I remember the last time I took off that filthy black apronette. Dressed in an oversized t-shirt emblazoned with the restaurant's logo, I staggered amongst the tables slowly as though I were lost. Did I make any money?  The question floated in front of me, in neon.  In a daze, I looked
  down into a bib-like pocket at my crotch and saw a roll of paper money that could choke a circus freak. After forking over the bank, after the pay out at the end of the night and after tipping out to everyone from the bartender to the busboy, the good Lord only knew how much of that was actually coming home with me. My feet were throbbing.  So was my lower back. And my shoulders were killing me.  I thought of my oversized tub, filled with epsom salts, waiting
  for me patiently.  Instantly, a look of placidity smeared itself across my face.  Somehow, that vision was enough to get me through the rest of the night.  Eventually, I would stumble into the early morning sunlight without shades.  No cab will pick me up, of course.  I end up having to walk to the West Village from the Lower East Side so I can take the subway uptown.

I worked the graveyard shift and I had been there, nonstop, for eight hours.  We got slammed and we stayed that way all night long.  It was brutal.  Junkies shooting up in the bathroom.  Obnoxious club kids on recreational drugs, bouncing all over the place.  Japanese college students drinking copious amounts of beer and projectile vomiting all over everything.  It wasn't fun, hosing all that down at the end of the night.  Battered and tired, I'd go home and throw myself into my bed.  Time rolled on.  The next thing I knew, a year had gone by and I was still there, yelling into some junkie's face.  Enough, I said.  And that was that.

I thought that I'd never look down the barrel of that gun again.  I was so sure, I promised myself I never would.  Little did I realize the strength or the elasticity of my own resolve. When my back was against the wall at the beginning of the year, I dug that waiter's apron up and had it cleaned. I was willing to wait tables all over again, if that's what I had to do.  I was willing to do whatever it took, to stay in NYC and make my dreams come true.  Knowing this about myself startled me and filled me with a great sense of relief and wonder.  I'm not going to give up on me.  Something in my essence won't let me do that. I honestly believe that if I stick it out, if I outlast all this crap, from the crap that keeps happening to me and the crap that surrounds me, to the crap that comes at me everyday in waves, I'll make it.

So.  It looks like I'll be waiting tables again.