she directs into the tissue is so loud that the bellmen look up and over from their station to see what exploded. “I mean…” she begins, but pauses to wipe her tongue off with the crispy tissue, “…that’s what a concierge does – he looks stuff up fa people.”

“Miss – I’m happy to look something up for you,” I say. “Is it a business or personal listing you’re looking for?”

“What does it matter?” she says and stuffs the tissue back into her sleeve. I get that pre-puke waterfall in my salivary glands. “You don’t gotta phonebook.”

“But I have the internet,” I say – and realize that I probably just sounded like a dick if anyone was watching. Nobody likes the look of some punk rolling his eyes at an old lady. It’s the equivalent of a Gordon Gekko type peeling out in his schmancy BMW around a Chrysler full of old people in the slow lane and flipping them off because they aren’t going 93 in a 55 like he is.

But explaining the internet to ancient, rheumy eyed New York Jews is like bartering over a 25-cent difference in the price of a durian fruit at a squalid market in Hanoi. It is ridiculous and futile all at once. And it makes you a little bit of an asshole for trying.

“Business or personal?” I say.

“Pfft. Personal,” she says like gauntlet-thrown…let’s-see-watcha-got-kid.

“Last name?”

“Rosenkranz.”

“First?”

“Moshe.”

“Manhattan?”

“Brooklyn.”

“Borough Park?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says and can’t mask her confusion at how I may know that.

I hit the print icon and wish our printers were faster so I could make the paper appear supernaturally fast. Then I would explain to the old hen that a male witch is actually called a warlock.

“Here you are miss,” I say and hand her the paper.

She looks at the page for a second – replete with name, address, phone number and neighborhood map – and then, to my surprise, tries to level me with the evil-eye. She actually wags a finger at me and says, “So ya do gotta phone book back there.”

Bubble Boy and the Fucking Manager

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 21:00:00 +0000

“I was running late this afternoon,” I say and click the 'delete all' icon in my email inbox. "Didn't feel like a button down."

“I don’t give a shit,” Cameron says coolly. “But I can see your ink. Better hope Ray doesn’t see that. You know he gets weird about tattoos.”

“It’s a tree branch,” I say fingering the spot on my chest where I’m sure it is visible under my v-neck. “It’s not like it says BALLS DEEP in cursive around my neck or something.”

“Oh yeah… like, what’s-his-name…. Williams?”

A former bar-back at the Gate, Wilson – the heavily tattooed bassist for the hillbilly bluegrass band called The Fucks – had legions of his visible tattoos lasered off so he could work in shirtsleeves without covering himself in long tennis wristbands from wrist to bicep. Once The Fucks signed a three record deal with Sony and went platinum with the single ‘Graverobbin (Steal Your Gold Teeth)’ Wilson had a team of four tattoo artists work for 80 hours straight to painstakingly restore his colorful sleeves from high resolution photographs of the originals just in time for the video shoot for their second single ‘Bathtub Gin Ain’t Nuthin but Meth’.

“Huh… You know what,” Cameron says perking up like he’s had the best idea in the world. “You should get a teardrop done under your eye. That would be some hardcore shit.”

“I’m not very hardcore,” I say.

“Whatever Lil’ Wayne. I’m out,” he says and pushes the heavy door open, disappearing from the hotel lobby into the late evening, leaving me alone to complete the dregs of the evening shift at the concierge desk.
It is 10:36pm.

Someone – across the lobby – is taking pictures of me.

I book ghost reservations at Locanda Verde, Beauty&Essex, Hakkasan, Eleven Madison Park and Ai Fiori for tomorrow evening. I pocket $18 in postage money, left by a woman sending postcards to Belgium that I’m sure without looking – even though I don’t read Flemish – all said the same thing. I delete 23 new emails without reading them.

A guest comes down to the desk shaking with rage. He demands to speak with the FUCKING MANAGER. I gingerly ask him for his room number and he replies, “MANAGER.”

Sometimes people just don’t want to explain themselves to someone without a title. But some of them are savvy to the fact that if they explain the situation to me and I go back to the office and explain in to the manager, it gives the manager time to come up with fifty different plausible scenarios as to why this issue is a non-issue. Most of the shit people get for free at the hotel by way of manager comps is from putting the manager in a position where he is taken off guard and fills his stumped silence with offers of free breakfast, a free night – or in this case, as I will later find out, a free lifetime supply of ass-tonguing at any Lanzarote Hotel Group hotels or their affiliate properties worldwide.

I break away from the guest and walk to the back where Carl is sitting at his desk, fiddling with the color contrast on his 27” iMac display.

“Sorry to drop this on you, man, but there’s some guy who just keeps saying manager and won’t give me his room nu…”

“Dude,” Carl says and puts on his fedora with the old-timey feather in the brim. “Do you think ‘Search and Destroy’ should go on my new playlist before or after Matt and Kim’s ‘Cameras’?”

“Um… I, uh don’t…”

“Simple question,” he says. “Iggy Pop first or second.”

“First?”

“That’s what I thought,” he says and hits the publish icon on his music blog. “Age before beauty. I am the man. I make it pour.” He takes an unlit cigarette out of his pack and sticks it behind his ear. “Now – what did you need?”

“I’ve got this guy at the desk demanding a manager – won’t tell me his room number, or what the issue is. Probably fishing for free shit. He looks pissed,” I say and point at the screen to the new post on his blog. “Why is Bright Eyes on there? I didn’t realize it was still 2002.”

“Shit,” Carl says. “Carl always get some douche who wants to yell at Carl for two hours straight… right about ten minutes before Carl is supposed to be at Carl’s house doing Carl stuff for the evening. Carl isn’t pleased,” Carl says, putting his hat on again for the billionth time today. He stands up from his desk and says, “Wanna see something cool?"
I shrug.
"I’m going to blow this guy off. No matter what his issue is, I’ll be done with it in 30 seconds. Roof fell on your bed while you were taking a nap? Don’t care… have a drink ticket. Engineering stole your wallet? Don’t care – 10% off tonight’s rate. Gauntlet thrown,” he says with a glint in his eye.

It’s actually pretty amazing to watch Carl not care. He’s one of those rare people who can be demeaning and condescending to someone’s face and still have them shake his hand at the end of the interaction.

“Sic em,” I say and walk back out to my desk to watch the shaming.

Carl approaches the guest all swagger and shoulders, aware that he is putting on a show. He squares up to the guest and says, “Oh dear. I hear you have an issue. Might I be of assistance, good sir?”

The guest is speaking in a low tone and seems to be trying mightily to keep it together. I can’t hear the words, but he is balling up his fists and smacking himself on the thigh to emphasize whatever he is saying.

Carl’s face slowly morphs from a condescending, shit-eating grin into a pale and horrified death mask. At one point he actually covers his mouth with his hand.

The guest seems to be tearing up – and Carl puts a reassuring hand on his shoulder and says, “I’m so sorry.”

There is no trace of irony.

I keep waiting for Carl to drop the hammer. Instead, he gently takes the guest by the shoulder and walks him into the bar. Carl bolts out after a few minutes and runs up to the desk and hisses, “Call the fucking doctor.”

“Doctor or 911?” I ask.

“Fuck – I don’t know,” he says and runs back to his office. A moment later he appears with one of the old walkie-talkies he prefers to the earpieces we all use. “I guess the house doctor. Call the house doctor.”

“Sure,” I say, snapping to attention – and start to dial. “What’s the problem?”

Carl looks at out of the side of his head like he doesn’t want to say it. “Just call him. Tell him it’s urgent.”

“Dude – it’s 11 o’clock. His service won’t call him this late unless they can tell him what happened that is so important that they woke his ass up.” It’s true. Our house doctor is one of Forbes top three earners in the North-American health care profession and he’s one of the last people making personal house calls in the city. He could tell you that you had a month to live and make you feel like well… at least I have a month. His client list is said to be as amazing as an imploding star.

But calling his answering service is like placing a collect call from a switchboard in Bosnia to the offices of the Puerto Rican Day Parade. It’s a whole bunch of sighing and confusion and random protocol.

Carl takes a breath and leans across the desk and whispers, “That guy’s six-year-old son was playing under the bed and found a used condom. He thought it was a balloon. When his dad got out of the shower and came into the other room, his son was trying to blow it up. They’re here on his birthday trip – and he thought it was for the party.”

I drop the phone receiver and involuntarily gag.

When I get through to the doctor’s answering service, I have a hard time relaying the problem to Maria. She mutters, “Oh mah gaaahhd,” over and over and then says, “Stand by for Dr. Rosen.”

I am on hold for seven minutes.

An email comes in that I immediately delete.

Three backpackers approach the desk with Canadian flags sewn on the shoulders of their matching Roots jackets and I pretend I am having a serious conversation about the necessity to book reservations at Ethiopian restaurants until they stop looking at me.

The hold music is Phil Collins.

A security guard I’ve never seen before comes up and points at the pile of newspapers behind the desk and says, “Noo Yor Time.” I give him the one missing the real estate and sports sections and he stares at me until I look away.

I have a mild heart attack when the guest in question comes back out of the bar with a beer glass full of scotch and stumbles up to my desk.

“Where’s the manager?”

“Um… he’ll be out in a second.” I say, looking towards the back office. “He’s – um… coming. Soon?”

