True Enough

The first bar I worked at had small bathrooms and each restroom was in two parts- a square closet -sized antechamber with sink, towel dispenser and a chalkboard for the customers to write on and a door leading to a slightly larger room for the actual toilet. There was no urinal in the men's room so the sink got used far too often...one of the happiest days of my young life was the day I got promoted from dishwasher to cook, as it meant I no longer had to clean the bathrooms.

The graffiti in the ladies room often mentioned one of our regulars, a good-lucking yuppie scum by the name of Jeff. Jeff was, by all the chalked accounts, a "real monster"...one night there was a remarkably well-drawn penis cartoon in there with the caption : Jeff in Life Size.

The weird thing was, Jeff really did do well with women. At last call, he was never alone. I usually was, though. After closing the kitchen, I'd hang out with the bartender, manager and waitress after hours, doing coke, talking and drinking the owner's liquor. Sometime the owner showed up and joined us. It was 1985 and life was different then. Drugs were still fun, for one thing.

One night, we were talking about the "Jeff graffiti" and I asked our waitress Michelle if she'd do me a favor. Would she write "the cook has a foot-long" in the women's room? It would be better if it was a woman's handwriting, I reasoned.

"Allan", said the much-older Michelle," you should never lie about that."

"Why?"

"If someone calls your bluff they will laugh at you and you will look like a jerk."

"Well, how do you know it isn't true?", I replied.

I was 20, drunk and coked to the nines. I wasn't very bright and was prone to saying profoundly stupid things.

"Is it ?", asked Michelle. "Let's see. We're all friends here, whip it out."

"Uh", I blanched, "never mind."

Michelle laughed and called me a jerk.