held us in something like awe, Sam, Dimitri and I would work all day
and late into the night. When the restaurant closed, we'd take over the
bar, drinking Cristal—which we'd buy at cost—and running fat rails of
coke from one end of the bar to the other, then crawling along on all-
fours to snort them. The cuter and more degenerate members of the floor
staff would hang with us, so there was a lot of humping in the dry-goods
area and on the banquettes, 50-pound flour sacks being popular staging
areas for after-work copulation. We'd bribed the doormen and security
people of all the local nightclubs and rock and roll venues with steak
sandwiches and free snacks, so that after we'd finished with our
pleasures at the Work Progress bar, we'd bounce around from club to
club without waiting on line or paying admission. A squadron of punk
rocker junkie guitar heroes ate for free at Work Progress—so we got free
tickets and backstage passes to the Mudd Club, CBGB, Tier Three,
Hurrah, Club 57 and so on. And when the clubs closed it was off to after-
hours where we'd drink and do more drugs until, weather permitting,
we'd hit the seven o'clock train to Long Beach. We'd finish the last of our
smack on the train, then pass out on the beach. Whichever one of us
woke from the nod would roll the others over to avoid an uneven burn.
When we finally arrived back at work, sand in our hair, we looked
tanned, rested and ready.
We considered ourselves a tribe. As such, we had a number of unusual
customs, rituals and practices all our own. If you cut yourself in the
Work Progress kitchen, tradition called for maximum spillage and
dispersion of blood. One squeezed the wound till it ran freely, then
hurled great gouts of red spray on the jackets and aprons of comrades.
We loved blood in our kitchen. If you dinged yourself badly, it was no
disgrace; we'd stencil a little cut-out shape of a chef knife under your
station to commemorate the event. After a while, you'd have a little row
of these things, like a fighter pilot. The house cat-a mouse-killer-got her
own stencil (a tiny mouse shape) sprayed on the wall by her water bowl,
signifying confirmed kills.