Regret Pt. 1

I read an article a couple of months ago where John Lucas implied that he got so far out of his head on drugs and alcohol one night that he may have fucked a chicken. Not definitely, but may have. He's not saying this because he's proud of it. He's saying it to illustrate something we all know but somehow fail to heed: drugs and alcohol will mess with your judgment big time.

You don't have to fuck a chicken to know he's right. But once in a while we could all use some reminding.

But first, to catch you up real quick...

This hospital job has been every bit as soul-crushing as I thought it would be. I'll tell you all about it later -- the dishroom, the patient units, the grime that builds up under my nails and on my pants and seemingly beneath the top layer of my skin. The fact that I wear the same shirt and pants three or four days in a row, sometimes not showering the whole time. How dirty I've become. That I'm not one of the best guys at loading the huge industrial dishwasher, nor am I a whiz on the trayline. How many fucking weird people I work with. Later for all of that.

The good news is that I've made some friends. The PMS crew is made up of three types of employees:
1. Limited Term Employees, or LTE's -- we're allowed 1000 work hours, which is roughly 6-7 months, and then we have to find a new job. Most of the LTE's, like me, are young adults trying to figure out what to do with ourselves and we hope to have figured it out well before we hit that 1000. Because we just know we're better than this place. However, it has become increasingly clear to me that none of us will leave until we get to 1000 hours on the nose. The trick will be getting out before they figure out a way to sign you up for another 1000.
2. University Students -- kids looking to make some extra bucks as they attend UW. Just a regular student job for these guys, and most of them work about 15-20 hours a week. I have become friends with a few of them -- Dave G. from Philly, Eli from Wisconsin, and a few others.
3. Lifers -- these are people who have given up on ever leaving the trayline. Many of them are smart, accomplished people who for one reason or another got broken by the world and now they're too tired or too scared to try something new. Some of them are just hopeless dumbasses, too. They are all state employees and they have an excellent benefits plan with a reasonable retirement age, so they are just gonna go ahead and wait it out. By far the most interesting is Jerome, The Checker. A post-doc student in English in the early 70's, he blew it all when his advisor caught him in an unexplainable clinch with the advisor's wife. After that he kicked around New Orleans for a few years and then came up North and took this job in the early 80's. He's saved enough money to buy a nice house on Madison's East side, where he lives alone and spends his days and nights smoking pot and reading books and listening to music. He seems to have no interest in ever doing anything else. He's about 46 years old and has more stories than anyone I've ever met. In fact, he occasionally alludes to dark nights of chicken fucking but I think maybe he's speaking metaphorically.

More about them all later, but first I want to tell you with all seriousness: I have had my last drink. It's been almost a week now and I don't miss it one bit. What I especially don't miss is nights like the one I'm about to describe, the night that has made me fold up my drinkin' pants forever.

Last Friday was shaping up to be a good one. I had Saturday off for the first time in almost a month, and I was looking for a strong night on the town. My roommates were also in the mood to rid the world of some beer, so we formed a raw outline for the evening: 9pm, Church Key bar on University Avenue, beyond that let God take over. I had told Eli and Dave, my two Trayline buddies, to come out and join us for a few, and they were excited to do just that, having both turned 21 in the last couple of months.

That much of the evening is clear. A plan was in place, we had every intention of executing it, and we had a powerful tailwind. It had the makings of a historic evening.

Unfortunately, shit got fucked up real bad.

What follows is a rough chronological reconstruction of the evening, based on:
-my own memory of what happened (in black)
-what others have told me happened (in crimson)
-theories of missing events that I have come up with based on the things I do know (in blue)

8:35 pm: location: our apartment, 30 North Park Street

I am excited as hell for the evening. We are watching the Knicks crush Atlanta and drinking beer out of the fridge. Riley has transformed this team in one season and I never expected that. They were a piece of shit last year. We are playing beer darts as we watch, getting ready to go out. Regular game of 301, if you get over 40 on your three darts your opponent has to take a drink, and if you don't break 20 on three darts you have to drink a full beer. Max is punishing me but I am so far able to get more than 20 on each turn, avoiding a potentially lethal early-evening full beer slam.

