Coffee, Bubba?

I bumped into President Clinton, literally.

I fell on top of the President of the United States. I was his waiter and I tried to put a bread stick on his plate in a crowded room, when someone bumped me.

I promise I was bumped when I fell on him.

Eyeball to eyeball, his look said, “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m the President.”

All I could do was apologize. I’m just lucky I got out of there without creating an international incident. Giving a nut-job like me access to the President of the United States is just plain dumb. If not dangerous.

Let me tell the full story.

Let’s just say would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr. would have had a hard-on at the scenario fate threw at my feet: Jodie Foster and the President of the United States at hip level.

It was the 75th anniversary of Time Magazine and anyone who had been on the cover was invited to a huge party at Radio City Music Hall. The guest list was bizarre, from Henry Kissinger to Big Bird.

Somehow, I passed a background check to be a waiter at the event, but I never heard of anybody who had not passed the test.

I had been there all day, setting up and had lost my holographic badge as I was moving boxes. I went to Secret Service and begged them to send me home, that the president’s life was in jeopardy if I stayed, but they demanded I take a pop at him.

I thought for sure that Secret Service would tell me that I would have to leave, but they just handed me another hologram.

“Thanks. I’ll give this to my buddy parked in the basement in my Ryder truck full of cow-shit and gasoline.” I told him and walked back to the floor.

No, but I should have. Honestly, Secret Service is so lax.

I could definitely shoot the president. I just couldn’t get very far afterwards.

I thought about how much trouble I could get in if I just bitch-slapped him. The Lewinski era had just started. We all knew he was guilty as hell but hadn’t found the cum-stained dress yet.

Shit-stained undies displayed for the paparazzi, the sex-credibility-advisor brought hair-do affidavits and a white nostalgia for tribal identity.

Secret Service removed his silverware before he came in, and an agent always brings him one of several random plates to ensure he isn’t poisoned. But then I was authorized to give him a breadstick and cream for his coffee, for some reason.

I had never worked for this company before but had a few friends who did. I thought for sure that I would just walk around refilling glasses, maybe picking up a few plates, and just star-gazing all night long. At some point Secret Service needed to meet the President’s waiter and the guy who had been assigned was off in another part of the building, passing hors d’oeuvres or something.

Someone recommended me and that was it.

Next thing I know I’m shaking the iron hand of Secret Service, a bull of a man trained to snap my neck in a heartbeat.

Then the owner of the Plaza Hotel had orders from Wolfgang Puck for me about how dinner is to be served. The fucking menu is an epic poem that I haven’t even glanced at, and apparently Wolfgang thinks it’s a good idea for me to cut lamb from the bone on this huge chunk of marble without spilling the bowl of gravy resting on it.

This is seriously too weird, but I backburner the heart attack I’m having and do what I have to.

The room is full of everyone who ever was.

I mean Jesus himself is sipping cosmos with Elvis Presley.

The band plays “Hail to the Chief” and in walks the President of the United States and the First Lady. It’s just like I’ve seen on TV, except the President walks over to me and sits down. There is no TV screen. This is so fucking bizarre.

I am allowed to offer him some bread. I work my way around the table, “Would you care for some bread, Mr. President?” I hear myself saying, with enough bureaucratic litter on my monkey suit that I look appropriately reamed by the powers that be.

“Sure.” he says.

I am such a fucking idiot.

I promise I was bumped; I swear I was bumped when I fell on him.

I come back to consciousness what feels like several minutes later. Sweat is pouring down my nose. Here I am, holding the fucking Parthenon on one arm, trying to not spill a flimsy silver boat full of gravy. I’ve already spilled water on Mary Tyler Moore and bumped into the President, who am I going to scald with this gravy and knock unconscious with this marble cutting board?

I can literally see the sweat pouring down my nose. Jodi “Travis Bickle” Foster is my first victim. Trying not to say a line from Taxi Driver, “Cum on her face, fuck her in the ass…” my borderline case of Turrets or Asperger’s or sociopathic-whatever is killing me.

She jokes with Clinton about a cameo of him in Contact welcoming aliens to the planet.

“I liked it” he says, chuckling his head side to side. Like a kid in a candy store, this man loved his job.

“He called you little piece of chicken” I wanted to scream.

I could scare the shit out of everybody in this room.

I carve a piece of this beast’s leg, drop it on her plate somewhere, pour some gravy on it, only getting a little on the tablecloth, and I ask, “Would you like some more?”

That sweet woman looked right at me and said “No, thank you.” She was so graceful, realizing that her poor waiter was shitting his pants.