The guest slams his drink and I pick up a second phone receiver, dialing Carl’s extension over and over until he picks up.

“What!” he says.

I pull the first phone away from my ear with the hold music and speak into the second handset. “Your guy is back from the bar. He’s asking for you.”

“How does he seem?”

I look at the man’s hands shaking slightly and say, “Just get out here.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“Nothing yet. I can’t get a hold of him. His service is probably ordering chicken wings and grape soda before calling him. I’ve been holding for like nine minutes.” The hold music changes to a very smooth, lite-rendition of a Simply Red song. I ignore a Brazilian woman, with lips so injected with collagen that she looks like she’s having an allergic reaction, clicking her nails on the desk as she impatiently waits for service.

Carl sighs. “OK – hang tight. I’ll be out in a second. I’m trying to get approval for a room-move to a Cloud-suite from corporate.”

“Sheeiyt,” I say.

“Keep him busy,” Carl says and hangs up the phone.

I hold a just-one-more-second finger in the air as the doctor’s answering service comes back on the line. There is a queue ten deep at my desk now.

“Mkaay. Thank you for your patience,” the operator says. “I can’t seem to reach the doctor right now. You can leave me the guest’s cell phone number and the doctor can call him back. If this is an emergency, I suggest you tell the guest to go to the emergency room.” It sounds like she is reading from a script.

“I don’t know if this is an emergency,” I say quietly. “Is it an emergency if a kid gets herpes from a used rubber that he decided to blow up? Should we call 911 – or just tell him to wait for the doctor’s call?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a doctor,” she says. “But if this is an emergency, I suggest you tell the guest to go to the emergency room.”

The Brazilian woman is no longer clicking her nails to remind me she is there. She is now banging the side of her plastic key on the desk and saying, “Ei! Preciso ter o meu maldito pacote. Você é retardada?”

I hear a couple waiting in the growing line make friends with another patron over how ridiculous the wait is.

Somebody further back in line says, “Don’t fucking touch me.”

One guy says, “This is pointless,” and peels off the line that has grown to over fifteen people.

“Listen… I really need your help,” I plead to the operator. “Could you please try to call the doctor again? And if you can’t get through, let me know who is covering his calls.”

She sighs heavily, but finally says, “Please hold.” There is a click and then I hear Air Supply.

Pulling the phone away from my mouth, I say, “Carl is on his way out. I’m just waiting for the house doctor’s service to locate him. Thanks for your patience.”

The guest takes a huge gulp of whiskey and nods.

The next five minutes take place with two phones glued to my two ears. I have CJ retrieve Ms. Da Silva’s package, I call Brooklyn Bowl and reserve a table for a party of eight for Mr. Bevin and I mark the location of every strip club in the city on a map for Mr. Vorst who squeals with delight at every new x I make on the map. “So many pussies,” he says. I give two shopping guides to a family from Sweden – and book them on a Woodbury Common shuttle for tomorrow. I slip a twenty into my pocket from Mr. and Mrs. Forster, who bathe me in praise for having recommended ‘The Best Man’ yesterday – and then I book a pair of tickets (marked up to $750 per ticket) to ‘The Book of Mormon’ matinee performance tomorrow. I send security up to room 657 with Ms. Kendall who says her boyfriend engaged the chain lock and won’t stop fucking her sister. I send 19 successive calls to voicemail.

Air Supply becomes Peter Cetera.

The line vanishes once I point out the restroom to a Japanese man who waited nine minutes to ask me where it was.

It’s just me and the condom licker’s dad.

As if on cue, the phone clicks and the operator says, “Hold the line please.” I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear a long pulse. She says, “Go ahead.”

“Oh man… Dr. R – I’m so sorry to bother you. But this is a big one…”

Make it Rain

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Mon, 21 May 2012 22:55:00 +0000

“Dude – you will get soooo laid,” he says leaning in conspiratorially and killing me with his Halal rice platter breath.

“I dunno man,” I say, looking at my watch, ~~somewhat~~ totally proud of myself that I can probably get laid anyway.

“Seriously Sean – bitches love power. When I told my wife about my promotion to Front Office Manager, she treated my dick like it was her sole source of oxygen, dude. For a full week.”

I’m pretty sure a week’s worth of blowjobs does not equal a good deal when you take a position in management but the salary they’re offering to pay you reeks of line staff wages – a practice which is rampant within the company. (They’re also famous for giving promotions to people they want to get rid of – giving the employee a job they are supremely under-qualified for; and then watching passively as the new-hire flails under the pressure they were never meant to manage. The rope tightens from the gallows, and the company collectively shrugs blamelessly from the sidelines as if to say, ‘we did all we could.’ By the time HR gets involved, the firing seems like a mercy killing.)

But I haven’t even heard the salary yet. Maybe the Lanzarote Hotel Group will do the right thing. I have been with the company for fucking ever.

“What are they offering?” I ask and, for a second, envision a company car… maybe a BMW… or an Audi; an expense account for entertaining clients – or some hours on a NetJet card so I can get my Gulfstream on.

Abasi’s face falls a little bit, but he makes a valiant attempt to keep his smile bright. “48K,” he says almost as a question, and quickly adds, “But you get a gym membership…”

“At fucking Gold’s?” I cut him off.

“Um… I think so,” he says, and I can see the wheels begin to turn. “But it might be Equinox. Let me check.”

I sink further into the leather couch that Abasi hurriedly pulled me to three minutes ago, saying he had something to tell me that would change my life. The leather is old and cracking and smells like an ancient spilled liquor and cigarette ash.

“How many hours did you work last week?” I ask.

“Um,” he says. Abasi isn’t an idiot and he knows where I’m going with this. “45… or so.”

“Or so indeed,” I say pulling out my phone. “You’re always here. And I remember a conversation we had two weeks ago where you told me you were pulling down between 65-70 hours a week.” I start typing into the calculator app and talking to myself. “48 thou divided by 52 weeks divided by 70 or so hours…”

Abasi tries to look over my shoulder.

“13 and change.”

“What?” he says and tries to look at my phone again.

“13 bucks an hour,” I say and stand up. “Sorry, I’m not a Salvadorian gardener.” I feel like a dick almost immediately when I remember that Abasi’s wife is from Guatemala or something.

He laughs. “Let me see what I can do about this. Maybe there’s a little leeway. I’d hate for you to lose out on this amazing opportunity over a little thing like money. I mean, this is a resume maker,” he says and stands up. “Plus – if you take it, we’ll have an excuse to suit up and head over to the Penthouse Executive Club and get some stank-on-our-hang-downs, bro.”

The elbow he gives me sharply in the ribs lets me know he is just one of the guys.

“You fuck strippers?” I say before I realize the words have left my mouth.

He shifts his weight awkwardly from foot to foot and says, “Well… I’ll let em, um… give me a handie in the champagne room from time to time.”

Two things are immediately obvious from his statement here:

1) Nobody lets a stripper jerk them off in the champagne room. That is an honor that comes at a sizable cost.

2) Abasi, the Egyptian Conniption, makes a hell of a lot more than $48,000 a year.

Three days later, I stride into the GM’s office with the purpose and bravado of a general – my nose so high I would drown in a fucking rainstorm. My list of demands for the management position is lengthy and outrageous – and the salary requirement is astronomical.

My palms are sweaty.

There is no way they will say yes to this batshit list I’m about to rattle off.

I’m slightly more nervous and perplexed when a flash of lightning detonates behind my eyes, and I suddenly realize my biggest fear is that they might actually go for it.

The Oldest Profession

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:34:00 +0000

“Sorry,” he says and hands me a twenty-dollar-bill that looks like has been around since the dawn of time. “It’s all I’ve got.”

“It all spends the same, sir,” I say and give that little nod the old-school Europeans seem to love so much. “Thank you.”

“Thanks to you,” he says and takes the slip of paper with Eleven Madison Park’s address written on it. “You may make ze taxi reservation?”

“I’ll alert the doorman that you’re on your way out. He’ll take care of the taxi for you.”

“Thanks,” he says and walks off, stopping midway through the lobby to reclaim his wife who has been intently staring at the chandelier as if unicorns were falling from it.

I toss the bill on the desk and forget about it for three hours. The night is smooth, and there is no urgency to anything I do. A rare reprieve.

As I sip on some cold coffee, an email comes in, cryptically outlining details of a party that will take place tomorrow throughout the entire lobby and bar spaces for 2,700 people in celebration of a glossy magazine (that no one in the publishing world thought would make it this far) reaching their ten-year anniversary. Security will be tight. They’re billing it as the party of the decade.

Fuuuuuck.

Hey DJ, cue the sad jams.

Parties at The Gate are thrown without the slightest regard for the guest or their actual comfort. On Halloween or New Years Eve, it actually pays to be a non-guest – solely an attendee of the party. It is the one instance where that paying customer is unwitting relegated to the role of second class citizen, unwashed denizen – untouchable street urchin wandering the alleys of Delhi after a 27-hour shift of barehanded brick-making at the death factory.

When Deadmau5 comes to spin records at the Fashion Week Dressed to Kill party, the only thing that matters to the hotel is revenue. Who cares if you are spending $1200 per night on your 165 square foot ‘Luxe’ room? The lobby, bars and nightclub are off limits unless you buy a ticket on top of that.

