Somewhere in the stream of consciousness meanderings of my mind while I was working my way through a rush at work tonight, I recalled a different night in a different restaurant during a different rush some twenty plus years ago. This was while I was working at what at that time was the biggest Red Lobster restaurant in the country, or the world – hell, maybe even the universe – located in Albuquerque, and this particular night we were just getting HAMMERED. There were a lot of nights like that, given the size of the restaurant, but this particular night it really just felt like we were getting no mercy and no reprieve from the front of the house, just absolute constant aggressive ass pounding, no lube, no reach-around.
At some point, my best friend Branden, who I had met when he started working in that kitchen a couple years prior, decided he’d had enough, and so he left his station on the line, marched up to the host stand where the douchiest manager I have ever worked for was directing the hospitality staff, and asked him in front of an overflowing lobby whether he was going to stop fucking us in the ass any time soon.
This did not go over well. 😅
I was still back on the line, as I at an elderly 20 years of age was in charge of keeping the whole thing together and running back there, and the next thing I knew I hear Branden shouting at me, “Yo, Fuckface, lets GO.” I looked over and saw that the entire management staff present that night were all right behind him, angrily telling him he needed to leave the building and trying to body him out. At this point I didn’t yet know what had happened, but it was obvious Branden had been fired. Without hesitation, myself and three of the other five line cooks on shift dropped our shit, tossed our aprons, and we all promptly fucked right off out of the building, because fuck that night and fuck all those assholes.
Branden and I went and stole a couple bottles of Stoli from a liquor store and met the other guys back at one of their apartments and immediately got shithoused while Branden filled everyone in on why we had all just quit. We did this thing at the time where we would get a bottle of vodka, two glasses, and would pour out four fingers of liquor for each of us and slam the shit right away, pour and slam, pour and slam, until the bottle was gone within minutes, and then we would go out and find a party and really get our drunk on. It was a healthy time in our lives, obviously. The other guys weren’t quite so unhinged, but that night we all strapped on a good buzz and then went and got into some bullshit together to celebrate our newfound independence from the clutches of shithouse seafood. If only I had the good sense to stay away (I worked for Red Lobster at different times and in different locations off and on for like eighteen fucking years, WHYYYYY 🤣)
Anyways, in a couple months, we’ll be coming up on twenty years since my boy blew the back of his skull out one lonely drunken night, and as such I’ve had him on my mind a lot lately, a lot more than usual. I only knew Branden for a handful of years, but something about our dynamic, we just got incredibly close almost immediately after we met each other, and so we had a bond pretty much as if we were brothers. We even looked almost exactly alike, so most people who didn’t know better assumed we really were brothers, and we were happy to let that assumption be.
His death wasn’t the first significant loss I experienced in my life, but it was at the time and up until my mother’s passing the most significant loss I had experienced, and it fucked me up for a long time. Obviously I was already well on my way to having a drinking and drugging problem, but after Branden killed himself it went to a whole other level. I really didn’t crawl my way out of that hole or start to deal with any of it in a remotely healthy manner for over a decade, until I had my lovely little psychotic break and finally put together a few years of sobriety and started to unpack all the shit I was subconsciously self-medicating with booze and pills and shit.
Anyways, expect probably more than a few Branden stories over the next few months. Most of them should be both fairly entertaining and fairly concerning. 😅
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A Labyrinth Of Twisted Abjection 