Wednesday, November 6, 2013

how i met The Mirage

"Be yourself,everyone is taken." Oscar Wilde
the St.George Carlin of his times

hola,
partly i blame Korak the Killer....
now then Mayor DiFi had grafted together a deal
that some rich Chinese magnate could
build a 1000 room hotel a block from the Powell cable cars
provided that he employ at least a third of his staff
from the benighted Tenderloin,
as it's impoverished residents would be most effected as he
tore down their shabby SRO hotels for his one square block project.
one snag came up and they had to build this monster
in a U Shape as one SRO owner refused to sell
allegedly because it would interfere with
his steady supply of crack and whores.
so done and done.

when the hotel was mostly completed they had a hiring fair,
a huge hiring fair as poverty was rampant in frisco
even in those days, the mid 1980s.
now Korak owed me money at least a $1000
and later i would find out he owed most
of the local shopkeepers money too.

so having failed the Psych panel on two local Police forces
Korak was not optimistic about his chances of landing the hotel job
being a beautiful hulking anger management issue on legs
(my "first Wife" as The Mirage dubbed him).

so i urged him on and even went down with him to
the cattle call where i was told in order to wait
i'd have to fill out an application and be interviewed
..as .there were like several thousand people there
 for about 700 jobs,so i did.
was interviewd by a very nice man named Wyatt
who did everything he could
to assure me i had a job there
before the hotel opened,
Korak of course got no such assurance.

so i gave notice at my old job of nine years
where i was making $13-15 per hour
(the same or better pay at the new hotel)
with the promise that i would have to
deal with one less level of idiocy
and command my own shift.
so i gave notice and waited and waited
and walked by the hotel site
as the job was almost finished then mostly
 finished and still nothing.

so a week before the soft opening i got the call
and came in only to be told that Mr.Wyatt,
who i was genuinely looking forward to working with
had given his notice and was leaving within the week.
fuck. 
clusterfuck actually as
it seems they had hired another big black
guy thinking it was me (we shared a name)
which accounted for the delay and was
an omen of things to come.
so they had given my shift away to a 30 year Marine
turned besotted bragging mercenary,
(with a business card advertisng the fact no less,
 we went out drinking together at a nearby sleazy dive
that my then BFF Kim would bartend one day)
so like Korak of course he liked me and i
became his second in command.

it did not take long for him
to be fired for bringing an unauthorized
Chinese hooker in after hours to show her around,
so i got shift command. my shift was partly useless
so i got Korak hired on as my second.

now the Security chief was an indecisive H-N-I-C front man
who had twice switched from the SFPD to CHP and back
and as his Mr.Wyatt he fired
a coke snorting Nob Hill legacy rich white boy
who restored old Porsches as a hobby.....
and couldn't be bothered to read the reams
of reports we cranked out on each shift,
on demand from corporate HQ,so
he was constantly being embarrassed
 in the morning meetings which
 he took out on us by
calling us/me up at home during my sleep time
and screaming how it was all my fault.
sigh...

so we took to taping up the most concise reports
on the lamps and walls of his temp office
which he negated by not going to the temp office
before the morning meetings
(which is why i relate so much to DILBERT)
longish sigh.

anyhoo, the swing shift supervisor
Kristaki ( half black half Japanese)
 had never slept with a black man
and wanted me to be her first
(she had two kids and a white husband and
a major coke habit,some of it justified by
major toxic health problems).

so The Mirage got hired,for whatever reasons,
on to the swing shift and she was stunned
when Kristaki would shuck her uniform
to brief me and Korak in her see thru bra
and pantyhose with her huge bush clearly visible.
just another day at the office.

i had some deadwood on my shift so when it
came time i got The Mirage on mine,
she seemed like a good fit
besides with her ugly SuperCuts bob i thot she was 40-50s
and not actually nine years younger than me.
we had a lot in common artwise and other things
and when we weren't dealing with "SlutPuppy"
Normal Woman,Copper Penny and "Mrs.Butterworth"
(who went on to kill her lover in Oakland)
we bonded which deepened more
after i got fired
(eventually 2/3rds of all shifts would be
turfed and Mayor DiFi
issued not a swauwk of protest.).

i even left home mid Super Bowl
to go book shopping with The Mirage
and her monkish BFF who would go on
 to become one of our sons
"fairy godfathers" his partner D
died of AIDS much much too soon and
i still miss him.

so my aching back is telling me that's about it.

aloha2utoday
namaste
 mega

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