I step back and the owner of the Plaza or whoever the fuck this guy is reassures me that I’m doing okay. Secret Service rubs my shoulders. Like a punch-drunk boxer getting tips from a coach I can barely understand, I get back into it.

Time Magazine’s Walter Isaacson, a bit of a dick (though he is the one paying for it), and his wife, looking totally out-of-place, fall prey next. Then Hillary Clinton, who was very nice to me, always saying “thank you.” Lauren Bacall, twice as old as Bogey ever was, seemed to say “look at me, look at me” with her every gesture, when I couldn’t look away fast enough. Reverend Billy Graham, propped-up and drooling, looked and acted half-dead.

The only way to survive was to pretend it wasn’t happening at all.

Bubba was a very hands-on guy.

Shaking hands with the men; a pat on the back or a two-hand grip, and always with the woman, a hand on the far shoulder, and /or a pat on the hips. What is a pat on the hips from the most powerful man in the world? It is so exhilarating to be in the same room as the president that touching him is intoxicating. If he grabbed your ass, you wouldn’t be able to talk for days.

I watched the man for about three hours, and he was fascinating. When I offered him cream and sugar for his coffee later, he brushed me away with his hand, like swatting away a fly.

At one point Sean Connery walked over and asked to meet the president. Bubba had a big ole piece of lamb on his fork, ready to put in his mouth, and dropped it on his plate as he stood up so fast to meet “James Bond!” he said, as the leader of the free world gave the b-movie actor a double handed handshake, like anyone would do if they met 007. Too weird.

Charging the plastic castle on a wooden horse, glue dripping from my rubber mustache, I made it into the kitchen a couple of times for bottles of Pellegrino for Hillary.

The vibe in there was weird, like everyone on the other side of the door was famous as hell, wielding a painfully unfair set of human relationships to their economic benefit. Anarchist butlers, like myself, maintained the boundaries of transparent inequalities, on my hands and knees eating the corporate leftovers.

I saw a friend of mine getting a phone number from Jack Kevorkian, said her grandmother wanted to die. I saw Kevin Costner try to talk to Mikhail Gorbachev. Tom Cruise yucked it up with Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Bill Gates, I could take him out with one punch. He’s soft. Jerry Falwell smiled at me, like the devil himself. I blocked Joe DiMaggio’s view of Mohammad Ali.

I walked amongst the gods, picking up their discarded napkins.

John F. Kennedy Jr. put his hand on my shoulder, and asked “Can I get around this way?” If words came out of my mouth at all, I must have said “You can do anything you want.” Basically, I was in JFK Jr’s way and was asked to move, but what a proud moment that was.

If we didn’t believe in God, then there wouldn’t be celebrities.

But…

The weirdest shit that ever happened to me (while wearing a waiter’s tux) was the night I got a cup of hot water for his holiness, the Dalai Lama, at an awards banquet on Wall Street.

I knew this was gonna be some crazy shit when I saw the guest list included the twelfth incarnation of Buddha, the President of Ireland, and Ravi Shankar who were receiving humanitarian awards.

Secret Service was there and did a bomb sweep of the building while I set the diner tables. Shitheads, never once went to the basement. Wouldn’t the IRA put a bomb under the Irish president’s table? Did it never occur to the security team to look downstairs?

They stood around with their German Shepards, joking about quarterbacks and never once went downstairs where I parked my van full of cowshit and gasoline.

That wasn’t the problem though, just an observation.

The problem was that 1,200 people were on their way and had paid between $10,000 and $40,000 per plate based on their proximity to his holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Somehow, I was elected to alert Secret Service to this situation.

“Hello, Dalai! It’s so nice to have you back where you belong.” On Wall Street?

A group of Buddhist monks were lined up outside, protesting his being there at all, flying around on a private airplane to go to a dinner party with a bunch of rich assholes. I thought they would self-immolate.

Regardless of that, when 1,200 people have dinner in the same room, you need something called a seating chart that lets people know where they are supposed to sit, especially when they have paid the equivalent of my annual salary for a two-hour dinner.

The person in charge of seating never faxed over the chart (and never worked for that company again), but as one of the ‘captains’ it was my $30 an hour job to head-off problems like this.

Somehow, I was elected to alert Secret Service to this situation. Standing around by the door, making jokes about monks, not looking for bombs or guns, and completely unaware of the fact that the whole place was about to go completely apeshit. I tried to explain the problem to these lifeless automotons, but the idea that people needed somewhere to sit seemed to be over their heads.

Realizing that they needed to look like they were protecting someone, they took me by the arm to a side room where I was to stand against the wall while they debated what a ‘seating chart’ was.

