I almost had a German boyfriend

Every now and again (usually Hallmark holidays that require lovers), I wonder about the potential husbands who got away. Last month, I was reminded of Alexander Wasmus, who I might have settled down with if his command of English hadn't made him sound like a total donger.

One evening after I babysat the Russels, Mrs. Russell asked me if I would like to write to her sister-in-law's cousin's son, who lived in Germany and wanted an American pen pal. I was 14 and I had no interest in any boy who I couldn't sneak in through the screen door to french kiss after I'd put the kids I babysat to bed, but I reluctantly agreed.

My first letter to Alexander Wasmus was a masterpiece, a work of art ripe for insertion in a time capsule representing the quintessential American pre-teen of the late 1980s. I discussed my piano lessons, volleyball and basketball practice, my part in the school play, my cat, my brother's gerbil, my father's job, my parents' heritage, the population of my town, the classes I took in school, the sea level of Chicago, the average annual precipitation of Illinois, boy troubles ("Do girls in your class make out with the boys in the bathrooms during recess too?), fashion crises ("My mom won't let me get a pair of jams yet."), television ("We all like to watch The Cosby Show."), and pop music ("Can you do the hand jive to Faith?  It's a song by George Michael.").

["This photo was taken in Austria. There the weather was almost fine."]

Much to my dismay, Alexander responded with a diatribe on the weather in some Austrian village he'd visited. Instead of telling me about the funky Euro things he did or the music he and his friends listened to, his Easter card limply announced: "I took a dance lesson once, but I don't go to formal dancings. Perhaps I will sell my computer and buy a radio controlled model plane. I like to join the parts together and to paint it."

What? I was so disappointed. I kept trying to draw more interesting information out of him, but my German Rain Man always managed to squeze in some lame information about the weather. Talking about the weather is bad enough in person, but it's worse coming in air mail envelopes. Moreover, the "Love Alexander" at the end of his letters didn't ring true.

Christmas Greetings from Alexander: "Some South Africans came to our school. They're not only white ones. It's very interesting to hear about their politics and way of life. Sometimes it's very dangerous for the whites to drive through the black quarters. Perhaps the angry blacks will throw stones at their cars. Are there blacks in your area? At this time it is 20C in South Africa. Love Alexander"

(What the fuck?)

[Is this a Christmas card?]

But Alexander Wasmus demanded more than I could give. Along with the airmail Christmas card, Alexander Wasmus sent me a casette tape of German Christmas carols, sung, quite naturally, in German. Being 15, I was obsessed with spending my afternoons repeatedly dialing into the Z-95 hotline in a hopeless effort to be the 95th caller and win INXS tickets. I could have given a flying fuck about a collection of Nazi Christmas songs, and I must have got so caught up with not learning any new languages, not being afraid of black people, and not looking up the temperature of towns in Africa, that I forgot to write and thank him.

A month later, I received a postcard from Alexander Wasmus demanding a response. I was put off by his pushiness and did not comply. I never wrote to him again.

 

Was I too cruel? Could we have worked out our differences... me, eschewing foreign language skills, needing my modern music and someone to go up my shirt, and he, needing to wax romantic of the tempreature in Perchtoldsdorf? If I was too hasty in my judgment, we will never know.

On a side note, did you catch that?  What is up with German school children in 1988 learning JAPANESE?  When I read that now I can't believe that's what's been going on over there.  How do they not rule the planet? And we think we're so futuristic because our kids know how to count to ten in Mexican (until they turn 7 and forget)?

In Sarajevo

This is a page from my diary when I was traveling with my grandparents for three weeks in Yugoslavia, which, as everyone knows, is famous for hot dogs.

