“That doesn’t happen here”

Feminine Power in the Face of Fighting: A Waitress Story.

At 22, I started working as a cocktail waitress and bartender at a jazz club in New York City. My boss was an eccentric 6’5″ man who loved Star Trek and trying out his unusual theories of efficacy and efficiency with his staff.

The application to get this job had been a booklet with questions like “Who is John Galt?” and “How can you add this check fastest (show your work),” and “What’s in a Tom Collins?”¹ Only some of the questions made sense for a low-brow job like slinging cocktails, but philosophy was always going to be part of New York’s Corner of Walk and Don’t Walk.

And in an odd rebellion against the typical protocol for an open-til-4:00AM club, Captain Jim (as he liked to be called) rarely hired men, and had no special security while piles of cash were counted in front of a huge window. He also and never hired male bouncers to police the door. Jim said bouncers provoked fights by their very existence, and we weren’t catering to the kind of person who would take on some door handler over a non-provocation.

We catered to genuine jazz lovers, civil drinkers, and cash carriers because they understood not to f*ck around with stupid stuff like fighting.

Even on weekend nights, when the street was loaded with ‘bridge and tunnel’² teens and barfing men-children picking fights while shouting odd mating calls inside posse’s of similar dudes; our team worked to keep the peace on Bleecker Street. We were artists, writers, photographers, and actresses. We took turns working the door for our jazz joint, protecting our mahogany bar full of dark beer-sipping regulars, and itty bitty tables full of tourists.

And we were the only club on the stretch who didn’t have a big or coolly watchful man guarding the door on weekends. Instead we had quirky creative women in mini-skirts collecting $3 to enter and holding a pile of $1’s like a cigarette mid-smoke, while making judgements about who would be allowed to “just use the bathroom” based on whim and our felt sense of deserved-ness.

Who’s duding who?

So this one Saturday night, the street was glistening as usual. Puddles of beer spills on the pavement made the red lights and taxi yellows reflect sparkly patterns, and the street was criss-crossed continually with groups of glossy humans and frat boys from Long Island and New Jersey. Colors, lights, sounds, and the smells of said spilled beer…

The street was alive with music through doors opening and closing and peppered with car horns. It was the very definition of Nightlife. This particular weekend’s surge of jay walkers was again comprised of young men and women looking for a famously good time, and sloppy young drinkers who were mostly fine, even if annoying.

My section was on the sidewalk. I was minding 10 small vinyl tables right on Bleecker, loosely enclosed by a low metal sectioned fence that could be moved up against the building as needed. Most of my customers sat there enthralled by the scene on the street, and ordered modestly.

It was worth it to buy a $7 beer in the 1990s. You didn’t often get to see that much fully-spirited humanity kicking it between jazz and blues and comedy and rock clubs. Our cynical Smirnoff-drinking pianist was inside, protected by tonight’s Mae West running the door. It was clear my customers didn’t want to pay a cover. Okay, cheap, but easy. They were street-watchers.

I walked outside with my 20th tray of drinks and simple food served on Styrofoam plates, and glanced at my stash of black ashtrays. I could smoke during my shift and did. Constantly. Everyone could smoke in restaurants then. And in Jazz clubs, Japanese tourists, mobster wanna bees, disheveled middle-aged artists, and Chazz Palminteri understudies were almost expected to. I loved holding a lit cigarette while taking an order for a Weiss Bier or a negroni. It caused confusion, and delight. Yeah, the servers ran the joint.

Fisticuffs³

So, I’m outside and I see this guy of about 25 swinging arms over my little fence toward another guy who had been drinking with a small group. Within a second, the outside guy jumped the fence and now everyone was standing and the fists were flying. Tables overturned, chairs folded up on themselves and hit the ground, and I tossed my tray down on the one table left standing.

I was fully inside my chaotic section and without thought⁴ jammed my body in front of the interloper. I was wedged right between him and everyone else. And he stopped, they stopped. His arms ceased moving and he was slack-jawed and blurry drunk and starting to look at me in disbelief. I’m 5’2″ and in a voice I didn’t know was mine, said to him simply, “that doesn’t happen here.”

His jaw that had been hanging down and to the left, righted itself to center closed, bringing his face back into symmetry. His eyes pulled into fast focus – a feat considering how drunk he was – and and all the fight left his body at once. I actually saw it leave. Astonishing.

“Ugh, Sorry,” he said, moved one chair into place and walked out of my section. Everyone else picked up furniture and put order back together. Witnessing the street began again and when the night eventually ended, I saw I made some okay bank.

That doesn’t happen here: the stoic spaces of women working

It was a space. It was a space where women work. A place where women work without male protection. Because they don’t need it apparently. That night I learned this for real. My body knew what to do before my brain could understand: I was a woman and I was protecting my station.

No tough bouncer could have ended that scene as fast as a 22-year old waitress with no tolerance for violence. Don’t mess with my job. Don’t make more work for me. That doesn’t happen here, because I’m here and I have a job to do. Really, it’s that simple.

Women in mini-skirts are apparently some of the greatest peace-keepers on the planet, or at least in halting bar brawls pulling angry young men out of drunken confusion and getting them back to the land of civility. And this saving grace happens in a split second, when any woman holds her space.

Application questions, if you like…

What spaces do you work in? What do you hold as your own protectorate? These can be physical and metaphoric spaces. In these places, what is sacred to you? Is it your service? Your role? Your gaze? Your understanding? Is it the people you engage with there? Is it the tasks you do?

Question: What does your protected space need from you today, and how can you best show up for it?

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1. I had screwed up the math, guessed on John Galt, but admirably put in an assumption about Jazz greats, but because the administering staff gave me a secret high rating, I got the job anyway. ↩︎
2. The derisive term used by locals to describe the non-serious party-seeking teens and young adults who came into Manhattan solely to get drunk. ↩︎
3. The ↩︎
4. I say honestly “without thought” because no thinking person would have done this. ↩︎