The Sex Lives of Misfits

By Frank Genao

I've been a bartender for more than thirty years in Norway, England, Dominican Republic, the U.S, and on various planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Before that, I was employed on various cruise lines, cut meat at a slaughter factory, worked as a newspaper boy, a petrol pump attendant, a waiter, a fluffer for the porn industry, and worked for several mentally insane restaurant & bar owners--some from outside our solar system. I began writing as a release valve from the insanity of bartending and watching people sit at the bar and speak to their pets in baby talk. My writings have been a source of mild amusement for family, friends, and customers too lazy to walk down the street and purchase a newspaper. I've also written for mentally challenged friends, fellow slackers, and compulsive losers seeking help in securing employment through fabricating tall tales on their resumes.

You can find out more about me by visiting me in jail, or from watching America's Dumbest Criminals TV show.

Bartending and mowing grass is what I do for a living, but it’s not who I am.

Frank

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Genao
• Release date: Apr 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301564545

Frank Genao

I've been a bartender for more than thirty years in Norway, England, Dominican Republic, the U.S, and on various planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Before that, I was employed on various cruise lines, cut meat at a slaughter factory, worked as a newspaper boy, a petrol pump attendant, a waiter, a fluffer for the porn industry, and worked for several mentally insane restaurant & bar owners--some from outside our solar system. I began writing as a release valve from the insanity of bartending and watching people sit at the bar and speak to their pets in baby talk. My writings have been a source of mild amusement for family, friends, and customers too lazy to walk down the street and purchase a newspaper. I've also written for mentally challenged friends, fellow slackers, and compulsive losers seeking help in securing employment through fabricating outrageous tales of intergalactic travel on their resumes. Bartending and cutting grass is what I do for a living, but it’s not who I am.

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CABARETE DIARIES

BOOK II

by Frank Genao

CABARETE DIARIES, BOOK II is a work of fiction. Only the names of celebrities and song titles are real. All the other people, places, stories and events in this book are completely fictional. Any similarity to any real person, place, identity, experience or event is purely coincidental.

© Copyright 2017 Frank Genao

All Rights Reserved

Design and E-Book Formatting:

Fearless Literary Services

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 · The Caribbean

2 · One Coffee Per Shift

3 · Arkansas Earl Buys a House

4 · Why Am I Here?

5 · Our Coffee Machine and Restaurant Business Dynamics

6 · Living in a Transient Tourist Town

7 · Big Red and Judge Judy

8 · Topless Bar Patrons

9 · Big Fred

10 · My Laboratory, the Bar

11 · Big Red

12 · A Haitian Divorce

13 · The Caribbean

14 · The Vibrator

15 · The Usual Suspects

16 · A Road Trip and Space Travel

17 · More About Big Red

18 · Fat Pat and the Mormons

19 · Gringo Logic

20 · Big Red and Her Vibrator

21 · Heart of Gold

22 · No More Meat

23 · More About Big Red

24 · Dolores

25 · Bar Tabs

26 · Whiskey

27 · New Secretary

28 · Aromatic Smells

29 · The Value of a Dollar

30 · Big Red's Beautiful Butt

31 · A Magnet for Pussy and Death

32 · Sex Addiction

33 · Russians in the DR

34 · The New Secretary

35 · The Caribbean Dream

36 · Alabama Gary

37 · Big Red Starts Writing a Book

38 · Get It While You Can

39 · Timmy's Rule #8 About Unpaid Bar Tabs

40 · Women

41 · A Kafkaesque Merry-Go-Round

42 · Big Red Starts Painting

43 · Heat

44 · Timmy's Rule #9

45 · Music

46 · Big Fred Dies

47 · Chablis

1

The Caribbean

I’m doing field research on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic. Directly in front of me is my laboratory — four miles of white sandy beach on which girls and boys emanate the smell of sexual revolution and freedom. The girls prance back and forth in bikinis. The men wear nothing more than board shorts. Everyone reeks of coconut suntan lotion and pheromones. Wildness permeates the air and stains everything it touches. If you’ve just arrived from some small, non-descript Midwestern town like Boise, Idaho and you’re not mentally prepared, you’ll be overwhelmed. I’ve seen people carried away on stretchers before they’ve even had a sip of alcohol.

The smell of youth is intoxicating.

I’m here every morning with my coffee, working on my thesis. This isn’t easy work and there’s pressure from my co-workers and kitchen staff who eagerly await my daily report on what’s happening. Every day I come into work, grab a coffee and do my first quick scan of the beach. If there’s nothing in the laboratory to study and dissect, I z-out each cash register and start going over our restaurant and bar’s numbers from the night before. I pay particularly close attention to the bottom number, which tells me everything I need to know about the previous evening’s business. I can see that someone is stealing. Someone is always stealing. The restaurant and bar business is a smorgasbord for theft… and that’s even before the staff show up.

First the food and liquor distributors cheat. They over-report what they’ve delivered. They cut corners. They fudge numbers. Everything they say has to be checked and rechecked. They and everyone else are always looking for new loopholes to exploit. Everyone’s always looking for new and creative ways to cheat the system. That’s the nature of the service industry.

Second, our staff steals even when they don’t even think they’re stealing. They give free drinks to their friends and family. They grab and eat food from the walk-in coolers. They drink soft drinks, refreshments and coffee throughout the day without putting any of this down on our inventory sheet so we can do an accurate accounting. Our staff shows up even when they’re not on the clock so they can drink and eat food.