September 23, 1985

A word about hot tubs

I was having dinner with my girlfriends last night, and one of them told a really funny story about something that she had once observed happening in a hot tub, something that did not involve her at all. So then we were talking about hot tubs, and I'm the first one to say, I do not like hot tubs. I even dated (loosely, I’ll admit) a guy who had a 6-man hot tub on his back porch, but I do not like hot tubs at all. First of all, hot tubs are hot, which many people like, but I don't. I’ve mentioned before that I don't like being hot. My reactions to intense heat are extreme. I once had to scream my way out of a sauna. But I know that I am in the minority with my opinion about hot tubs, so I'll tell you another reason that I don't like hot tubs, and this is one that everyone can get on board with: Hot tubs, when used as theaters for intercourse, yield disappointment.

I am speaking from the perspective of a woman, as I have no idea what it's like for a man, but when you are a woman having sex in a hot tub, the following things are going on: (1) you're having sex in hot water, and water must never be mistaken for lubricant, so it's sort of like dry humping, except (2) you're not dry humping, you're having sex in hot water, so there's definitely a sensation of being entered by a penis, but the sensation is foreign and like rubber and not pleasurable in the least, (3) because of the water, there are necessarily sloshing and sucking noises, and everyone knows that sloshing and sucking noises during sex are the least sexy noises of all, and (4) you have to pretend that while all of this is happening, you are having the sexiest, most amazingly hot experience of your entire fucking life, because, as everybody knows (especially people who have never had sex in a hot tub), having sex in a hot tub, is so fucking hot.

By way of illustration, I will now relate to you one of my hot tub experiences. This isn't for the squeamish. I'm telling you up-font, it's bad. If the paragraph above made you squirm even slightly, I suggest that you stop reading right here, or put a bucket next to your chair, because this is powerful stuff, and I assure you that you are going to wish you never read this story because you are going to think of it every time you see a hot tub for the rest of your life.

My boyfriend and I were at a bed and breakfast in the mountains (I have some strong opinions about beds and breakfast-es as well, but that's something for another day). We were sitting outside on a private porch, looking up at the stars through a telescope, downing a case of Miller Lite, and talking about our past and our present and the future we would have together. We'd had the most amazing day climbing mountains and we were in this beautiful place with the black night sky and the moon and the stars and each other. And we were drunk. 

We were

oh so very drunk.

And, let's face it, no one is sober when they get the idea to have sex in a hot tub.

As luck would have it, our room had a hot tub in it, and after we were done with all the talking (and all the Miller Lite), we went into the room and started making out. We took off our clothes. He said, in an incredibly sexy way, "Let's get in the hot tub." I already knew about how things can go in a hot tub, but I really loved him and so I thought our sex in the hot tub would surely be wildly sexy. He turned on the water. And we sat there. And we waited. Do you know how long it takes to fill up a hot tub? It takes a real long time. By the time the hot tub was almost full, we were both sitting on the steps of the hot tub, both naked, both holding our drunk heads up with our hands, which were connected to our arms, which were connected to our elbows, which were resting on our knees.  Two drunk horny naked people sitting with their elbows on their knees, propping their heads up, not talking to each other, staring at the floor, waiting for the water level to rise.

That was the beginning part of our hot tub experience. The next part was, the hot tub was just about full, so we got in. But the water was SO HOT. We hadn't modulated the temperature by turning on the cold water a little. We'd just cranked up the hot nozzle, so the water was irrefutably too hot. Immediately upon trying to get into the hot tub, we both immediately jumped out. He said, "Should we even bother with this?" I wanted our evening to be perfect, so I said, "Yes, let's," and I tried once again to get in. It was torturous and horrible. My feet were burning. He tried to get in too. He said, "Just ease in. We'll get used to it."  We tried really hard to sit in that hot tub.  I was feeling incredibly uncomfortable and sick, like my head was going to explode. I even felt a little angry, because, I can't help it, but I get freaked out and angry when I'm overheated.

The next two things, while I have no choice but to tell you about them separately, happened concurrently.

On his end: He said, "We need to turn on the jets." So he reached out of the hot tub and turned on the jets.