“Who are you?” they asked, like Jack Bauer with a blowtorch and no time, and “How do you know this?”

At an event of this size, it is typical that the captains wear a headset, so we coordinate our superior’s orders with the bowties on the ground. The ear plug and mic in the sleeve also makes the waiter look self-important and people like to see that when they have paid $40,000 dollars for 3 pieces of asparagus and a bite of meat. I tell them to ask my supervisor to verify my identity and ask permission to call him on my headset.

“Ignite the bomb in the basement” I yell into the mic.

No, I just ask my boss, Don, a baldheaded cross-dresser with a thing for Latino boys, to come verify my story.

After what felt like an eternity, another waiter, this rather sad middle-aged guy who buys blow-jobs with his bar-tips says “Yeah, he works here” and Secret Service lets me go.

“How do you know who this guy is?” I wanted to ask, but I was glad to be free so easily.

The seating chart issue was dismissed and 1,200 Madison Avenue Buddhists, trying to get their money-grubbing eyes on his holiness hoarded through the door.

Of course, they all needed to know where to sit, and me with my headset looked like the perfect guy to ask and had no answer to give.

Eventually, the staff decided on “His holiness will not enter the room until you have sat down” as the message we would rely to these oh so Zen-like millionaires.

I lost track of how many Armani suit assholes poked their fingers in my face, telling me “I have paid $40,000 to sit next to the fucking Dalai Lama and you need to tell me where that is.”

To my credit, I took shit off no one.

People yelling in my face, while in my left ear I’m hearing chaos break-out on every channel on my headset; the kitchen ran out of vegetables, tables were missing forks, and Champaign was luke-warm.

I realized that I was being tested.

This was just too weird; the leader of the Buddhist tradition, a belief founded on the concept of having no possessions and being peaceful, was waiting to enter a room full rich assholes who all wanted to kill someone.

Once I realized the absurdity of this metaphysical test, I finally smiled. I took the plug out of my ear, and gleefully told these assholes to sit the fuck down. In time they accepted that all their money would have no influence on me or his holiness, and they sat down.

Paula Cole performed the theme song from Dawson’s Creek for some reason I couldn’t understand, “I Don’t Want to Wait.” Remember that one?

A dozen Indian swamis did some really weird chants, wrapping silk scarves around the necks of certain lucky trophy wives, and the crowd went wild.

Then his holiness walked out on to the stage and gave a speech about human kindness with his imitable wit and charm.

I stood at his feet (his holiness wears Rockport shoes).

I didn’t pay a dime and had the best seat in the house. He stepped off the stage and had his picture taken with Paula; her on one side and me on the other. Of course, I’ve never seen the photo.

He looked down when he passed me. He was supposed to stop and tell me who I am and what I’m supposed to do with my life, but he looked down and walked past.

I’m like, “Hey Lama, hey! What about something, you know, for the effort?”

Where is my total consciousness?

And then, outta nowhere, I bump into Jocylyn Wildenstein, a woman who has had over thirty plastic surgery operations to make her look like a cat. Her face was the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. The cat eyes, long cheek bones, all she was missing were the whiskers. I thought I was going to barf. She really looked plastic, like rubber, absolutely fake. It was disgusting.

I supervised as someone led his holiness to his seat. All he wanted was one cup of hot water.

I put my ear plug back in and called for a clear path to the hot water. I escorted a waiter through the floor and kitchen, parting the way through screaming chefs and abused waiters like Moses parting the Red Sea. We filled that cup with hot water and delivered it to his holiness within two minutes of his request.

I heard that he was grateful. So was I.

I was dating a girl named Joy at the time; a cute little pixie with an amazing singing voice. Pure Joy. We’d pinch each other’s butts as we served dinner and refilled drinks to keep things light.

She could tell I was stressed and flashed her boobs to me in a hallway.

One of my few regrets in life is not getting it on with Joy in the bank vault of the old stock exchange, regardless of which world leader or pop icon was dining above.

At the end of the night, some of the guests had seemed to accept their place in the universe, for the moment, as something slightly less significant than they may have previously thought.

Some asked very politely, with great humility, if they could keep the candles on their table. I, with my headset, graciously allowed them to.

Secret Service was still confused as to why the night was so chaotic. Don went home with one of the bus boys, the event planner was fired, for the time being, and I made $500 for watching someone pour one cup of water.

I’ve done some crazy shit in my time, but that night took the fucking cake.

Personal Sidebar: The world would collapse if rich people did not have their servants for one day. Most of them are so used to having someone else do everything for them that they can't do anything for themselves. I kid you not; many of these people do not know where the spoons are kept in their own kitchens because they never feed themselves.