Tickets will be on sale, yet the staff won’t be able to answer the simplest of inquiries over the phone or in person – because the same shroud of mystery and aloofness that goes into creating an appropriate façade of cool is all pervasive. The staff and general public know that there is an event taking place – however, how to buy tickets, which class of ticket affords what, etc is untold and unknown. I used to think it was simple lack-of-organizational prowess.

But it far is more sinister than that.

The confusion that mounts as people are unable to get straight answers to simple questions adds to the anticipation. It makes them want it even more – because the assumption is that ‘I’ll be left out unless I get this shit figured out. Beg, borrow, steal – whatever. Must. Get. In.’

The first person to put a velvet rope in front of his nightclub knew that people want the exact thing they are told they cannot have. Their value in themselves – their self worth – skyrockets when they are able to get what others (people just like them) have been told they cannot have. The more illusive and mysterious the payoff, the more people want to get exclusive access to the rare bird – so they can be one of the few to actually caress the unseen plumage. People instinctively thirst for a pass from the gatekeeper – a visa into the territory of the privileged few – to feel quenched.

Hell... why do you think religion has been so successful throughout the eons? Christians want to pass Peter at the gates of Heaven. The Greeks needed a coin to pay Charon to be ferried across the River Styx to the Underworld. History is full of evidence of these phenomena where people need to pass the scrutinous gaze of another person; to figure out a secret code to get where they want to go. The place they covet might be different – but the desire is as ancient as whoring.

I am a gatekeeper of sorts. If I am well compensated, I will make an appropriate effort to get two people into Babbo even though the restaurant has been booked solid for thirty days. I will call my promoter friend at the Boom Boom Room for the $400 I get from the three balding tax-attorneys in the throes of their midlife crises who were turned away by the doorman last night.

And the night before that.

They need to go because they have been told they cannot. It will not be the first time someone tried to buy themselves into heaven to be sure.

Sometimes, though, I turn off the phone and retract my outreached palm as a form of simple self-preservation. When the situation is unwinnable, I have no issue in accepting that, contrary to my desire to be – I am not all-powerful.

Two years ago, the New Years Eve party promoters sold 6,500 tickets for an event space that, even if you juked the capacity stats and completely ignored the fire-code limitations, can hold 4,000 people. That means that 2,500 people who bought tickets (and the hundreds who thought they might just turn up and get a last minute wristband) were stuck in the freezing rain outside when the clock struck midnight, chanting and protesting like a bunch of riled-up Pakistanis setting half of Lahore on fire by burning a few too many effigies of the American president and their own pro-Western prime-minister. Riot police were called for crowd-control. There were uniformed squads outside the hotel until January 6^th, checking IDs and confirming reservations before they would let anyone into the building.

That year, my whole anything-is-possible-for-a-price mantra flew out the window for a few days. I found myself triple checking dinner reservations I had been paid gratuities for and probably pissing a few hostesses off along the way. But the fear dies as it always does – and soon enough I was back to taking hand outs from people I never intended to actually help at all. Thank you very much.

At 10:15, I start to clean up so I can get the eff out of here and drink some goddamned Pabst. The iPads get plugged in and locked in the cabinet (along with the cup of pens that seems to disappear with regularity… fucking savage thieves on the overnight). Even the Time Outs get locked in the…

What the shit?

I take a second look at the bill Mr. Vandersloot palmed me with earlier for his EMP reservation. It’s not a twenty at all.

It’s a two.

But it’s old. And it doesn’t even look like it’s the right size. It’s big, old play money. For a second, I’m pissed. Then, I give in to a wry smile. He pulled one over on me. Sharp old fucker.

But a closer look reveals a date: 1896.

I google ‘1896 two-dollar-bill’.

Tonight I drink Green Label and take a taxi instead of the subway.

Semper Fi or Die

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:20:00 +0000

“Our woom!” he says and juts his chin out like some dickhole NHL coach, half-a-second away from pulling the goalie and throwing his clipboard on the ice. “Give us our woom!”

“Your womb?” I ask as if I don’t understand what he’s saying.

“Yes. We have been waiting for our woom since six and a half this mowning. We are vewy tiwed. Make ze keys.” He would push me if there weren’t a huge desk between us.

“Oh… your room. Of course you’d like your keys sir,” I say. “I know that reception guarantees check-in by 4pm. Looks like it’s about 2:30 right now, “ I say, clicking my pen, “soooo….”

“Look,” he says and tries to turn his eyes into fire, “You will make my check-in absolutely now.” He slams a fist on the desk for emphasis.

“No – you look,” I say. “I don’t make ze check-in. If you would like to inquire about the availability of your room, by all means, you can walk over to reception and ask if it is ready. On the off chance it is not, you can rest assured that it will be ready by 4pm – when all rooms are guaranteed for check in. I’m sure your flight got you in very early this morning – but that does not mean you can stand around the concierge desk demanding that I check you in every 20 minutes. I make dinner reservations and book theatre tickets. I get people in to nightclubs. I have nothing to do with the wooms here at The Gate,” I say and return the fire gaze. “But rest-assured, if I did, I would give you the one with the premium package*.”

Fucking pushy Israelis.

I blame the obligatory military service. Take a nation (albeit a dangerous nation in the middle of a perpetual political and religious shitstorm, rife with danger – implied and very real – from every neighboring country in the region who want them dead) inhabited by an entire population of people who have to complete between two to three years of service in the armed forces, who, when they travel to New York, walk around SoHo like a mob of petty tyrants trying to exert their will all over your face. Hence, there is a hierarchy model that exists in every conversation you have with them. If you assert yourself as the superior officer in the conversation, they tend to back down and defer to your judgment. If you sit there and meekly take it (as Americans in the service industry have been trained to do), then you’re asking for an earful of orders from someone who now perceives you his inferior. It’s all, “Sir, yes sir!” to the full-bird-colonel from that point on.

Of course, speaking to a guest that way is frowned upon at all Lanzarote Hotel Group properties. Sometimes you get it wrong and the CFO of El Al Airlines demands to speak with your manager. But it is a calculated risk; one that pays off more times than it doesn’t.

“Thank you,” he says. “I will now go to weception.”

“As you wish sir,” I say. “Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.”

“Have a nice day,” he says and gives a polite, charming wave, now quite the diplomat.

I smile tightly, narrow my eyes and give a little salute.

*Definition of Premium Package: Last sell room – usually containing one or more non-working items – only in inventory when the hotel is sold out and/or when some ass-pony wants to play tough guy about his check-in time. The hotel equivalent of a waiter serving an unruly dinner patron a cocktail with an extra shot.

brb, jk

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Fri, 04 May 2012 01:02:00 +0000

She fumbles around for something in her purse, and I hope it is money. As soon as the weird eau-de-purse-air reaches where I'm standing, the smell of campfire and Certs assaults me like a wizened grandmother from the 1940s. When she pulls out a green plastic lighter and a bent, half-smoked cigarette and sparks it up, there is an awkward moment that passes between the two of us. It’s not a game changer, but it does make things slightly more interesting.

“Miss,” I say gently, “there's no smoking in the hotel.”

Her wild eyes meet mine with a look that says oh - I know, and she takes an enormous drag off the already brutalized stick, hot-boxing the hell out of her ragged Virginia Slim. Her bangs fall into her face and make brief contact with the cherry. The sizzle makes me cringe.

I wonder what happened between the time she sunnily approached the concierge desk, asking for a reservation at Beauty & Essex, sweetly adding, “I know it's last minute, so no drama on the time... we can go late, hon,” - and now. When I secured a 9pm table, she said, “Aww, sweetie - somebody's about to het a high-five,” but stopped short of slapping palms with me because her phone beeped. The message alert was one of those clumsy computer generated atonal things and, for a second, we were all nostalgically rocking out to the sweetest ringtone of 2004.

Whatever she read caused her face to disintegrate.

Now, two Goliaths from security are walking over to my desk with the heady purpose you only feel when you spend all day eyeballing perps (definition: daring tourists in dad-jeans and ladies-who-lunch to get out of line) - and finally something huge like this jumps off. I signal them to take it easy. They have tackled smokers before; treating them, in general, like soccer hoodlums who might strangle you with their Man U scarves if you don't get the upper hand immediately.

“You want to have a seat miss?” I ask, and that's when the waterworks get flipped on blast. Her guttural sobs generate concerned looks from reception and the bell desk.

“No,” she says and tosses the butt of her smoke on the floor and stubs it out with a shoe that probably cost used-car money.

She reaches back into her purse, emerging with the gnarled soft-pack and Myron from security grabs her hand.

“That’s no way to treat a fucking lady!” she screams.

All movement has stopped in the lobby and people don't even try to pretend they aren't staring. I'm pretty sure the music cuts out just like in the movies.

“Ma'am, I'm just doing my job,” Myron says, presumably just like they taught him at Lazer Point Blank Security Services & Security Guard School of the Greater Bronx Area.

“Not you, sweetie,” she says to Myron and looks up at him, seeing him for the first time. “It's this,” she says, unleashing a massive snot bubble and turning her phone towards us.