On my end, and at the same exact moment that he was turning on the jets: I said, "I don't feel good." I've already told you that my reactions to heat are extreme, and the water in the hot tub was TOO HOT.  I threw up in the hot tub.

We were so drunk and impatient to start getting it on in the hot tub, that we hadn't filled the water in the hot tub high enough so that the jets were UNDER the water level. In this instance, the top of the water was level with the jets. So the jets blew air across the top of the water, spraying the water and my vomit in every direction, at the walls and squarely into our chests and our faces with the force of 12 fire hoses. He, getting powerfully hit in the face with a stream of puke-influxed, burning hot water, promptly also threw up in the hot tub. Can you imagine retching, while someone is pointing a power washer at your face? It was like this.

We jumped out of the hot tub, but the jets were on a timer. We couldn't figure out how to turn them off. The hot water and our throw up were spraying all over the room and all over us. I kept yelling "TURN IT OFF!! TURN IT OFF!!" He kept yelling, "I'M TRYING!! I'M TRYING!!" And then "WHY DID YOU THROW UP?? WHY DID YOU THROW UP??" And this whole time, we're scrambling around the room, naked, soaking wet, sweating and dizzy, covered in our own vomit, getting pummeled by streams of water. It was mayhem. MAYHEM, I tell you. Finally, he got the jets turned off, after which followed silence. Then he said, "I guess we have to clean this up." I said, “Isn't that what maids are for?'' He said, "Jules. We can't leave the room like this." So we spent a good deal of the rest of the evening cleaning up the mess. Then we took cold showers and since we'd used all the towels to clean up the puke and the water, we had to dry ourselves off with our clothes. We got into the bed and didn't touch each other because we were so embarrassed about this shameful, disgusting thing that had just happened to us, when all we were trying to do was have sexy sex in a hot tub.

In our room, there was a big, beautiful book. The purpose of the book was for the people who stayed in the room to write their names, and where they were from, and say something about how they liked their stay at the bed and breakfast. I think the bed and breakfast was called Blueberry Hill. The next morning, I sat at the dressing table and read aloud from the book in our room at Blueberry Hill, and we made fun of all the entries. "What kind of losers would spend their honeymoon here?" and "After this they're going to DOLLYWOOD?? Oh, that's so sad. Promise me we’ll never go to Dollywood. Unless we do it ironically." I decided to add our names to the book, and here is what I wrote:

"Julie and [boyfriend's name], visiting from [state where we lived], had a really terrible time of it in that hot tub over there. Hot tubs don't belong in carpeted bedrooms right next to the bed. They belong in bathrooms or pool facilities or someplace with lots of tiles. So if you use the hot tub, use caution. And don't throw up. Since the hot tub didn't work out for us, we tied each other to the bed posts using the decorative quilt, and we did dirty dirty things to one another here at Blueberry Hill. So, all in all, we give this bed and breakfast a hearty thumbs up!"

Then we left Blueberry Hill, and although we dated for two more years, we never got in a hot tub together or spoke of it again.

[I really hope that my ex-boyfriend isn’t reading this, because he has a truly lovely wife who I respect and who probably has no trouble at all with hot tubs, and he would be well within his rights to be upset at me for writing about our tragic hot tub snafu, but I don’t think he reads this. If you are reading this, I apologize, but I hope you'll agree that the embarrassment you may feel about what happened to us in that hot tub is greatly outweighed by the importance of me getting the word out about hot tubs.  And besides, Paul, I didn’t use your name, so I don’t think anyone will know that I was talking about you.]