Just before we leave, I score an 8 when only one of my three plastic tipped darts sticks in the dartboard (house rule: only darts that stick count) and I am forced to drink an entire beer. It's too cold, too carbonated, and I have to muscle it down in three passes. Bad sign.

9:30pm: location: The Church Key bar

Oh, it's a great night. Our Appleton connection, Jeff Ice, is tending bar and drinks are for the most part free. It's rare you get to use the phrase, our Appleton connection, but at the Church Key it applies. The Church Key is a bar on the second floor of a two story building on University Avenue. Juke box is pretty weak. Beer selection is average. Clientele is decidedly unglamorous. The only memorable thing about the bar is that it overlooks a deli/liquor store on the first floor. It's all open air between bar and deli but the deli is always closed when we're there. So you look over the balcony and you see all the snacks and stuff in the darkened store and it's just one of those things that makes you feel a little bit drunker.

A lot of my friends are from Appleton and so are a lot of the people who work at the Church Key. So the price is always right, making it a great place to fuel up on the cheap before you head out further into the night.

10:00pm: location: The Church Key bar

We're fueling up nice and steady when I look over at the entrance and see my young buddies Dave and Eli making their way in. Nice guys, both of 'em, as far as I can tell. This is the first time I've actually socialized with them outside of the hospital. Dave is from Philly, a real sarcastic dude who is dating a beautiful Filipino woman named Elena, who's also part of PMS. She's not here tonight. Eli is from a small town in deep deep northern Wisconsin, "up nort" as they say, and he's a bit socially awkward. Funny once you get to know him, but kind of quiet and morose at first glance. I bonded with Eli because he was kind of obnoxious at work and didn't really give a fuck about the bosses. He knew that firing him would hurt them worse than it would him. He's been my constant bud in the dishroom.

In the dishroom, all the dirty, half-eaten, disease-ridden patient trays roll by, and each person is responsible for pulling off certain items -- cups, small plates, silverware, bowls, etc, which are then rinsed, gathered on plastic trays and handed off to the loader, who pours them into the super-hot, fast-moving industrial dishwashing machine in perfect little rows, making sure none of the tread is uncovered as it rolls on through the machine. It's an art, these guys are every bit as slick as Las Vegas blackjack dealers. I know because I've been the loader before, and it is hard as hell. Every time you find a rhythm and get a nice row of bowls going, suddenly two of them will get stuck together by some crusted mashed potatoes and you're immediately behind and faced with tons of empty tread.

PM Dennis was covering for AM Dennis one night a couple of weeks ago, and as manager his job in the dishroom is to disassemble the "Isolation" trays, which are basically the ones from patients with infectious diseases. I guess they don't pay us enough for that so the managers deal with it. Still, about half the time the nurses forget to keep the Isolation trays separate and one has already gone halfway through the dish line before someone notices. The Isolation trays are easily identified because the paper placemats are put on upside down. I sometimes wonder if the Isolation patients realize that that's how we mark them as contagious outcasts. Or if they get their tray every day and think, Man these food service workers suck! My placemat's upside down again today! What are the odds? Anyway, it sucks when your hand is deep inside somebody's half-full, still-warm coffee mug and you see an upside down placemat. Yuck. At that point you yell out "ISOLATION!" and the attending Dennis comes and pulls the tray off the line, takes it in back and dismantles it safely somehow. This happens, these errors, about five times a night. Sometimes a syringe will float on by. That always gets some oohs and aahs. By the end of dishroom, which is the end of our shift, your hands are covered in slime and food and contagious snot and blood and you've lost all dignity and you want to take your new infections and go home. We wear rubber gloves but they don't help, the dirty rotten dishwater pools up in the fingers and you end up with a rash that can lead to an open wound and then Dear God you're fucked. I hate the dishroom.