On the glowing screen of her ancient Nokia is a message from someone named ‘Hubby’:

whn u get back i will b gone. i mean it ths time 4 real

we r fnshd. u can keep the kids. car is mine tho.

She says, “Ten years - and I get a text.”

I am incapable of saying anything because my jaw is on the floor.

Myron says, “That's some cold shit, yo.”

She moves off to the side of the desk to compose herself. The couple behind her in line want reservations at Boulud Sud and pepper me with questions like, “How many is wax museum?” and, “Where is 9/11?”

Puttana Means Bitch

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:33:00 +0000

Trying to explain Supershuttle to Italians is like trying to outline your detailed ideas for health care reform in Lakota.

It is impossible.

“OK,” I will say, “for your flight on Alitalia, leaving from JFK at 6:30pm, the shuttle will be here at the hotel between 1:20 and 1:35pm. Make sure to be out front with your luggage a few minutes early. They’re usually on time.”

“Eeeeehhhh….. Slowly per favore. Nouvamente.” They usually make an exaggerated hand signal relaying that they didn’t understand.

“Autobus – here… at 1 and 20 PM,” I will say.

Now they understand, but don’t like the information.

“Que catzo,” they usually say. “Many ah… early times. I, eeehhhhh… go more a later.”

Most times, at this point in the conversation, I have a hard time not letting out an involuntary, exasperated sigh. It’s not that I think they are being ridiculous. There’s just no easy way to break the language barrier enough to tell them that I can’t dictate the pick-up time.

Sometimes they get hostile.

Supershuttle is a shared van service that picks people up at their hotel and takes them to the airport. The $19 per person door-to-door price tag is a great motivator in people’s desire to use it. Or they have a pre-paid voucher that came with their vacation package booked on Orbitz, and to let it go to waste would be such a shame. The cost is kept low by picking up at numerous points throughout the city – then making the trip to the airport loaded down with 20 strangers packed inside a humid van, a mountain of luggage haphazardly thrown in back like a passenger train in India.

Somewhere along the line, Supershuttle probably got sick of people claiming they missed their flight because the van didn’t get them to the airport on time, so they came out with a time diagnostic to make sure they wouldn’t be held responsible for any of that nonsense. Now – in New York at least – they pick up four hours before a domestic departure. Five hours ahead of the flight time for international.

That’s fucking ear-leee.

The FAA recommends an airport arrival time of three hours before an international flight, and two hours before a domestic flight. Anyone who has flown in this decade (except for the day before Thanksgiving – or a few weeks after some jerk-off tries to blow up his shoes or his Hanes boxer-shorts) knows that’s a ploy to sell duty free items to bored people who need to kill some serious time.

Mr. Savvy-Business-Traveler, who prints his boarding pass out online and only does carry-on, can clear security at LGA in 20 minutes.

Mrs. Brings-a-Whole-Lotta-Shit can check those heavy ass bags with the sky-cap out front of the terminal, get her boarding pass there and clear security at JFK in 45 minutes.

Even Mr. Cheers-You’re-A-Star heading back to London on Virgin Atlantic, staggering arm-in-arm with the liquored up beer gut with angular bangs he calls a girlfriend, can use the automated kiosk to print out boarding passes and luggage tickets and get through the entire process at EWR in an hour or so.

In fact, Germans are the only people that love the early shuttle pick up. They would go to the airport the day before their flight if they could.

If the person on the other side of my desk is going to LGA, my work is done for me. It costs more for two people to take the shuttle than it does to take a cab.

They always say, “Wow – thanks so much. Glad I asked,” and then walk off to check their luggage with the doorman so they can enjoy the city for two hours more than they had planned.

Two people going to JFK can pay $7 more for a flat rate taxi and at least ride out with a shred of dignity.

EWR is tough sell in a cab if the traveler is looking to save some dough. It is the meter, plus the harsh tolls both ways: like $75-$80; unless you hit standstill traffic and sit there in the back of the car, listening to the cabbie’s lame mix tape of Mullah Shahbaz al Zatiri calling for the destruction of the West, while the meter goes up up up.

When Mr. Andolini walks up to the desk, he is all smiles. Last night I sent him for a quiet, romantic dinner with the missus at Perry Street and then put him on the guestlist at PDT.

He thanks me with a spirited handshake. “Very niiiice. Good fashion dining. I am a love this cock-a-tail bar,” He says as he crushes my palm. He would probably kiss me on both cheeks if there weren’t a massive, wooden desk between us.

“Great. So glad you enjoyed it Mr. Andolini,” I say, and reclaim my wounded hand, wiping his sweat off my palm on my pants leg.

“Very enjoy. Grazie. Un’altra cosa: now I am make one prenotazione per shuttle bus a for air-o-porte.”

Shit.

His smile fades as I relay the pick up time I get from the shuttle’s website after I plug his name and flight time in.

“Eeeehhh…. No,” he says with a look conveying every assurance that I’ve made a mistake.

“Mr. Andolini,” I say, “You can always take a yello…”

That’s as far as I get.

Off to my right, my co-worker, a very unshaven and hungover Cameron, leans backwards and cringes as the wasted drunk woman (39 years old in a prom dress) in front of him lunges with every poorly formed word, screaming that she has been robbed. She has the broken capillaries of a true drunk already spidering their way across her lil-piggy nose.

“They stole my fuckin coat and bag! It’s a Prada!” she yells at him and sways. “They took all my shit! Where the fuck is it?” she asks with a theatric twist of her wrist – a rhetorical question in her mind to be sure, because she has already placed all of the blame on Cameron. “TELL ME. WHERE. MY SHIT IS. FAGGOT.”

“Ma’am,” Cameron says, looking at me for help, “Calm down. Who stole your coat and bag?”

This question seems to be too much for her. She short circuits trying to process his inquiry, and for a second it seems like she might fall down. “My fuckin coat! MY FUCKIN BAG! Gone! Giiiiive iiit!” she drawls like a hammered Paula Dean. She points at Cameron with a murderous fingernail poised like an ice pick at his jugular. Her shiny, teal dress has a huge stain on the front. “You musta took it! Give back or I’ll end you! I WILL FUCKIN KILL YOU!” She then leans in and whispers, “If you give it back, it’s all good. I will just take it and go…. and – um… give it back to me.”

“Ma’am,” Cameron coos. “Of course I didn’t take your items. Did you check them with the bellmen? Or is it possible you left it in the lobby unattended and it was taken to lost and fou…”

“YOU LIAR!” she shouts again and wags an unsteady finger in his general direction. “Give it back or I will – um… tell my boyfriend. You don’t understand! I need my shit back!”

I bite my lip to not break out in a full on laugh.

I feel for Cameron. I really do. It’s the worst to deal with shitty drunks at 4:45 in the afternoon who threaten to end your life for no reason. Add to that, the fact that Cameron has been holed up in a by-the-hour hotel room for two days on a coke binge with two fake-titted go-go dancers from Greenhouse (even though he left in the middle of it all to work an 8 hour shift yesterday, then went back downtown after work to try and ‘jam taffy into a coin slot’) and is coming down so horrendously that 20 minutes ago he told me he feels like a bullet might be the sensible way out. It’s just that this is so over the top and ridiculous that I’m almost giddy it’s not happening to me.

She’s so wasted that it’s like watching pills-Elvis and Tom Sizemore duke it out inside the body of a girl named Heather.

Or Meghan.

She is wild eyed and wet lipped, and for a second I think she might spit at Cameron.

She sways deeply to one side – and then, when Mr. Andolini reaches over to steady her and keep her from falling, viscously scratches his face like a rape victim.

He shouts, “Puttana,” and lets her go. His hands cover the raw nail marks across his cheek.

I call security, who tells me they are watching it all right now on the monitors.

“Any chance of actually coming up to help?” I ask incredulously.

“Copy that,” the lazy voice says noncommittally, but soon I hear a dispatch in my earpiece about sending a detail to the Charlie Delta.

The woman is now demanding both Cameron and Mr. Andolini’s names. As she points her finger at them in turn and screams, “What’s your name? WHATS YOUR ASS LICKING NAME FAGGOT?” Cameron slumps against the back wall rolling his eyes and scratching his head.

“It’s Sunday,” he says, looking at her with a mixture of hate and pleading. “It’s fucking Sunday. C’mon.”

It’s Friday – but I know what he means.

It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:48:00 +0000

“Since when is a consensual blowjob considered rape?” the groom-to-be asked the father of the bride.

“I’m going to have to go with you on this one, bud,” the NYPD officer with the sergeant stripes announced to the room. Our director of hotel security nodded in grave agreement. A tenuous alliance was formed at that moment.

But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

Should I start with the bride’s cousin with meth-mouth that tried to check in to the hotel a day and a half early?

Or how about the groom’s side of the family that pulled up to the hotel at 8AM in a party bus, replete with stripper pole (and stripper), they took in from JFK.

Or that the bride’s father was so drunk that he called all the girls ‘sir’ at the reception desk. By the time he made it over to us at the concierge for, “restrnt recommmmendayshonsss,” he was hitting the flask like it was an IV bag containing life saving broad-spectrum antibiotics. It was 10AM.