This brings me to another point I would like to make. The allure of having sex in a hot tub is the same as the allure of having sex anywhere other than a bed. Or a car. You can usually work things out well enough in a car. And I'll even give you the floor. 99% of the time, having sex on the floor works out just as well as having sex on a bed, but there is always the potential for rug burn, which you don't learn about until the next day, when your knees or your ass start stinging in the shower. But anywhere else, say, the kitchen counter, or a public restroom, or against a tree, ANYWHERE ELSE, just turns disappointing, and it turns disappointing remarkably fast. With the kitchen counter, someone always ends up with a faucet up her ass. With the public restroom, you're thinking, "This is fucking disgusting. TRY NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING! TRY NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING! Keep your mouth closed." With a tree, well, one of you is rubbing up against bark, and that's exponentially worse than what happens to you on a floor.

Any time you try to have sex in an "exciting" way in "a different place", it's like a game of chicken. Which one of you will be the first to tap out and say what both of you are thinking: "Ah, fuck it.  Let's just go to the bedroom."

Then, defeated, one of you leads the other by the hand into the bedroom, mopily, and you have sex, like avergage-sex-having human people, in a bed, and you probably have just the most boringest of sex, in just the same old way that you always do, with all the same moves that led you to think you should spice things up by trying to have sex on the kitchen counter in the first place. And after it’s over, you're lying there. With your eyes open. And your arms flat at your sides. And neither of you is saying anything. But you both know what just happened. What just happened is: You failed at being sexy and you will be hard-pressed to try being adventurous again. You will think to yourself: "I thought more highly of myself and my partner, but as it turns out, I am sexually tame. I have no business trying to have sexy sex again." And it is the most disappointing realization that you will ever have in your entire life. Yes, there will be other disappointments, some of them shocking, some of them brutal, and most of them related in one way or another to your mother, but this is the one that goes to the core of things. Finding out that you prefer to have sex in a bed.

But, I'm here to tell you what not everyone knows. This happens to everyone. EVERYONE. Everyone has had the experience of having sex in a place where they shouldn't have bothered to try to have sex and then having it turn into something other than what you thought it would be. So when I said this to my friends at dinner, and we all agreed that it was true that we had all had this experience, one of my friends said, “That’s why! That’s the reason people don't go around having sex in ostensibly exotic and sexy places. Because it doesn't work. It just does not work.”

Then my other friend said, “That’s your next blog.”

If you refute my theories, if you think that hot tubs are a sexy place to have sex, or if you can honestly tell me that every time you've had sex anywhere other than a bed it always turned out really cool and just as you'd imagined (better even!), I'd like you to tell me about it.

But I won't believe you, and neither will anyone else.

P.S. If you are my little brother, or a friend of my little brother's who I see from time to time at my little brother's parties or at real estate closings in which you are paying me to look out for your legal interests, or if you are my colleague and shouldn't know these things about me, or if you are my sister-in-law or my cousin or my aunt, or if, God forbid, you are my mother, or LITTLE BABY JESUS PLEASE NO, my father, then all you need to know is that I came by the information in this post not from personal experience, but from second-hand information and research and things I have seen in movies. I am a virgin and all these stories I'm telling in the first person as if they actually happened to me, did not actually happen to me. I'm just telling a pack of lies because I'm embarrassed that I am still a virgin and I want my friends to think I am having a lot of sex, when in fact, I have never and will never have sex, and I have never seen and will never see a penis, in fact, I don't even know what a penis is. Penis? What's a penis? Don't ask me. I have no idea and no curiosity whatsoever in the matter. And if I ever have a baby, it will be delivered by a stork, which is how I came to be someone's daughter, because, praise Yahweh, my parents never had sex either.

P.P.S. If you are my mother, stop reading my fucking blog, you terrible terrible person. If I wanted you to read my blog, I would invite you to read my blog. Now go make a casserole and stop poking around on the internet. The internet isn’t for you. It’s a dangerous and filthy place, and Jesus doesn’t approve. And also, it really upsets me that you have a jacuzzi.