But Eli makes it bearable. The two of us will along sing as loud as we can, each trying to be more earnest than the other as we trade off the Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder parts of Temple of the Dog's "Hunger Strike." The lifers just stare at us and keep grabbing bowls off trays. I remember on this particular night there was an Isolation tray and I yelled "ISOLATION!" and PM Dennis came over and dutifully grabbed it off the line. PM Dennis was sort of a by-the-book dude, not much fun. He was in his late 30's, an officious little fella with a thick beard. He was a lifer already although he may not have known it yet. As he grabbed the tray he muttered something sarcastic about the singing and that we should be paying attention and we just stared at him. As soon as Dennis turned his back to us, Eli picked up an uneaten orange, a big one too, and threw it as hard as he could at the wall across from the dishline. It smashed into the clock over there, which was covered with a metal grate for just such occasions. But Eli's throw was so perfect and so fierce that it slammed the grate into the clock, broke the glass, and stopped the clock. The room went silent. Dennis turned around, stared at Eli, who stared right back. Then Dennis just kept walking away with his Isolation tray, shaking his head. I never quite understood why he didn't fire or at least reprimand Eli right then and there to save face. My only thought was that his pride meant less to him than the aggravation he'd feel if he had to replace Eli on that night's dishline. I hope I never get to that point.

Anyway, Eli and Dave G. are here and we're all having a blast. I introduce them to my buddies and we make sure they can get the Appleton discount. We're at the bar swapping stories about the trayline, in fact at one point we put together an all-star trayline team made up only of gay and lesbian employees. We even had them all on their correct stations. I went to the bar and and returned with a round.

Eli: What the fuck is this beer, dude?
Me: It's Sam Adams.
Eli: It's fucking gross, dude.
Dave: Yeah, this is way too strong or something.
Me: No, it's good. You need to get used to it.
Dave: Can I get a Bud Light or something?
Eli: Get me an Old Mil or a Bud Light. This beer is getting me fucked up. It's too strong.
Me: Have you ever tried any other kind of beer besides Bud, Old Milwaukee, and Miller?
Dave and Eli: No, not really.

I'm pretty much a lightweight when it comes to drinking, but these guys were greener than Kermit the Frog. I'd never heard anybody complain that their beer was too strong before. Rookies.

Still, I am getting pretty drunk myself. That slam before we left the house is hurting me.

11:45pm: location: The Red Shed bar

The Red Shed is another nondescript Madison bar, a one floor dive noteworthy only for its $4 L.I. Iced Teas that are served in mason jars and will take you right down to the ground, and for the covered wagon that sits atop the building. More on that another time.

We are at the Red Shed and I am almost finished with a Long Island Iced Tea and I feel kinda woozy.

Somebody orders some shots, I think. We drink them. Eli and Dave G. (not pictured) are hanging in there.

1:00am: location: the Red Shed bar

At this point Hans starts getting loud and feisty. He probably thinks he's being funny, but nobody is all that amused. He keeps interrupting people's darts games by standing in front of the bullseye and blabbering something about William Tell. A few of us hint that he should probably head home, but he says he's feeling alive and strong. BC (also not pictured), Milo and DB head home.

Yeah, I sort of remember that...and then Clyde and Joe and Vic and Max come over to where I'm carrying on and they tell me they're taking off. Everybody's getting tired...

Not me. I am too busy impressing the hospital kids to realize I should join my roommates and admit that the night has us all beat.

If I knew what laid ahead I certainly would have.

2am: location: The Red Shed bar

At 2am comes last call and I am in no way ready to give in. The young guys are still there, pounding down the booze right along with me.

Me: Let's go drinking someplace. You guys got any booze?
Dave: I have some Everclear back at my apartment.

Who are these punks? They've never sampled a beer any darker than Budweiser but are sitting on a stash of Everclear? What the hell? As far as I know, Everclear is just a myth that sophomores talk about to scare freshmen. I've never actually seen it.

Me: Let's go.

Part 2
Part 3