Late night after my first shift returning to work at this Italian restaurant called Vignola (now closed for years) I strolled down familiar cobblestone wharf streets of Portland Maine, once again everything I owned on my back, just how I’d left 3 years ago.
It felt good to be back breathing the briny air, even if was a little strange to just be picking up where I had left off after being away for so long and being such a different person than when I’d set off to backpack across the country as a sheltered 20 year old. Even more bizarre to be back at this restaurant considering I’d quit by no showing on a busy Saturday, one of the cardinal sins of the restaurant business.
I had been on my way to work that day, honestly, feeling drained after a long week, not looking forward to a long weekend on top of it and stopped to get a coffee at my favorite spot on Exchange Street. My dad and step-mom were there, who I’d not seen in over 6 months, since I’d been disowned for sinning against GOD by defiling my virginity and had moved out. They acted like they didn’t know me, left the line and walked out without ordering. I got my coffee and turned around to head home instead. Things were falling apart in my life and that was the last straw, I made up my mind to leave town, get as far away from all of them as I could and start fresh. I already had an offer to go work part time on a sheep farm in Oregon for room & board, I’d take them up on the offer!
When I got back to my East End apartment that I was on the verge of being evicted from, my downstairs neighbors invited me to join them at a big ocean front vacation home one of their friend’s owned an hour north and it sounded like just the thing I needed. We had a great big BBQ, drank wine while passing the bong around looking over almost black choppy Atlantic waters, tiny white and red fishing boats chugging by the islands rising and falling over the white caps. When night came we broke out the mushrooms and tripped until we all fell asleep just before dawn, sprawled around the grassy lawn, deck chairs, and ocean side hammock. I made my way back into town the next day and sheepishly picked up my last check from Vignola, explaining what happened to the sous chef at the time who’d hired me. Within the next couple of days I was on the road.
Now I was back after all that and with a bunch more unexpected life bullshit piled on.
I guess they needed someone young and desperate enough to work the pizza station, a 500 degree open mouthed oven squashed into a back corner of the mostly open kitchen in an alcove behind the bar. On busy nights when the temp of the kitchen rose that corner turned into a sauna and it was hard to breathe you’d have to wrap towels from the freezer around the back of your neck and chug quarts of water to keep from passing out on the line. You’d be slinging pizzas as fast as the oven could cook them, rounds of 5 at a time, with sweat flying off you and sizzling on the oven as you fling dough high into the air to turn it out as quickly and efficiently as possible. After a while in the busy rush you stopped noticing the little bits of skin from your forearms you’ve lost to the bite of the red hot gaping jaws of that hell beast of a pizza oven.
The sticky dough, sweat and semolina coats your arms and dusts your hair and bandana (usually pizza station wore a bandana around the forehead to keep sweat from literally dripping into the pizza as they worked). Chef wants you to toss the dough, never roll it, like they do in Italy he says, and step over a little bit when you do so the VIP table can see you, it adds to the show, really fling it high! If you do it good maybe chef will take you out back and get you high later! So you end up covered in this paste of sweat and gluten no matter what you do, and on busy nights when you can’t make the trip down the line to the sink as often as needed it bakes into a plaster cast across your back and arms in the kiln of the oven heat.
Not many people were applying for this position from the sounds of it when I’d talked to the current sous chef (old brunch cook when I’d worked there before) and he offered me a fast track off the station if I’d just jump in and help out, prove myself a little. It was my only way out of North Carolina where I’d been stuck for a while and had found myself in a dangerous situation, I didn’t even care that it was right back to Maine I was so nostalgic after what I’d been through.
My first night on this station had gone well, just a basic 12 hour shift. I’d passed the tests they gave me like making a red sauce and getting a batch of dough fermenting and kept on top of orders with ease once they’d showed me which pie names meant what toppings.
I gave myself a quick rinse in the bathroom to get the crust off myself, threw my doughy wet kitchen clothes, black chinos and black cloth button chef coat with red bandana, into the work laundry hamper and set off to figure out what I was going to do between now and my next shift tomorrow at 11am.
Walking around in jeans, white undershirt and backpack over my shoulder, 12am, Portland felt like it had changed into a whole different place than I’d remembered. But aside from a few coffee shops and stores closing I realized it hadn’t changed much, I was over 21 now and this opened a whole new set of possibilities. I lit up a Camel and set off to find a bar that wouldn’t look too closely at my expired driver’s license.
PART 2 HERE
Thank you everyone who read my last piece “Water Prayers” and hello to the couple of you who’ve followed me! When I started to post my writing I didn’t really expect anyone to see it, at least not for a while, to have a warm reception on that last piece means a lot.
