Jack Rose

2005

The Scotts call it Hogmanay. The French refer to it as, la Saint-Sylvestre. Here it’s called New Year’s Eve.

I call it pure hell.

But it pays.

I’ve worked every New Year’s Eve since I began my career as a waiter and have come to rely on the massive tips I receive to pay my January rent. But this year my restaurant is closed. No New Year’s gig. Panic sets in.

Then Liz calls.

Liz is a friend and the general-manager of Jack Rose, a hefty two-story restaurant on 47th Street and Eighth Avenue. She heard through the omniscient restaurant grapevine that I’m off. She’s calling because she booked a party of 300 lower-to-middle class thirty-somethings from Queens, and two of her waiters are out with the flu. She needs me.

Hooray.

I think.

Party starts at 10:00 pm. I arrive at 8:30 pm, eager, but a tad tremulous. I’ve not worked here before, but Jack Rose uses the same POS system I use in my restaurant. All I’ll need is a brief overview of the menu, and I should be fine.

“Walk me through it,” I say to Liz.

“First off, there’s no food.”

“No food?”

“Nope. Bottle service only. Only food we serve is a complimentary platter of fruit that comes with each bottle sold.”

“Sounds simple enough.”

“It is, but…

Here it is. There’s always a “but.”

Liz says: “I’ve been doing this same party for three years now. They come from deep within the bowels of Queens, which is not a bad thing, but it is a thing. At approximately one o’clock you must stop whatever you’re doing and join the staff in the kitchen.”

“What are we doing in the kitchen?”

“Hiding.”

“Hiding? Why?”

“You’ll see.”

We strip the downstairs tables of any and all accoutrements. Only item remaining is a small tabletop frame holding the Bottle Menu. Bottles start at $350.00.

Upstairs has been converted into a dance hall, festooned with colorful streamers and “Happy New Year” banners. There’s a DJ.

10:15 pm. Nine buses pull up in front of the restaurant. 300 guests arrive en masse, a swarm of eager to whoop-it-up merrymakers.

My first table: seven mountainous tough guys wearing plastic New Year’s Eve glasses.

I say: “Good evening, gentlemen, and Happy New year. Welcome to–”

Big Dude at the head of the table cuts me off: “Gimme a bottle of Jack and a bottle of Patrón Silver. Plenty of ice. And a liter of Dr. Pepper.”

“I don’t think we have Dr. Pepper.”

“Not to worry,” says the guy with greasy grimy fingers sitting next to Big Dude, “I brung some.”

He produces a giant liter of Dr. Pepper.

I have no idea where he was hiding it, but there it is.

Big Dude says: “That better not be diet!”

“Nah,” says greasy grimy finger guy, “I learnt my lesson.”

I serve the booze, a bucket of ice, and a stack of red Solo cups. I watch as the guys pour equal amounts of Patrón and Jack Daniels over ice, topping it with a splash of Dr. Pepper.

I dare to ask: “What is that called?”

“It’s called a ‘Rusty Seppuku.’”

I give the guys their complimentary platter of fruit.

“What’s that?”

“Fruit.”

“We’re not paying for that.”

“It’s complimentary,” I say, then realizing I’m talking to an auto-mechanic from Far Rockaway, I add, “It’s free.”

“I don’t like it, but okay. Leave it. And go.”

I go.

My next table, all women, shimmering Bon-Ton dresses, two pounds of hairspray each.

“Good evening and Happy New–

“Yeah, whatever. Two bottles of Belvedere and a bottle of Diet Mountain Dew.”

I decide not to tell then that we don’t have Mountain Dew, diet or otherwise. I serve the Belvedere, Solo cups, ice, a liter of 7-Up, and the plate of complimentary fruit.

“Happy New Year,” I say.

They roll their eyes. I think I hear one say, “Pervert.”

I’m beginning to get the idea. I approach my third table:

“What’ya want?”

“Bottle of Makers Mark and a bottle of Absolut.”

I drop the bottles and the other shit on the table.

It proceeds like this for the next hour-and-a-half. Bottle after bottle after bottle, as the outer borough nymphs and satyrs contort themselves into a frenzied bacchanalia of desperate “look-we’re-having-fun” grimaces.

Ten minutes to midnight we open all doors and windows. We’re five blocks from Times Square. Both hands on the clock reach their zenith, bringing a great tumultuous roar from a million mid-town revelers that washes over us like a tsunami.

“Happy New Year!!!!”

The party kicks in.

At 12:45 Liz commands us to drop all checks.

“I’m cutting them off. They can’t get any drunker.”

She’s right. All 300 guests are unashamedly polluted.

I drop all checks. Collect credit cards, process them. Last one to get his credit card voucher is Big Dude.

Big Dude takes his sweet, drunken time signing the bill. It’s now one o’clock.

I look around. No waiters. I recall Liz’s earlier warning. And there she is, waving at me from the kitchen. Actually, she’s not waving, she’s frantically beckoning me, like a mother calling her child in from a dangerous thunderstorm.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

I collect Big Dude’s credit card slip, say goodnight, and turn to go. I’m on the other side of the dining room, fifteen yards or so from the kitchen doors. I start walking, but am stopped by an eerie, unsettling quiet. Kind of like that ten seconds of silence before the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Then the vomiting begins.

Two of the big-haired dames from my second table lift their chins and roar as they spew vomit upward like a pair of Las Vegas fountains. To my right, greasy grimy finger guy stands and paints the wall with rancid-smelling watermelon puke.

“DUCK!” yells Liz.

I duck just as two women, standing three feet apart on either side of me, barf a flame thrower of puke that practically singes the top of my head.

“Run!” screams Liz, “RUN!”

I run, but am blocked by an enormous woman who, bent over, waters the floor with an unending stream of hurled purple and green sick.

I am surrounded by a cacophony of hurling, heaving and retching.

I leap over a chunky pile of puke. I skirt another pile that seems to have something living inside of it. I reach the kitchen door, so far mostly unscathed by the communal upchucking.

But before Liz can close the door, Big Dude appears, and with a great bellow, purposely, it seems, sprays me from head to toe with five gallons of regurgitated Rusty Seppuku juice.

I stand, arms outstretched, dripping stomach acid and Dr. Pepper.

I strip off my waiter’s togs and Liz and the my co-waiters hose me down with the nozzle from the dish washer.

We wait while the vomitus carnage continues in the dining room. It sounds like a human slaughterhouse. Someone suggests we call an ambulance, but Liz pooh-poohs the idea.

“By four in the mourning, they’ll have gotten it all out of their systems, and they’ll actually be sober again.”

She’s correct. By four in the morning, the guests calmly gather their things, and, completely sober, step over their piles of vomit and make their way to the awaiting buses.

I make $1,500 and swear off booze for the next ten years.