Once 2 O’clock rolled around, most of the wedding group had checked in, the majority of them in some state of disrepair or other. The fat grandmother belonging to the groom’s side with the long pube-like whiskers coming out of a mole on her neck zoomed around the lobby in a Hoveround power chair that she drove like an Andretti – passive aggressively bearing down on stationary groups of people in the lobby, then hitting the breaks last minute and berating them for not getting out of the way.

“Geeez… you’d think people would have a little COMMON COURTASY,” she would say, and buzz off looking for more people to almost collide with.

The wedding gift bags were not labeled, so the catering team had one delivered per room assuming they were all the same. When an uncle (groom’s side) came downstairs waving a small, glassine baggie of white powder and demanding to know what, “Magnum XL rubbers are doing in my fucking kid’s room,” the caterers realized there might have been a slight oversight. Sure enough, there were cards addressed to specific names – but those cards were sealed inside the gift bags.

By comparison, a giant roach inside one of the rooms seemed like a no-bigs moment; until the house doctor had to be called because, as it turns out, the roach crawled inside the ear of the 24-year-old ring-bearer with severe Down’s Syndrome – and his mother (bride’s side) was worried it had laid eggs.

When the doctor asked the ring-bearer if he had any discomfort in his ear, his mother said, “How the hell is he supposed to know? He’s retarded.”

The doctor’s face was ashen as he recounted to us at the concierge desk (in full recognition that he was breaking doctor/patient confidentiality) that while he was looking into the young man’s ear with the illuminating scope he heard violent, tearing sounds and realized the retard was shitting himself.

We all involuntarily recoiled when he said it smelled like, “canned beef stew and corpses.”

Then we processed the doctor’s paid-out slip, handing him the cash but leaving the crumpled, green paper on the desk until someone from housekeeping walked by and threw it away.

Things weren’t off to a great start.

No shock there. Things rarely move smoothly on a sold out weekend in June when some couple decides to invite a hundred plus members of extended family and friends to their over planned, under executed wedding in New York. Add copious amounts of alcohol, pills, powders and old family resentments to the mix – and it’s only a matter of time before a gun gets pulled and some poor bellboy gets gut shot because he misplaced the garment bag containing the wedding dress.

We all kept our heads pretty low that Friday – trying our best to be non-existent when the bride’s dad came up to the desk again to shout unintelligible, red-faced complaints to a desk manager who probably wasn’t even listening anymore.

By the time the lobby bar opened for the evening and swallowed the entire lot of them, the hotel’s line staff started to breath a little easier. Even though you had drunken idiots breaking glasses and punching each other and dancing along to Skrillex remixes of Debbie Gibson songs (groom’s choice), at least they were in a dark bar where that sort of behavior seems more at home. Even grandma in the scooter was waving a hand in the air.

“Hell… the worst is over,” Cameron said to me as he tucked his newspaper under his arm and prepared to leave for the evening. “They get married tomorrow – get drunk again tomorrow night. Then they check out and we never see these sad redneck fucks again.”

“Yep,” I said and popped a piece of nicotine gum into my mouth, gearing up for the next three hours alone at the desk. I figured I would delete all of the emails in my inbox, make some international phone calls and then hit the Limewire music superhighway.

I was halfway through my nostalgically driven, illegal download of the short Jane’s Addiction discography when every single member of the security staff ran towards the elevator bank with more purpose than I previously thought them capable of. One of the elevator cars probably got stuck between floors again.

I quickly decided against downloading any of the Perry Farrell side projects.

Meh.

Three hours later, and I was staring at the groom-to-be taking a cameraphone picture of a grainy image on a computer monitor as the members of the security staff looked at their shoes in embarrassment.

He studied the screen of his Motorola for a moment and said, “Well, I guess that’s good enough for me.”

“That doesn’t prove a goddamn thing,” the bride’s father said.

“Oh no, Jim? Doesn’t prove anything… except for what I already suspected about your whore daughter.”

The police and security officers moved in quickly to keep the two separate.

But, maybe I jumped the gun again.

See – it turned out the bride-to-be disappeared from the bacchanalian pre-wedding party a whole bunch of times that night. She was all over the place… in and out of the bar, smoking on the sidewalk, talking crazy trash with her bridesmaids and going on-and-on to anyone who could bear listening to a speed-demon breakdown of tomorrow’s events (all to be expected for a busy and social bride on her big weekend).

Then she took off for 45 minutes with her step-brother (but that’s family, right?).

Then she bolted with two male hotel guests (who shall remain un-named – they’ve been through enough already), who were just there drinking and partying down with a whole bunch of Georgia trash who just happened to be having a wedding party at the same hotel they were checked in to.

When a first cousin (groom’s side) saw the bride-to-be taking off with two randoms, he got a little suspicious, rounded up the troops and decided to launch a manhunt.

They were all over the place, looking like drunken children with beards, everyone rocking the jeans-and-a-striped-button-down-shirt uniform.

“You seen Kaylee?” They shouted at staff members and kept walking without waiting for an answer, rocks glasses sweating through napkins in hammy fists. “Kaylee…. Kay-LEE!”

Once they finally finished scouring the lobby, some went upstairs – some went down the escalator. Some of the less related third cousins peeled off from the crowd and went back in the bar for more shots.

Kaylee’s father and the groom-to-be checked all the restrooms, the sidewalk and then went upstairs to check her room. They didn’t find her, and were on their way back downstairs from the 17^th floor. Dad hit the down elevator button and they waited, sharing some small talk and sipping from their beers. It was 23 seconds from the time they hit the button until the down indicator was illuminated and they heard the ding. 23 seconds of calm.

When the door opened, the terror began.

Upon official review of the security cameras, it appeared that Kaylee, the bride-to-be, entered the elevator at 10:37pm with two gentlemen she met in the bar. She began to aggressively kiss one of them while the other stood there awkwardly in the corner of the elevator car. 34 seconds after entering the elevator, she pulled her own breasts out of her top and began to fondle both of the men. The man she was kissing was more spirited in reciprocating. The second man appeared less involved; he stood there somewhat passively and swatted her hand away from his crotch twice. She appeared to deride the second man’s thwarting of her advances, but since there was no sound on the tapes, it was impossible to know exactly what she said. Whatever it was, it caused him shrug his shoulders in a defensive way that lead everyone watching the tapes to believe she had questioned his manhood. She then turned her focus back to the first man. As she bent down, her hand unzipped his fly and she started to fellate him. At 10:38pm, the elevator car stopped at the 11^th floor. When the door opened, an elderly couple started to walk into the car, but stopped just across the threshold and backed out. As the doors closed, the two men hi-fived each other while Kaylee continued to fellate the first man. The second man then took an iPhone out of his pocket and began to take video of the scene in the elevator car. At each floor, when the elevator stopped, he would videotape the reactions of the people who started to enter (but would then back out) and the man would then pan back to the sexual activity. Not one person waiting for the elevator on the floors got in. The trio rode up to the 34^th floor of the building and, without exiting, started their decent. At this point the bride-to-be was not only fellating one of the bar patrons, but was now digitally stimulating herself and presenting her genitals to the man with the iPhone in the moments he wasn’t videotaping the shocked reactions of hotel patrons. By 10:41pm, on it’s descent, the elevator car approached the 17^th floor. This time, when the doors opened, there was a different reaction. After approximately five and a half seconds of what looked like shocked stillness on everyone’s part, the two men who had been waiting for the elevator on the 17^th floor rushed into the car and began to brutally assault the two men who were already in the car.

In that five and a half seconds that passed before the assault began, Kaylee, the blushing bride-to-be, decided it might be better to scream rape than to admit to her father and fiancé that she was partaking in a random sexual act with two complete strangers – and had just been busted by said father and fiancé in said sexual act.

Yep – she claimed rape with a mouthful of cock and three of her own fingers jammed in her hole.

The two bar patrons took a fucking beating that night. After suffering three broken ribs, four black eyes, one ruptured cornea, a lacerated kidney and a total of seven broken fingers from defensive wounds, the police showed up and cuffed them both. Of course, not all of their injuries were suffered in the elevator car. It proved to be a long trip from the 17^th floor to the security office. None of the pre-wedding partygoers took mercy on either one of these men, who were at the time presumed rapists, on the way down the stairs.

By the time the cops were on scene, there were also two rape-techs from both Columbia Presbyterian and St. Luke’s Roosevelt on site arguing over who had jurisdiction in the matter.

The partiers who didn’t take part in the merciless beating were finishing shots and walking out of the bar and into the lobby, saying grave, drunk things way too loudly like, “Yep – we got a rape situation here,” and, “I fuckin’ wish I could kill that fuckin’ rapist,” and, “$9 is waaaay too much for a goddamn Corona.”

The police were taking statements and shooting glares at the two suspects sitting in the security office. The father of the bride was pacing back and forth saying, “Oh my baby girl,” with his head in his hands. There was an unusual lack of tears for someone making so many crying noises.

The groom-to-be was examining a cut on his knuckle with a curious expression on his face. He said, “Can we take a look at the security tapes?”

The lead detective who had just showed up said, “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. It might be too much for you, champ. Leave this to us.”

“No,” he insisted, “I want to see it.”

The detective shot a look to the director of security, who was putting all the playback passwords into the system.

When he finally hit play on the monitor the room took on an immediate hush.

