Because It's the Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" Way

I don’t really how I came to meet Delbert Fernandez. He was a spike haired Filipino kid who was fatter than his crystal meth habit should have allowed. Which for the most part did not get in the way of him looking like every other Filipino kid from San Jose. He looked like every other Filipino kid from San Jose because he gets his haircut at the same Vietnamese barber that every other Filipino kid gets his hair cut. Some Vietnamese salon on Tully where you have to wait in a very long line because everybody wants to see the same guy and there’s always that second barber with that fucked up haircut, with his sides all shaved, but he doesn’t fade it so it’s sticking out all thick and ugly like when you buy an onion and you just let it sit for a long time and that shit starts growing out the top and you don’t know whether to throw it out or put it in a pot, cover it in dirt and tell everyone you got a new plant. And on top of that, the motherfucker wants to dye his hair blonde. Now he’s already fucked up with the hair; it’s like burning your bagel and sticking a butter knife in your ass for the smear. And this poor pathetic second barber is just standing there. He’s standing there watching the other barber cutting hair after hair and everybody is smiling and happy and this poor fucking guy hasn’t smiled since the first day he arrived in this country-- then came Day 2; on Day 2 he starts to understand that back home, he was a history teacher or had a sweet government job and in this country he could be none of those things. I’d fuck up my hair too, come to think of it.

I think of this place when I think of Delbert Fernandez. I think of the guys who get their haircut at this shop, which is why we even started talking in the first place, because when I asked him if he got his haircut there, he said yes, then he offered me a bump and I said yes to that too.

Being a bartender at a corporate establishment is like being a porn actor in a soft core Cinemax or straight to DVD movie. It’s all nice and glossy but unlike those regular porno actors you have to put in a whole lot more effort into learning the lines and telling a story that nobody is really interested in and when you get there-- you never really get to stick it in, you just kind of lay on top of each other naked going, “Hunnnnhhhhh, hunhhhhhhh, HUNHHHHHHH!!”. I don’t feel like a real bartender: I put drinks together, I take money, I make more drinks, I take more money-- all the while I really, very desperately, want to pull my dick out. I just want to walk back and forth along the bar with my dick and balls sticking out my zipper hole and I want to make drinks that way. I mean, I’ll pull out some Purell if we’re worried about hygiene. I’m just feeling these days that I might as well be pulling out my dick and letting it hang there.

Today Delbert and I both endured the same pep talk from the newly hired General Manager Judd Buckner. A red faced, sweaty sweaty man whose pallor generally begins at a baseline rosy color, but when you get him talking about the Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" way he shoots up the hue scale to vermilion; making sure to shout out "Steakhouse Baby" with all the college basketball announcing bluster that Dick Vitale is known for, that a person can muster, because that too is the Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" way.
“Now look here fellas, look me straight in the eyes. I don’t know about you but I’m excited for today. I’m excited to make some money. I’m excited to see people happy, enjoying themselves, having a good time. See that’s the thing people look over about this business. We’re providing people a place to be happy. That’s important work. That’s what Dick Vitale's "Steakhouse Baby!" is all about. You with me fellas?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“You know what happened to me the other day. I’m going to tell you a story. Do you want to hear a story?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what drives me crazy? I have two brothers. One is a teacher and the other one, he works with abused children. It’s great work, nothing against what they do. However every time we’re together and someone asks them about our professions, do you know what happens? Do you? Do you know what happens?”
“Uhm, what happens?
“Yes”
“They’ll look at my brothers and they’ll tell them something like, 'that’s just great', 'that’s just wonderful', 'what great work you are doing helping those young people'. And like I said, it’s good work. Don’t you agree?”
“Uh huh.”
“Yes.”
“But what about this work guys? Doesn’t this work mean something? I mean when someone comes here for their birthday, and they’re surrounded by their friends and all the people that love them and they’re singing the official happy birthday song after our rendition of our special happy birthday song (because they don’t worry about such things as copyright infringement) don’t you see the look on that guy or that gal’s eyes, to see themselves through the eyes of their friends, and to just... feel... I’m sorry let me just gather myself here... to just feel more complete than they ever have. That guys, when I talk about the Dick Vitale's "STEAKHOUSE BABY!" way, that’s what I mean. Good times. Good friends. That’s what it comes down to. Repeat after me guys, good times.”
“Good times.”
“Yes.”
“Good friends.”
“Good friends.”
“Ye... I mean good friends.”