[Hot tubs are dirty cess pools of bacteria that cause

puking, folliculitis, and regrettable sexual encounters]

On how Gabe made it so I had to work at Portillo's

Last week I was going through the “drive-thru” (I dislike the word “drive-thru” because “thru” is not a word; also, “donut” is not a word, but the language keeps getting stupider and there’s nothing I can do about it). I was not going through the drive-thru because I was actually about to eat fast-food. I don’t eat fast-food. I just like going through drive-thrus to see what’s up. The drive-thru at Portillo’s is a beautifully-choreographed, highly-complex operation. In case you are from somewhere other than Chicago, Portillo’s is a chain of about 20 fast food restaurants started by founder/hot dog magnate Dick Portillo. By way of comparison, I feel really comfortable stating for the record that Portillo’s is better than, say, Chick-Fil-A, since I have never and will never eat at a Chick-Fil-A.  It just rubs me the wrong way. The drive-thru at Portillo’s does have the typical order box microphone deal, but that isn’t good enough for Dick Portillo, so you will hardly ever give your order into a box and then exchange money for food through a window. Instead, there are actual people standing in the drive-thru lanes, one or two to take orders, another to take your money, and yet another to give you your completed order, with an adequate number of ketchup packets and napkins, and send you on your way. All of these people are also highly-skilled at directing traffic.

I was sitting there with my window down, again, not because I was ordering food, but because I like the fresh air found in the alleyways of drive-thrus, and I overheard one of the order-taker drive-thru girls saying to another order-taker drive-thru girl, “When I get out of law school, I’m gonna come back here and tell that fucker to fuck himself!”

Well, kudos, young law student! With a mouth like that, you’re going to make a fine attorney. But there was another reason why this statement warmed my heart: I too worked at Portillo’s.

The summer before my senior year of high school, I was looking for a job. My timing was really bad because there were no good jobs to be had – all the college kids had already come home and scooped them up. I was pissed off about my situation because I’d had a good job at what was, for a time, the only video store in Naperville. It was called “Visions in Video.” How stupid is that? Everyone just called it “Visions.” Worse, this was so god damned long ago that when I started working there, you could still rent some movies from Visions on Beta. I’m not kidding. Anyway, I shouldn’t have even had to look for a job, but a few weeks before the end of my junior year, I got fired from Visions. It was an unjust termination, but my boss was this crazy micro-managing alcoholic who sat behind a huge pane of double glass that ran the whole length of the back wall of the main Visions store, whilst creepily viewing the real-time security video tapes from his other, smaller store. I worked at the small store, usually by myself, and it was very weird to know that my activities were being surveilled from afar by an intoxicated, but incredibly business savvy, nut job. If Keith didn’t like what I appeared to be doing, in black and white, with no sound, and in 15 second intervals, he’d call me at the store and tell yell, "Face movies!", which means, go around the entire store and make sure that the right movie is behind the right cover, all the covers are right-side up, and all the videos are fully rewound. This takes a heck of a long time. It was much better when a shipment of new releases came in and you had to get the movies ready for rental. This involved screw drivers and lighter fluid, and I won't even tell you why.

I liked that job. I met lots of people and it was decidedly better than working (1) in a Brown's Chicken, where people are always getting murdered in the freezer, or (2) at Centennial "pool", which is actually a quarry filled with filthy water. At Visions, I got to rent movies for free and I got asked out on dates by the public school guys who would come in. I also got to see who in town was renting the porn, and I got to learn a lot about the names of porn movies because I had to alphabetize the titles, and sometimes I even got to see porn when the guy whose shift was before mine would leave one running in the security camera in the break room. So I had a lot of exposure to porn and to dates with public school guys, and now that I think of it, that makes me wish I still worked there.