At 22:38 on the playback – when it was clear that sweet Kaylee, bride-to-be, was not only a willing participant, but appeared to be the aggressor in the situation, everyone started shooting involuntary looks at the groom and then to their own shoes – then their gazes returned to the screen.

Myron from the hotel’s security detail broke the silence by saying, “Fuckin’ white-people.”

The suspect with the split tongue and shattered eardrum shouted, “See… I told you we didn’t rape that girl.”

Pandemonium broke out. Everyone had a loud opinion in the matter. No more than fifteen tense seconds later, the madness was stomped out by the sergeant with the Magnum P.I. moustache who said, “EVERYBODY. SHUT. THE FUCK. UP.”

Should I tell you how they made Kaylee come downstairs and verbally confirm in front of at least 55 onlookers that she was not, in fact, raped? How about how they uncuffed the two unlucky suspects and sent them to the hospital for immediate treatment of their wounds; that now included baton strikes to the kneecaps and brain swelling? Or how the father of the bride kept grabbing disinterested police officers and trying to convince them that a sexual assault had indeed taken place, as the cops said, “Have a seat, sir,” and pushed him off?

What would you say if I told you the bride-to-be grabbed the groom-to-be and took him into the back hallway and said, “We can still make this work, baby,” and took his face in her hands and tried to kiss him?

His look at her was one of true pity, more than anger. “I mean… who does this shit?” he said, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his striped button-down shirt. “Seriously… Who blows two guys in an elevator on her own goddamn wedding weekend? Who fucks their own fucking stepbrother and then says it ain’t no big deal – cause you ain’t blood? You’re fucked up. So fucked up.”

He wiped a bloody knuckle with his shirttail and walked away.

Should I also tell you how, after he left his freshly dumped fiancé in the hallway, the police arrested him for assault?

Cowboys and Robbers

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:47:00 +0000

He calls all the white boys Billy, the black guys Jack and the Latinos – Pedro. He calls the Asians Lee. All the girls get lumped under the umbrella moniker Nugget.

I try to fake a conversation on my phone as soon as I walk out the front door of the douchey brunch spot on Eldridge Street and see him up ahead.

But my number is up.

“Hey Billy! Spare some change – get sumthinta eat?”

I hold my left hand over the microphone of my phone as if I’m trying to shield the person on the other end from hearing my side conversation. I do my best to look very busy. “Not today,” I whisper and go back to my phone mouthpiece with, ‘yeah – I told him to be careful, but he can be impetuous.’

“Sheeeeiiiiyt. Now I know you ain’t on the phone wid a word like impetus,” Cowboy says. “Thass some buttfuck made-up phone talk. Hows about you go into that pocket and gimme fi-dollas so I can get a bag and call it a day.”

I’ve never seen Cowboy this far downtown. His usual haunts range from the Upper West Side to Chelsea. He looks like a black Keith Richards with scarves around his head and a long, black leather jacket that he wears whether it’s July or January. He ‘borrows’ money from the doormen at the Gate with the distinction that he actually pays them back about one out of every four times. I found out that the usually tight fisted doormen started giving him a few bucks when, one day, Cowboy threatened to fling a palm full of feces at them if he didn’t get his fix money.

I mutter, ‘Hold on a second,’ into the mouthpiece and turn to face the weather beaten smack-addict. “Sorry Cowboy. Not Today. I’m broke.” Then I go back to my phone with a very lame, ‘well, she would say that. She’s incapable of shouldering any responsibility.’

Cowboy stops in his tracks and says, “How you know my name?”

I keep walking.

“How the FUCK you know my name?” I see him running up alongside me. “Either you a cop or you a faggit or you a kinda… demon-devil. Some shit bout to jump off. You don’t know me!” he shouts, spraying my face with fetid junky spittle. “HOW YOU KNOW MY MOTHAFUCKIN NAME?”

My darkened phone stays glued to my ear and I say, ‘Sure – just give me one more second,’ to the caller that isn’t there. “Damn, Cowboy,” I say to him gently. “What’s wrong, man? It’s me – Billy. You see me all the time uptown.”

His face freezes mid-snarl.

“Listen man – I don’t have any money today. You got the last of it 20 minutes ago, when I gave you that seven bucks around the corner on Division Street. Remember?”

He scratches his massive whole-head dreadlock with one hand and picks the underwear out of his ass with the other.

“You cleaned me out Cowboy. I don’t have anything else.”

Cowboy looks around, then back at me, a smile of recognition creeping into his smashed face. He says, “Oh man, dat was you?”

“Uh-huh,” I say, my weak stomach a second from imploding.

“Shit – Billy. My main man Billy. Billy the Kid,” he says almost jovially. “Yeah… Over there on Division and…” He searches the air.

“Division and Ludlow Street,” I say, completing the thought for him. I can’t believe this is working.

“Yeah – Division and Ludlow. Division and Ludlow. A little smoke – a little blow.” He reaches out to shake my hand in a gesture that is as much a demand as it is an invitation. “My man, Billy. Lookin out fo me.”

I tentatively reach out, hoping he will somehow get distracted. His hand is slimy and repulsive to the touch. I imagine shitbloodcumaidsebola as he grips my left hand. I keep the phone to my ear.

“Wass been up, Billy Billy?” he asks.

“Sorry Cowboy,” I say and motion to the phone. “Important call.”

“Oh shiiit, man. Yous on da phone. Why you didn’t say nuthin?” he says in an exaggerated whisper as if he is now the ambassador of manners and etiquette. “Busy Billy – busy bee. Finish that call man. Sorry to bother you.”

And then my phone, pressed to my ear for dear life, starts ringing.

Get Some

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 17:31:00 +0000

Cameron comes back from a two-hour lunch and lazily swipes at an Irish coffee in a to-go cup while watching clips of catastrophic helicopter crashes on You Tube as per usual.

“Whoa,” he says. “Check this one out. Looklooklook! The door gunner falls out right before the chopper hits the ground – and the rotor cuts him in half before the entire thing falls on him.”

“Huh?”

“See,” he says and freezes the frame right before the giant green bird falls sideways into the ground.

Sure enough, through the pixelated screen, the whirling blade appears to devastate the blurry figure on the ground a moment before the tin can falls on top of him.

I feel like I might throw up for a second.

“Magnificent,” Cameron says.

“Yeah… um, broadcast yourself. Or something,” I say and turn away until my salivary glands stop producing that pre-puke waterfall.

Three phone lines light up and I am thankful to have something to throw my attention into other than death and destruction and fabulous restaurant reservations.

“Gate concierge – this is Sean.”

“Did you say Sean?”

“Yes I did – how can I help?”

“Is that S-H-A-W-N – or S-E-A-N?” she spells out in a nasally, whiney voice that only originates in certain sections of Long Island; or most of Westchester.

I remain silent. I hate the spellers. Through them clarifying your name, they are in essence trying to bully you into thinking that they are going to hold you supremely accountable for this conversation in future negotiations. These are usually people who know that a room upgrade or a dinner reservation isn’t available who call ahead and get someone’s name and then use it at the front desk, saying Sean guaranteed a two-bedroom suite at $99 per night – or Sean guaranteed us a same day reservation at Per Se at 8 O’clock. There is always an agenda with the name spellers.

“Hello-ow?”

“Yes ma’am. I’m here.”

“How do you spell your name?”

“Ma’am – I’m the only Sean at the concierge desk – or at the Gate for that matter. I’m happy to help. You will have no trouble finding me in the future by simply asking for Sean. But rest assured, I spell it the right way.”

The shock I have caused on the other end of the phone line is palpable. There is a little puff of air and I know what she will say next.

“Let me speak to your manager.”

“Of course ma’am – right away. And whom may I say is calling?”

“Linda Blumenthal,” she says as if that should scare me into submission.

“Of course Ms. Blumenthal. Would you mind spelling that for me please.”

“Oh… I do mind.”

“In that case, I’ll just need the last four digits of your social security number, Ms. Blumenthal,” I say and Cameron’s ears perk up.

“Listen – I’ll say this once more… put your manager on the phone NOW.”

“Right away ma’am,” I say, and close with, “Have a pleasant day.” I mouth the word CUNT and transfer the call to Cameron who is only too happy to be my manager right now.

As I deal with another call regarding 30 tickets to the new production of ‘Death of a Salesman’, I manage to hear snippets of what Cameron says to the angry Linda Blumenthal:

“Of course… C-A-M-E-R-O-N… I will deal with him myself… Yes, he can be an arrogant person… Trust me, he is on his final warning… well, I don’t think he’s an anti-Semite – but you never know… Of course, I’d be happy to help you with that… I’ll just need the last four digits of your social security number… No ma’am – you listen…”

He hangs the phone up and turns his attention to an infrared military video showing blurry insurgents in some shithole being evaporated by a Predator Drone. “Get some,” he says and sips from his boozy to-go cup.

Feia De Cara, Boa De Bunda

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:02:00 +0000

The comment comes in on Monday:

Consiergee a no bueno.

Make a false reservate taxi car.

No come auroporto proper day.

Hotel must fire consiergee for

make a bad servicio.

Geez – thanks Sandro De Deus Santos Guimares Pires Scatamburlo. We appreciate your feedback immensely.

