Bar rot on my hands. It gets worse the more bartending shifts I have. Worse when I forget to wear gloves. Mainly I’ve developed a horrible allergy to 409, which we use throughout the restaurant. My rag hand – my right hand – is the more troubled hand. Dermatitis between the fingers. Itchy, scaly. At night instead of lotion, I smother my hands in hydrocortisone. But that thins the skin, and so if I do it too much, they get a crepey, old-person look, and I resolve to be better about wearing gloves at work.
The tops of my fingertips blister, too - little blistery rashes periodically bloom around my nail beds. Right now, my right middle finger suffers the most damage. This entire Winter I’ve had blisters chronically under the nail – little bubbles forming, also right at the under-edge of the nail bed. The finger is always swollen, and if I press it, pus comes out from the cuticle. The nail itself is ridged, crumpled-looking. I stopped wearing nail polish years ago.
Bar rot. Not to be confused with bar regulars. I don’t think of the single women who sit at my bar this way. Only the men. Like Tony, the recently divorced alcoholic whose last stop on his way home is my bar. His cheeks are round and his face is always bright red when he gets to us – for the one, maybe the two Beefeaters up with a twist. Always tells me how nice I look, in a gentlemanly tone, but his eyes have that look behind them – just a touch of the rabid dog. He’s too old for me and he knows it from the way I don’t meet his gaze, from my kind but general smile, and my charm school responses to his overtures. I’m a good deflector. He’s walked out without paying enough times that now we make him hand over his credit card when he orders, before we put the drink in front of him.
Dan, who said to me, “you shouldn’t frown so much” the first time I waited on him. He deals antiques and writes children’s books, and he hates his ex-wife with a passion. He acts like he’s broke: “Would you like another martini?” “Well, of course, I’d LIKE another martini, but it’s not in my budget tonight.” He tips like going out isn’t in his budget. We don’t ever buy him a round. Stinginess begets stinginess.
Then there are the coked up guys. Larry, so aggressively friendly: “How are you? You good? How’s the house? Still there? How’s business been? Good? Good. Good. That’s great. Just give me another HALF a martini.” In and out of the bathroom, making friends with whomever else is sitting near him. Or the lawyer, so quiet, so edgy. Always gets the same two dishes and the same wine but acts like he’s never been here before. Or Jim, who owns and runs a successful chain of restaurants in town, who comes in with his wife and their three-year-old daughter, who can’t sit still with them, sucking back Grey Goose and soda after Grey Goose and soda – out the door on the phone, back to their table, into the bathroom, back to the bar. When his wife and daughter head home he orders doubles.
The last time I ever did coke was in the bathroom of the restaurant I work in now, before it was this restaurant. Funny how things happen that way. Sometimes I go in there and remember those blurry days, fifteen years ago now. I had a daily habit for about a year, until my body said no more. I can’t imagine what it’s like for these men, all in their mid-forties, early fifties, still spinning like tops, pretending everything is great and grand, pretending that their lives are going somewhere, somewhere besides getting high in the run-down bathroom of an untrendy neighborhood restaurant.
I look at my rough, misshapen fingers and sigh.
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