The way I got fired was really unfair. First of all, I was a fine employee. I’d worked there since the day after my 16th birthday and I never called in sick, and I worked really hard, except when I was managing my social life in the form of flirting with the public school guys. I knew all the customers by name and they didn’t even have to give me their membership cards. When they came up to the counter, I rang them right up and that really made them have a nice feeling about things. I saved movies for my favorite customers and I got to give recommendations. A few families would just come in and say, “What do you have for us to watch this weekend, Jules?” I would pick out a movie for them (not "Cadillac Man") and they would be pleased. I was really proud of the job I was doing at Visions. I was influencing the lives of the VHS movie watchers of Naperville in a positive way (not so much the Beta people, who had probably made bad bets in many other aspects of their lives and therefore did not deserve my respect), I was babysitting the latch-key kids from the apartment complex across the street who loitered in my store every afternoon, and I was not divulging what I knew about the alarming number of fathers who were renting the porn.

But one day in May, Keith called me up to the big store and I had to go into his lair where he was sitting in the dark surrounded by tiny TV sets showing every angle of every corner of his video stores. The ice cubes were clinking in his glass of scotch as he called me over. He remained seated in his big leather chair and I stood in front of him not knowing what was going on. We rarely saw Keith, even though he was always up in his scary video room. He frightened me because he was always sort of drunk and he had a really off sense of humor, especially for having a crew of employees who were predominantly tall high school girls. He swore a lot in regular conversation. That’s where I learned to talk classy like I do today. The other place I learned to talk classy was from my mother, who is a long-haul trucker.

Keith said, “I’ve been watching you.”

I said, “I know.”

He said, “You’re stealing video tapes.”

“What? No I’m not. What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen your friends with the trench coats. You’re letting them steal movies.”

This was not true. It was true that some of my friends were indeed goth-y drama kids from the public high school who thought they were Robert Smith. They wore eye liner, and yes, trench coats, but there was no video stealing, certainly not as far as I knew. Even so, Keith was convinced that a recent rash of missing video tapes (“rash” = two) had something to do with my alternative friends, and so he fired me on the spot. I didn’t argue with him because it didn’t occur to me to defend myself. He told me I wasn’t getting paid for my last week of work to make up for the videos I’d supposedly let my friends steal. I’m sure that when Keith sobered up, he didn’t know that he’d fired me and wondered why I didn’t show up for my shift, but I went home and felt really terrible for getting fired from my first job and for a totally stupid reason that wasn’t even real. Now I didn’t have any spending money and I’d have to find a new job to tide me over till I went to college, and it totally sucked.

So that summer, when school got out, my best friend, Jason, and I, went out looking for jobs. At that time, Blockbuster didn’t even exist, so I had no transferrable skills. We started at the banks and the food places in downtown Naperville. We thought maybe we could be money changers or upscale waiters, but no one wanted us because we didn’t have any experience. We spent two days driving around, putting in applications, but no one was hiring. Late on the third day of our job search, we went through the drive-thru at Portillo’s on Ogden to get milkshakes. It was an off-time, so there were no employees working outside in the drive-thru. It was just the usual drive-thru box. Jason was driving, so he ordered the milkshakes and I, feeling slap-happy, leaned across him and screamed into the microphone: “and give us two applications for Portillo’s employment!” As it turned out, the person taking our order was not just any Portillo’s employee. When we pulled up to the window, the man standing there said, “I’m Frank. I’m the General Manager.” He may as well have had a sheriff’s badge and a six-shooter on his hip the way he was talking to us like we were a couple of hooligans hopped up on “the milkshake”. “Are you jokers serious? Do you really want jobs?” Even though I was willing to act like an asshole to a drive-thru microphone, I wasn’t able to follow through when this very real adult human being was glaring me in the face with an official-looking drive-thru microphone on his head, so Jason and I both lied, “Yes.” Frank said, “OK. Park your car and get in here.”

I’m not really sure why we thought we were beholden to the Portillo’s General Manager. We didn’t want to work there. We could have just driven away. But we were such good kids that we didn’t even see that as an option. An adult told us to do something, so we did it. Plus, he was holding our milkshakes hostage and we’d already paid for them with money we needed more of in the form of the least embarrassing summer jobs we could possibly find. Portillo’s was not one of those jobs.