See, the hotel hires a third-party service called The Borum Group to send guest satisfaction surveys to people via email upon their checkout. This gives the guest ample opportunity to gripe about the hotel’s shortcomings – or to raise the mufukkin roof for an employee they think went above and beyond on their behalf.

While the feedback is sometimes positive or constructive, for the most part it is the wild rantings of people who feel most comfortable communicating via computer and are only able to unleash the venom when they are sitting safely locked away at home without the socially paralyzing fear of someone calling ‘bullshit’ to their faces.

The bullshit in question today is this comment from these Brazilians regarding the ‘bad servicio’ they received from us.

While the Brazilian economy is on a massive upswing and business is booming, we only ever see the mega-rich and social elite of the country at the hotel. And, trust me, they’re proud of the fact their day doesn’t ever involve getting shot at by ten year old gangsters at baile-funk parties in the favelas. So proud, in fact, that they have the tendency to come off as kind of boastful, super classist and pushy. Not much of a winning combination.

Unless you’re a total ballsack.

Then way to go.

Our car service attempted to pick them up on the first day of their reservation – which was confirmed seventeen times via email by some travel agent named Fernanda in Sao Paulo who would end each email with ‘please to confirmate my reservate’.

The car waited five hours outside the TAM terminal, the driver trying to peek into customs, looking for a Brazilian family being roughed up by the TSA or something. Finally, the dispatch center cut him loose.

That night, the hotel posted the two rooms as a no-show and cancelled their reservations.

The next day we field a frantic call from a woman shouting, “Driver! Driver!” over and over into the phone.

Cameron, who fielded the call, thought it was a joke at first and shouted back non-sequiters back at the woman like, “Talcum! Las Vegas!”

“Driver!”

“Carbon Dating!”

When he finally realized what this was all about, he explained that it would take 45 minutes to get a car out to the airport to pick them up. They confirmed that they would wait.

Of course they didn’t.

An hour later, they are standing at the reception desk shrieking that the hotel never should have canceled their reservation – and that they just had to take a ‘stink yellow taxi car’ from the airport.

Apparently, yesterday, TAM Airlines flight 8082 left on time – and they didn’t wait around for a family of four who thought they could show up to the airport an hour-and-a-half after wheels-up and still get on the aircraft. This very same family of four is completely fucking gobsmacked that the hotel employees here at The Gate didn’t reach out telepathically and re-book their rooms and car service once these dipshits missed their flight and decided not to call anyone and tell them about their significant change of plans.

To placate and pacify the newly arrived guests (mostly so they would stop yelling in Portuguese in the middle of the lobby), the reception manager upgraded them to a Cloud Suite at no extra charge and sent some expensive wine up to the room as a peace pipe.

We were in no such position at the concierge desk, as the car service did exactly as they were told and had to pay the driver for his wasted day; a day he had to turn actual business away so he could continue to wait for the phantom Duke and Duchess of Awesome.

So the Brazilians paid for their car service even though they had to take a taxi like commoners – and the following Monday vilified the Concierge with a ridiculous comment that is sure to raise some eyebrows at corporate.

As soon as I see the broad shoulders overfilling the cheap suit, walking towards my desk, I know this is going to be a total waste of a half hour where I have to re-invent the wheel for the FNG – and prove that we were in the right. Emails and confirmation numbers and phone records will come into the conversation. I’m going to have to lawyer up for my talk with this idiot about why we got a bad Borum review.

His mouth is twisted into a smug, pink pucker – like a freshly shaved asshole that thinks the world of itself. The undeserved self-worth given off during his stride through the lobby almost makes me feel bad for him. It must mean he doesn’t feel very good about himself – that it’s all an act. Right?

At least that’s what I tell myself so I don’t feel like as much of a jerk trying to kiss the proper amount of ass, while giving off the appropriate air of technical knowhow and bluster to a new General Manager yet again.

We keep getting new ones… and about the time I have the GM trained to not question me at every turn (having finally proven myself as a worthy employee), they get shit-canned and I’m stuck proving myself to some new D Bag who comes in, guns blazing, looking to mop up the hotel’s problems in a week and declare a quick victory on the Russian Front. Where the other generals have failed, this new bozo thinks he can walk in with a new attitude and put the screws in deep and make the problems go away – the hotel emerging from the ashes of itself, born anew – like many a rising Phoenix.

It is way too frustrating and disheartening to take all of the corporate grime that comes with a hasty and ill-prepared regime-change personally. To persevere, it becomes necessary to step outside your body, sacrificing your ego and falling on your own sword from time to time as a pre-emptive tactic for keeping those paychecks rolling in.

I becomes the dissociative you.

It wouldn’t seem so pathetic if you hadn’t seen it so many damn times. It takes the new GM a few months to settle in and crack some skulls, taking no prisoners. He spins his wheels, but calls it ‘making headway’. Every minute victory is blown way out of proportion – and the reams of self-congratulatory emails claiming ‘progress’ and ‘resolve’ makes me Select-All/Delete as soon as I get in for the day. Then for the next two months there’s a desperation that sets in when your fearless new chairman realizes the beast is bigger than he is – and he puts up the last minute, all hands on deck ass kicking party. Some heads roll. Lambs to the slaughter… blahblahblah. Then a silent week where he probably gets called into some higher up executive office and told that he has been an ineffective leader; that something has gotta change. The next three months are spent trying to rectify all the wrongs and unburn all the bridges that he left in ruins. He hits a point where he realizes he needs the people whom he very recently felt above, and makes an effort to include them in his new direction.

But by then it is too late. The shareholders are a fickle bunch and the new GM hasn’t drummed up the revenue he said he was going to. And he hasn’t stuck a whole bunch of shoe up the union’s butthole like he said he was going to. And there have been the usual complaints of sexual harassment and improprieties with costly liquor stock. He goes away one day and the whispers begin.

A week later they tell you he has departed Lanzarote Hotel Group for other ‘business opportunities’.

Of course you have been around the block and know that means he was allowed to quit – maybe given a decent severance and permitted to save some face. The wording gives the perception of this being voluntary on his part, but he was pushed out.

Two months later, you’re shaking some new guy’s hand a little too firmly, laughing at an unfunny joke, feeling like a dick. The new GM is here and he’s looking to whip this place into shape; take no prisoners… kick a little ass along the way – and who knows… maybe take some names.

It is an exhausting process. One that requires you to look the other way, jump through the same hoops and groan your way through the same paces the last guy put you through.

One that makes you defend every poor Borum comment your department gets – no matter how ludicrous it may be.

But somehow you’re still here.

Hezbollah Strikes Again

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:07:00 +0000

“Oh jesus dude,” I say and cover my mouth and nose. I feel like I have swallowed an evil mouthful of Sarin gas.

“What?” Cameron says, lifting his eyes toward me for a second, then keeps on watching helicopter crashes on YouTube.

“What do you mean, what?” I say and back up as if the billion-year-old egg smell can’t find me two-feet away.

Suddenly, Cameron follows suit – and we are both gagging and looking at each other accusatorily. “Fuck,” he says. “Why would you do that?”

I glare at him as if to say don’t even try to pass this off as mine. “You’re the one who ate okonomiyaki and Corn Nuts for lunch, bitch.”

But it dawns on both of us at the same moment.

We have been Cropdusted.

Most likely, some Eurotrash POS walked by our desk and dropped a huge, wet fart and walked away.

I scan the hotel lobby for the assailant.

We abandon our post.

Like a G6

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 16:07:00 +0000

Tommy Ho has got you covered.

“Nintendo 3DS: you want? Ok – no problem. Bluetooth headset: you want? Ok – no problem. Samsung Galaxy S III: you want? Ok – no problem… but give me a couple days.” His banter reads like a PC Richard circular stuck in the Sunday Post.

He runs what he refers to as his wholesale business out of the trunk of his car. No trip to Chinatown would be complete without a stop by his boxy, tricked out Toyota Scion to have a peek at his wares.

Last week he had $15 / 20mg, three pill sample boxes of Cialis he was able to procure from a friendly uptown urologist’s receptionist. He always has cigarettes – Marlboro Lights and Newports – without the tax stamps. Two weeks ago I contemplated the purchase of an old pair of computerized Adidas 1s that fell off a truck and an array iPod Minis that were liberated from a UPS shipment by the palate.

He once asked me, “You need a gun?”

At the time, I replied, “Nah – I’m good,” with a feigned, steady cool even though I was somewhat thrown by the inquiry. I did, however, put him in contact with a member of our bell staff that had recently had a little run-in with a very tattooed member of the Trinitarios drug gang in Washington Heights and felt he needed a bit of added protection. The bellman’s pants bulged at the waistband for a couple months until his fear subsided.

Aside from peddling stolen goods, he sets up card games and knows about every dingy, illegal casino set up in shuttered noodle factories where you can drink 50 cent Tiger beer, shoot dice and play cards; sweating your sins away while being stared at by scarred up mafia guys. Tommy’s down with the remnants of the Ghost Shadows and Flying Dragons – as well as recently paroled members of BTK (Born to Kill), the Vietnamese crew that ran shit in the 80s and 90s.

Every concierge worth his salt knows a guy like Tommy Ho.

