the dueling insanities of marauding maude

at work the other night, a small, stout woman came in to eat dinner. she was worse for the wear; her bleached and frazzled locks trying to free themselves of her knockoff burberry plaid cap, a pink windbreaker, and jeans that looked as if her ass might have coughed them out onto her legs all pointed to signs that she might have had a little trouble during the recession. upon further inspection, the fact that she had half of her birth-given teeth, cataracts in her eyes, and the pungent realization that she smelled like a stale handle of mr. boston's vodka confirmed it.

this woman was indeed what my mother fondly calls them in orlando... a homeless.

she sat at a table, so i didn't have to deal with her, to which i sighed relief. it may have been a slow night but even i didn't want that kind of action. oh, but i couldn't get away that easy.

my manager had an alarmed look in his eyes. he motions me to lean forward and i could feel something was coming that i didn't want to hear.

"did you hear about the woman who came in here the other night, ordered several drinks and a full meal, and couldn't pay the tab?"

no. of course i didn't. but i have a feeling this was the woman, and i was already making the screwdriver that the server had fired at service bar.

"don't serve her that drink!!! go ask her if she can pay for it."

i've been in many uncomfortable situations. my best friend and newly ex-boyfriend pulling me into a room and telling me they want to date eachother, for example. or, having to tell one of my student's parent's that not only is she a bulimic/anorexic, but she also cuts herself. both not good nor fun to experience. but telling someone that they look broke, well, this has never happened to me. how was i supposed to approach it? Excuse me, m'am, but you look like tammy faye on heroin and smell like my cat's litter box, can you throw me some money up front so i'm sure you have enough money to pay?

"why don't you ask her, vince? you're the manager. why does it have to be me?"

he gave me a look that said he was too busy watching america's next dance crew to be bothered by confrontation right then. le sigh. i had no choice.

i walked over to her, and kneeled down. "m'am, it's bar policy after 9pm that we charge up front for drinks. i can't do a running tab with the servers." she looked at me incredulously, which is the same thing i would have done, because that is obviously a blatent lie. i have never been to a restaurant that you can order food and be waited on but the drinks you have to walk your lazy ass to the bar and pay for each one individual. even to a homeless person, it's ridiculous.

but it worked. "well, i don't want to pay for each drink as i go. that's why i sat at a table." if it had been a fair fight and had she not looked and smelled like a four day old diaper, i would have pointed out that the reason she sat at a table was so that she could order food and drinks and then walk on her bill, but she was relatively incoherent and i doubt it would have been entertaining anyway.

she got up from the table and asked where there was another bar she could order food from, and i pointed her towards front street, which subsequently was the street parallel to where my bar is, and to get there you need to take a "left, then a left, then a left." form a box. you could also take a right then a right then a right. they both work. it's a box. you just need to make a box.

she asked me how to get there five times. i was about to draw her a map when the owner walked through the doors and she made a quick exit. "what an odd lady," i thought.

the owner then explained that her name was "homeless maude", which i was relatively disappointed by. couldn't they have come up with something more interesting, like marauder maude the toothless drunk, or hoodwink maude the bamboozling swindlestress? throw me a bone, people.

anywayyyy, she is evidently notorious in queens for coming into restaurants and bars, ordering large amounts of booze and food, then passing out on the bar and pretending not to wake up so that the establishment calls an ambulance and takes her to the hospital, where she gets a free bed and more food from the gross cafeteria. not a bad ploy, maude. i mean, if beauty ain't your thing, may as well use your homelessness to your advantage. by the looks of her ass and fupa, she does pretty well for herself. i mean, success isn't always measured by your bank account, as she has so presented.

i guess the restaurants all began to realize the wool hood she was pulling over their eyes and began refusing service to her, so she moved into the city and has started doing this in the seaport. i probably would have stayed in brooklyn, where there are more options and less restaurants per square foot... but it's her business and i'm not running it.

the other day i was out to dinner and arguing my point of insanity... doing things over and over and over and expecting them to yield different results. my date was contesting that you can do something 999 times with the same result, and it's that 1000th time over which may be the loophole. i agree. nothing in this life is certain except death and taxes. maude is the perfect example of someone who contests both categories; for years she has been going to bars and restaurants and ordering things she can't pay for, and for the majority of this time, she has gotten away with it, which proves that she expects the same results every time she does it. as of late, her acquired notoriety is changing the winds of her habits. now she's doing the same thing over and over, and it is yielding different results, which is ultimately leaving her confused and jonesing for some more mr. bostons.

but who wants to do things 1000 times with the hopes that it may or may not be different??? not me. i'd rather gather my results after doing something, say, four or five times, give up, and have a dirty martini and a cigarette. the thing is, my borrowed theory (i ripped off albert einstein, he himself being someone of the insane sort) is based on the notion that someone won't do something thousands of times to find the tipping point. because that's what makes you insane. it's not necessarily the outcome of the experiment that you are looking for... it's the process of getting there which is being judged.

maude should have given it a week in between coming back, at least. you can't come back the day after you skip out on a 100$ check and expect no one to remember. although, i highly suspect that she didn't remember, judging from the alcohol emanating from her core existence. maybe that was her downfall. she couldn't remember where she was doing things over and over, and therefore shot herself in her own foot.

keep truckin', maude. though it may not be in my bar, someone else will yield you the same results you have seen in the past. it's inevitable.

k.