We skulked into the Portillo’s. Frank was sitting at one of the tables with our milkshakes and two applications. He started to do a joint interview of me and Jason, and we didn’t get that far into it when Gabe, a guy we’d gone to grade school with, walked by. He was a Portillo’s employee. He said, happily, “Hey, guys!” Frank said to Gabe, “You know these jokers?” I didn’t like that Frank kept calling us jokers. All of a sudden I felt like I wanted to be taken seriously. I didn’t want the job, but I was very conflicted between my desire to behave respectably and be hired, and my desire to NOT work at Portillo’s. Gabe said, “Yeah. We went to school together.” Frank said, “Can you vouch for them?” I hadn’t seen Gabe in three years. He knew nothing about my food-preparation skills. He had no business helping me get this stupid job that I didn’t want. But Gabe didn’t know that. He said, “Yeah!” and he walked away. Frank said, “OK, you two jokers are hired. Fill out these applications and come in tomorrow at 9 a.m.” Jason and I started drinking our milkshakes. I said, “I don’t want to work at fucking Portillo’s!” Jason said, “Why the fuck does Gabe have to work here?” But we filled out the applications and showed up the next morning for our training.

Training at Portillo’s is a very serious thing. You have to learn the abbreviations of every item on the menu and you have to know where to write what on the bag and what order in which to announce the food items over the microphone to the food prep line. It’s like rocket science, but with hot dogs.

The way Portillo’s works is, there is no assessment of your skills. The work that you do within the four walls of a Portillo’s is based entirely on your gender and race. If you are a girl and you are white, you work the cash register. If you are a boy and you are white, you work the drive-thru. If you are a boy and you are black, you work the oven and the fries. If you are a girl and you are black, you work the milkshake machine, the soda fountain, and “push” (where they collate the food and the drinks and call the orders out for the customers to pick up). And finally, if you are Mexican, you make the hot dogs and the beef sandwiches and you do every other task that you could possibly imagine happens in a fast food restaurant, all of which are degrading. Mexicans are paid half as much as everyone else because they are, all of them, and no one even acts like this isn't the case, illegal and being paid under the table. They work at Portillo’s 11 months out of the year, and for one month each year, they go back to Mexico to be with their families.

At Portillo’s all of the Mexicans are referred to as “amigos”, and they are interchangeable to the managers, who just yell out, “An amigo needs to get over here and mop this Coke up off the floor,” and an amigo comes right away with a mop. Those amigos were the hardest working fellas I ever saw. To this day, I have never worked anywhere that was better-run than a Portillo’s. It is a beautiful symphony of food-making -- racist and illegal in many many ways, if that bothers you -- but very organized. You’re not going to have any trouble getting your food timely at a Portillo’s, unless it’s a day when all the amigos run out the back door to hide in their Buick because of some indication that their illegality is being sniffed out. This didn’t happen a lot, but from time to time, 15 guys would just bolt, and the rest of us had to pretend to know how to make hot dogs in their absence.

My favorite thing to do at Portillo’s was work the milkshake machine, because you had to put your hip into it and it exploded milkshake all over you, which made you look like you were doing some serious fast-food preparation. There is something so satisfying about having a really dirty apron. Although I never once touched a french fry or a sandwich -- that was strictly black/amigo territory -- I got to make Gina Portillo’s Famous Chocolate Cake. I was standing at the cash registers one day making fry boxes with Carrie, who was 18 and seemed to me to come from some alternate universe, because she was pregnant with her second baby. It wasn’t busy, and Frank called to me from the big kitchen behind the food prep line, “Joker. Get in here and frost this cake.” It disappointed me to learn that Gina Portillo’s Famous Chocolate Cake was actually two round cakes made from Duncan Hines box mix and frosted with Duncan Hines chocolate frosting out of a plastic tub, the same stuff you can buy at the Jewel. Frank told me to use two tubs of frosting, which is an EXTREME amount of frosting, but I did what he told me to do, and from then on, it was my job to frost the cakes... cakes that had nothing to do with Gina Portillo, who, I believe, wrongfully attaches her name to just regular Duncan Hines chocolate cake. Still, that’s a tasty cake, because of the generous frosting.