Delbert Fernandez is the kind of guy who just looks generally pathetic, all of the time. I don’t think he’s sad. He doesn’t really complain about anything, he gets excited when you talk to him about Japanese Anime and he tends to, when he’s not working, dress in light or warm colors. It’s just the way he looks. The way his eyes droop down on the sides and his mouth is always open slightly enough to look like a wound. I got this impression I do of Delbert. It’s the 7 emotional states of Delbert Fernandez: it ranges from happy to sad to lusting (my favorite). It’s real easy to do because they’re all the same look. Today Delbert is especially pathetic. Today he is the guy at the club who is watching his girlfriend rub her ass against some random stranger on the dance floor while this sucker is stuck there holding her purse.

It was a slow night at the restaurant so the manager decided to cut the both of us. I ran into Delbert having a smoke in the back area. I dug through my apron pockets for my pack of smokes and asked him to light me up.
“So what you doing tonight man?” he asked.
“I might head out to Beth’s party. It’s tonight ain’t it?”
“Yeah. Do you have to work tomorrow?”
“Nah. That’s why I’m getting fucked up tonight.”
“Yo man, I got some shit at the house. We can get fucked up before we get fucked up.”
“Word, I can get with that.”

They say that a home, the feel of it, can very much be affected by a person’s emotional or mental state. I believe this to be true because when I walked right into Delbert’s apartment it felt like his depression had managed to climb through the vents and make a home inside of all the asbestos. I am certain his blinds had not been opened in months, held together by a sticky black film of dust, dirt and melancholy. I neglected the sofa for the lone metal folding chair he kept in the living room as what gathers on fabric has less of a chance collecting on flat metal surfaces. Delbert offered me a beer and layed out a bag of meth on the table. His hands began to tremble as he struggled to squeeze his finger between the two flaps of the tiny ziploc bag.
“All right,” he said, “it’s pretty much ass, but it’ll do the work.”
Delbert patted his pockets with a measured urgency and unable to find what he was looking for rifled through his messenger bag for his pipe and torch lighter.
“Fuck man,” he said, “where’s the bag-- oh right.”
Struggling again to squeeze the same finger between the flaps, he finally got it through, grabbed one flap and then used the other hand to take the second flap and pry open the bag. He scooped out bits of hard powder with a pen cap and placed it inside of the glass pipe. It sat inside of the reservoir, on top of where you can determine a pipe’s age by how it is cross hatched by scorch marks. A perfectly clear crystal on top of all that burnt murkiness. It should have been pretty period, but it had to settle for being the prettiest thing in this fucking apartment.
Delbert grabbed his torch lighter, put the pipe to his lips and then before he could light up, he turns to me and says, “So I been thinking right, I’ve been thinking about all that shit Judd was saying to us earlier, right? You remember what he was saying right?
“Yeah man.”
He turned to light the pipe again, and once stopped short to continue on his previous thought, “What’s so special about a motherfuckin’ birthday man. Or New Years for that matter. It’s insignificant. Completely insignificant. I mean how accurate, how accurate is it really? How accurate is time, you know? How accurate is our perception of time. I mean when we celebrate a birthday, how exact are we being?”
“All I know man is that people smarter than me figured that shit out long before I was born.”
“But how do we know they are right? I mean I sometimes, ya know, feel like some days are longer than others. I really really feel that. What if really, those days are really longer and it’s not just my perception? That’s the actuality. That’s the really real actuality, it’s happening that way. Some time becomes longer than other time and our watches and our stopwatches are just guesses, they’re estimates, but not real time. Not the real time.”
I desperately wanted to argue the point but who am I to tear apart this guy’s dream of having a relevant thought. So I nodded my head and said, “Yeah man, that’s... something. You should light that thing already.”
“Oh yeah,” Delbert put the pipe again to his lips and pressed the button on his lighter, it slammed down to an empty thud that echoed more than it rightfully should have throughout this empty apartment. Delbert looked at the lighter and pressed it again. Nothing. More and more of nothing. He filled the lighter with fluid and still nothing. He got up, looked around a few times and said, “I can fix this. Give me a minute. I can fix this.”

Delbert ran upstairs, I could hear him moving through his room, the scrape of table legs, the rustling of papers and small plastic objects. He came back down with a tweezer and an eyeglass wrench. He broke apart that cheap liquor store torch lighter, fidgeted around inside of it with his tools doing a whole lot of nothing that amounted to nothing. For two hours, I watched this guy sweat, and come at this lighter at every angle. Delbert was not what many people would consider a passionate man, but the fury with which he struggled to bring that lighter back to life, that was the most humanity I’ve ever seen out of him. It’s a trip, how much a person has to come alive to smoke, snort, or swallow that shit all away.
“Just fuck it man. Cut it, and let’s snort this fuckin’ shit already.”
Delbert, looked at me with only a moment’s feeling dejection already fleeing his face. He shook his head, poured the contents of the bag on a CD case and cut it up into sloppy lines. “Good enough” I told myself, “just tell him it’s good enough.”