I like Tommy because he’s old-school New York – real royalty. His accent is that of a Brooklyn shipyard worker, raised on a steady diet of hip-hop, with the slightest hint of his first generation Chinese roots. Tommy always gets philosophical after a few beers. He says things like:

“Why people always gotta answer the phone ‘hello?’ all tentative and shit, like they don’t know who’s calling? Shit man, you got caller ID – you know it’s me – pick up faggot.” And: “People feel like they gotta own stuff so they don’t feel like they got nothing in this world. They should give me one of them Nobel shits for all the work I do making things available to people who don’t feel like paying full price.” And: “Bitches always gonna try to stick you for that paper.”

His voice has a weathered three-pack-a-day gravel to it, which is not at all unpleasant. He always makes me feel like a valued customer, whether I’m buying a sweet new laptop or just a few cartons of smokes for resale. I was somewhat touched the day he said, “Ok – from now on you get Chinese prices. You ain’t no whiteboy in my book, you feel me.”

Of course, he still calls me Gwai Lo. Translation: White Ghost.

In The Weeds

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:17:00 +0000

It starts with one phone call; some guy we referred to Nobu for dinner and now wants a table at Rose Bar. Another call comes in, but I have to put it on hold because I am being summoned to make a reservation at Milos for 16 hammered investment bankers who lean and sway at the desk. They have been in the bar since 5:30, trying to figure out how to blow some of that bailout money. I pick up the phone and dial.

“Tell em we want a good table,” one of them says and fingers a five-dollar bill.

I mumble something to the hostess about giving them the table closest to the bathroom and she laughs.

“All set guys,” I say as I hang up, scribbling the address on the back of a business card.

“It’s gonna be a good table right?”

“Yep. The best one they have.”

“Nice,” he says and hands me the bill like it’s a fifty or something.

I put two more calls on hold and book an SUV service for a German film crew who has been filming a documentary on street-basketball for the past two-months and occupying two adjoining suites on the 25^th floor. A pinched face woman asks for a copy of USA Today. Two sixteen year olds ask where they can go where the doorman won’t card them. A guy with black fingernail polish leaves a copy of his demo for the A&R guy from Sony in room 1790, who picks up his packages daily and makes a huge show of dumping them all in the trash bin. Two street level prostitutes walk past the desk with a very short man in tow. This is their fourth trip out of the bar and up the elevators tonight.

I pick up one of the lines on hold and thank them for their patience. The line is dead.

The next woman who walks up to the desk is all glasses and teeth. She says, “This is my attorney,” and nods to her friend who stands there mouth agape. Glasses has had a few drinks and probably feels a ton smarter than she did when she got off work. She doesn’t introduce herself.

“Hi,” I say, desperately trying to place three calls on hold at once.

“My attorney tells me that if we smoke weed in the street we’ll get busted.”

“Umm…” I’m not sure if she’s serious, but my bullshit detector just armed itself.

She takes my silence to mean that I didn’t hear her over the dj mix in the lobby. “My attorney tells me that if we smoke weed in the street we’ll get busted.”

“Your attorney may have a valid point,” I say and put another call on hold. One rings back and I send it to voicemail.

“Well…um, where can we – uh – smoke weed?”

Her friend, the attorney, looks at her and says, “what are you doing?”

“I’m dead serious,” she says, gathering steam and very much enamored with her advanced sense of humor. “Can we smoke a joint in the street and get away with it? My attorney advises me against it. But I wanna get hiiiiigh.”

I want to say I’m too busy for this shit. I want to say this clumsy, drink-fuelled attempt at humor should be embarrassing enough for you to stop on your own accord. I want to point out that her attorney isn’t even Samoan. This librarian, with her magnified eyeballs swimming behind inch-thick corrective lenses, is not a pot smoker. I get the impression she thinks she is pulling one over on me by making me answer a joke question with a serious answer. She thinks this will be sooooo hilarious when she tells the girls.

Picking up the phone, I take a waiting call to separate me from the odd scene unfolding in front of me, and it dawns on me that I’ve got it all wrong. I suddenly have the feeling that Glasses is horny and desperately lonely. The more successful girls have already left the bar with their boyfriends. Glasses is taking off for home and this is her last-ditch effort to use an un-pick-up line to wrassle up some company before she is buzzed and alone again in her studio apartment in Astoria, listening to Tori Amos and smothering her cats with kisses. I feel a rare pang of empathy for this four-eyed loner.

Her friend, the attorney, grabs her by the arm and says, “let’s go.”

“Can we smoke weed out there?” she asks pointing to the terrace bar as she is being drug away from my desk.

“I’m sure your attorney would advise you against it,” I say.

Every single phone line is either ringing or on hold. It is a full switchboard. A desire or need is linked to each little flashing red and green button. I close my eyes, breathe deeply and press a random button.

“Thanks for holding. This is Sean.”

“Yes. Hi Sean. I’m calling from Matsuri to confirm a dinner reservation for tomorrow evening. Four people – 9pm – under the name Wilkinson.” Her tone is smooth and even.

Looking in the computer I don’t see any reservations under the name Wilkinson, or anything booked at Matsuri for that matter. Confirming dinner reservations is such bullshit. People routinely pull a no-show and no amount of reconfirmation or intimidation on the restaurant’s part is going to force someone into going through with a dinner when something better comes along.

“Yep. Here it is. Wilkinson, four at nine,” I lie. “Thanks for calling,”

“Have a great eveni….” She says, but I’m on to the next call.

I recommend Marquee to a total gino who calls looking for a, “fucking awesome club.”

I book Scarpetta on Opentable.com at 11pm for the guest from room 947 as she berates me for having put her on hold for so long.

I listen to hold music for one tenth of a second before hanging up on the next call.

I give detailed instructions on taking the subway from JFK into the city to some hippie backpacker who calls me ‘bra’ and insists on lessening his carbon footprint.

“Thanks for holding. This is Sean.”

I take a flower order from someone in Luxembourg who speaks better English than Tony Blair, who’s wife of thirty years will be here visiting a sick relative on their wedding anniversary.

I confirm that dry-cleaning was dropped of at 3:45pm for Ms. Willett in room 1102.

I set up a 2am appointment with our house-doctor for the guest in suite 666 who says he is pissing broken glass and swears that, “this never happens.”

“Thanks for holding. This is Sean.”

I suggest Superdive to some PR lady who wants to take a band she represents out for beers, “where they might get noticed – but not harassed…you know what I mean?” I assure her that I do.

I check the NJ Transit schedule to Princeton Junction for someone with bad cell phone reception and shout the next morning’s early train times into the mouthpiece like a stock trader.

I dispatch housekeeping to room 801 to bring extra towels to, “clean up all this blood.”

There are no more lines ringing and only one on hold. Taking a sip of cold coffee, I stare at the last little, red blinking light on the switchboard until whoever is on the other end gets sick of waiting and the light extinguishes.

Does This Ed Hardy T-Shirt Covered in Glitter Make Me Look Famous?

noreply@blogger.com (The Same Suit Every Day) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 02:28:00 +0000

“What kind food you want eat?” I say and mime shoveling a spoonful of something into my open mouth.

“Aaaahhh… rest-a-ront,” he says for the fifth time.

“Fuck,” I mutter and pull the iPad out from under the desk and search Google images for sushi and show it to him. He shakes his head no. I pull up an image of a taco platter and he shakes his head no like a pitcher waving off signs to throw a slider when it is obvious high heat is required for this batter. Pictures of coq au vin and a baguette inspire the same reaction as jpegs of pad-Thai and woon sen noodles. I’m about to show him a photo of a steak and baked potato, and if that fails, a pic of a snake heart in a shot glass when he has an idea and hurriedly pulls a small Farsi to English dictionary out and starts flipping through pages until he reaches what he wants for dinner.

“Rest-a-ront,” he says and points to a word with an index finger so fat and misshapen it looks like a big toe.

I hold the book up to my face and try to angle it towards the tiny amount light being given off from the single floodlight running on the emergency generator.

“Oh – you do want French,” I say, figuring the guest’s toe-finger is covering the word I’m supposed to be seeing. I figure it’s a decent guess because we’re in the F section of his gnarled little book. “French… Français?” I mimic a moustache twirl that confuses him. “Pepe le Pew?”

Taking his book back like this is my fault, he gets a pen out of his jacket pocket and underlines the word – then shoves the book into my face.

He has underlined the word fashion.

“Rest-a-ront,” he says. “Fishons rest-a-ront.”

I shoot a look at Cameron who is biting his lip, trying not to laugh. He picks up the phone and fakes a call. It is not uncommon for people to say this – although they’re usually Italian. Normally the request comes out something like: “I ama look for a trendy dinings. Fashion food.” You could send these guests to a place that specializes in bland meat substitutes and Crystal Light and they would be happy – as long as the next table over is comprised of people who look vaguely famous.

I scribble the address of the Waverly Inn on a business card and hand it to him. “Here you are sir. Very fashionable.”

“Rest-a-ront?” he says, taking the card as if there may be a huge mistake being made on my part.

“Yes. Fishons restaurant, sir. Perfectly vapid choice. Style over substance, as ordered. Nothing but the best for you.”

“Fishons,” he says backing away, looking doubtful.

“Fishons indeed,” I say, nodding as I acknowledge the guest walking up to the desk in hopes that this one will leave me alone.