The second time I frosted a cake, it was morning time before the restaurant opened. DaWayne came by and slapped me on the ass and said, “Look at Betty Crocker go!” From then on, everyone called me Betty Crocker instead of Joker. DaWayne, impressed with my cake-frosting skills I guess, followed me home from work that day. He parked his Fiero in my driveway and walked up to the front door and asked me if I wanted to go out. We were both still wearing our black Portillo’s aprons and visors and bow ties. I said, “I’m not allowed to date 25-year olds.” He said, “So, you’re not allowed to date black guys?” He looked really pissed off. I said, “No. I’m pretty sure it’s that I’m not allowed to date 25-year-olds.” (Especially 25-year-olds who follow me home from work after smacking my ass all day long.)

One day I was out in the parking lot picking up garbage in the rain. This was an amigo’s job, but I was being punished. I’d gone into Frank’s office and asked him if he could maybe say something to DaWayne about all the ass-slapping. Frank said, “DaWayne has worked here longer than you, and you’ll quit and he’ll still be here, so no, I’m not gonna say anything to DaWayne. Put on a rain coat.”

All of the amigos, except for Alonzo, were constantly hitting on all of the girls and it made me feel gross because most of these men had wives and children in Mexico, they were much older than me, and I was half a foot taller than all of them, except for Alonzo. Sadly, Alonzo never hit on me. I waited for that day, but it never came. Alonzo was young and tall and svelte and single and he was taking classes at COD and was apparently the only one of the amigos who had a green card and who didn’t come to work with the rest of the amigos in the one car. Also, I once saw Alonzo imitating Michael Jackson in a very competent way, and so I knew that he was out of my league. But all five-foot-two of Nacho would often sidle up to me and make me feel weird.

NACHO: You have boyfriend?

ME: No.

NACHO: No?! Why?

ME: I don’t know.

NACHO: You don’t like boys?

ME: I like boys.

NACHO: I can be your boyfriend.

ME: I have to go make fry boxes.

Nacho would ask me if he could be my boyfriend almost every day and you’d think that he would grow discouraged when I ignored him every time he asked, but that little dude had cajones. What did he think we were going to do? I’d finally say yes and then he’d pick me up with his carload of Mexican roommates and we’d all eat for half-price at Portillo’s? Also, Nacho was married and was probably 30, but he didn’t see the language, height, age, and marital status disparities between us as obstacles to us dating. So every day that I went to work at Portillo’s, I had to get my ass slapped and dodge the advances of the amigos. My life was so hard.

I wondered how it worked with these amigos. They lived somewhere in Mexico and they’d heard about Dick Portillo? Did young Mexicans dream of someday crossing the border illegally, and making their way to the freezing suburbs of Chicago to put pickle spears on hot dogs in the Chicago fashion and mop floors for less than minimum wage? Could they really support an entire family in Mexico on the money they made at Portillo’s? How could they only see their wives and children once a year? Did they even like their wives and children, or did they just prefer living in Naperville and sharing one Buick and an apartment with 30 of their amigos? Were their circumstances in Mexico really so bad that this was the logical best solution? Did they feel really strongly about hot dogs? Hadn’t anyone clued them in about the far more lucrative drug trade?

Luckily, part-way through my senior year of high school, I got a part in a play and rehearsals were after school, so I quit my job at Portillo’s. I’m sure DaWayne found some other ass to smack.

Incidentally, whereas I worked there for 6 months, Jason quit after two days, and he would come in with his friends in their trench coats to mock me and then go next door to Baker’s Square to smoke and eat pie and write poetry on paper napkins. It’s OK. Jason’s dead now, so I’m glad he didn’t spend part of his short life working in a Portillo’s. Because of Gabe.