Heavy Guns

Last night I made the jump to the heavy guns, switching to the opiates to manage pain. By this hour of the morning, I am thinking I should have done this yesterday during the day, as now I am behind the eight ball of pain management. The pain is intense. Very intense. I took another two dilaudid, looking at the bottle to see when I can take the next. Two more hours. The razors in my throat that I spoke of weeks ago, are fragments of the pain that is now centralized in my throat. We are definitely killing something here. There is definitely a fight going on. Heavy guns are being loaded, and we are in the shit, as we used to say in the restaurant biz.

It’s been years since I was in the restaurant biz- 38 years ago. It was intense. I was 27. I was working at a new Co-operative restaurant called Isadoras- how new? We built the walk-in cooler ourselves from panels. I was handling two stations. Cold prep and desserts. At some point I was commandeered to do hot prep, then service. Service was grill work. The Flat Iron. Deep Fat Fryer.

I did that for a few weeks. While at the same time, doing prep ( mise en plus), and trying to create a dessert menu. Restaurant work is fast, loud, YES CHEF, hierarchical. Some people flourish. Most fail.

It didn’t take more than a few weeks before I actively contemplated the risk of laying my hands on the flat iron, or dipping them in the deep fat fryer just to get out of having to do a shift. Seriously. I was desperate, kind of crazy, and life seemed hopeless. Most of the grill cooks would get themselves set up for service, then it was rock n roll. You either flew or you sank like a fucking rock. Fear was everywhere but was not an option we could indulge. So we would gas up, do a shot or a line, buck up motherfuckers, time for the heavy guns.

The dilaudid is kicking in. Another hour or so, I will take another couple. It’s about getting ahead of the pain. We’ve been here before.

One night, I had requested to work graveyard shift. To get ahead on my baking, and avoid the flat iron. I started at 10 pm and worked, mainly on my own, until 7 am. Just me and the cleaners, also the dish pit.

One night I was making muffins. I pulled out a case of walnuts. They came in a wooden box, nailed shut. From China. I used the claw hammer to pry open the box. In those days, we used oven rags as mitts. We would use them to wipe food and counters. The Chef had us soak them in bleach water, then wring them out and hang to dry. So the back the kitchen was filled with hanging half wet bleachy rags. Just to be clear, these rags were still full of food and grease. I reached into the box of walnuts, and to my horror, I saw a box of walnuts……..and little white maggots. The box was crawling with them. As I stifled my gag reflex, I noticed that the wet rags all had maggots on them as well.

Little white wormy maggots. Just what you want to see when you’re working a graveyard shift on your own. I was not truly alone, as the West Indian cleaners were there too. Represent ing Saint Lucia, Jamaica, and Grenada. Also for about an hour or so, we had company of the still humid and sweaty dish pit and the dish pigs.

Tommy. Heavy Metal Tommy. “Hey Dennis, I got tickets.”

Oh yeah, what to Tommy?

The Two Beards!

Two Beards??

ZZ Top, aka The Two Beards. Remember the Tres Hombres gatefold? Big food. A flat surface for rolling joints. Of course, they were my favourite for a awhile too. About ten years before Tommy discovered the Two Beards.

I had moved back to Canada in 1973. My favourite band was ZZ Top.

No one in West Van was into ZZTop.

Bowie, definitely, Nick Gilder, anything Brit based, stuck up pukes abounded. The worst year of my life. I was was 15 and fucked. No friends. A guy called me Derek all year. I didn’t correct him. At least he talked to me. My best friend, once I made one, was Waldochuk. Waldo. Ukrainian kid with a giant nose and side door ears, sticking out, ready to get clipped.

Everyone in West Van was a miserable stuck up puke. Their favourite slang word was suck. As a noun. “What a suck.”

I was a suck. That was 1973. The year the war in Vietnam ended. The year America lost.

Heavy guns.

Is it all these memories that weigh things down?

The Doctors gave me a numbing pink liquid ( lidocaine) that I can swab on the open sores in my mouth. Time to hit that shit up too. Bring back the Magic Mouthwash, the Nyaststin for the thrush. The numbing pink stuff. The numbing opiates.

Hopefully with all these heavy guns I will get back to an equilibrium where my throat can accept food or liquid going down.

7 more days, starting today.