Third, I cheat as well. I add liquor to my coffee in order to take the edge off of work. I find that a shot of whiskey is an especially effective way to deal with the insanity and chaos of work.

Every day brings a new set of issues and problems. Theft is so endemic in the restaurant and bar business that it’s comical.

I look around the bar. Our best bartender, Mary, is looking at her reflection in the cooler window and making last minute adjustments to her hairdo. A Dominican female never stops adjusting her hairdo. She constantly fine-tunes whenever the humidity is too intense or she needs to relax her hair a bit more. Sometimes Mary opens a beer cooler and sticks her head deep inside so the refrigerated air can attack the humidity that’s creating havoc with her look.

On a hot and humid day like today, Mary and the rest of the female staff constantly stick their heads into refrigerators and freezers. They constantly battle the humidity to keep their hair from rising like a loaf of baking bread.

Unfortunately our beer cooler fans kick into over-drive every time someone opens the door and leaves it ajar while she sticks her head deeper and deeper inside until half her body disappears. I’ve seen female staff disappear into a beer cooler and not emerge until the end of an eight-hour shift.

Mary only leaves her head deeply submerged for two or three minute spurts before pulling out to take a quick glance around the bar to see if there’re any new customers. Does it matter to her that people sit around our bar watching this spectacle? Not in the least. She could care less. She needs to chill out repeatedly throughout the day to keep her hair at a manageable height.

Our bar and restaurant is a freak show.

The staff all want to keep their hair from rising. Two of our waitresses go into the walk-in freezer for up to five minutes each. When they come back into the restaurant, they’ve got frost hanging from their eyebrows and nostril hairs. They start pulling out their frozen nostril hairs and eyebrows in the middle of the restaurant. Then they compare them. Yes, life here is insane. Everything about the Caribbean is insane.

The constant opening and closing of our refrigerator and freezer doors is going to put us out of business. Our monthly electricity bill is through the roof. Electricity on an island is insanely expensive, and the Dominican Republic has one of the highest electricity rates of any island, which is why poor people here resort to stealing electricity from the main grid. They tap into the main grid and just steal. Even children do it. They tap into the main lines that run up and down the main streets. This is no harder than climbing an apple tree and plucking apples from the branches. Sometimes people tap into the electrical lines of nearby businesses as well. They frequently tap into our restaurant lines and steal our electricity. We have to employ an electrician full time to check our lines every day. He cuts down one line, and before he’s crossed the street, the thieves have tapped in again. We’re in a constant tug of war. There’s constant give and take. Some of the locals run extension cords down several city blocks, from a generator to a business as far as a quarter mile away. There they sell the electricity to someone else. Everyone needs electricity, but few islanders can afford it.

But how can the locals afford electricity when a monthly electrical bill can run thousands of pesos? The average monthly income here is 8,000 pesos (about $50 a week, which comes to about $200 US dollars a month). Electricity is one of the most under-appreciated and taken-for-granted luxuries of the First World.

I use a bar napkin to wipe the sweat off my forehead. It’s scorching hot as usual here, about ninety degrees in the shade. I look over at Mary, who still has her head buried deep in a beer cooler. Then I realize that our entire female staff is deep inside our beer coolers and walk-in freezers. None of them is on the floor and working. It’s entirely too hot to start chasing the staff around, so I remain seated, doing everything I can to avoid moving.

After I organize the z-out’s for the registers, I place them in an envelope and put them behind the bar. Behind the bar is organized chaos. It’s where we keep the lost and found items from our drunk customers. We have wallets and bikinis, used underwear and hats, condoms and diaphragms. Everything you can possibly imagine gets left behind and then waits forever to be claimed.

Every once and a while I need to go behind the bar to find some mail. People stop by day and night leaving envelopes and packages for the owner and manager. The bar and restaurant’s owner is Big Fred. His son, Timmy is our general manager. I’m the glorified bar back, but I’ve been given the title of assistant manager to Timmy. People stop by to leave us envelopes and packages, and then it’s my job to hunt these items down as though they were Easter Eggs. No one ever remembers exactly where they’ve put these packages and envelopes.

Our staff are all locals, they’re islanders. They’re wonderful people: friendly, warm and laid back, really laid back. If they were any more laid back, they’d be in a coma. The islanders laugh easily, smile easily and they’re fun to be around. Unfortunately, many of them suffer from some sort of genetic mutation that renders their memories almost useless.

None of the staff remember to give us any of the packages and messages that have been delivered. They also forget when someone has stopped by to leave envelopes, utility bills, food and presents. So the packages and envelopes sit behind beer coolers, beer kegs and sinks — sometimes for years — before they are found. I’ve found gift-wrapped packages dating back to the 1980’s. I’ve found envelopes dating back to WWII. The fact that these packages and envelopes — including wedding invitations, electricity bills and reports of peoples’ deaths — never get delivered to us speaks volumes about our laid back island culture.

I’ll say to the staff, I wonder why no one’s given me or the owner this package, that is clearly marked Very Important."

You never asked for it, they’ll answer.

How can I ask for it if I don’t know it’s here?

If it was important, you would know that it’s here.

How can I know it’s important, or that it’s here, if no one tells me about it? I’ll ask.

If it is meant to be, it will be.

What’s that mean?

If God wants you to know about it, he will tell you, they explain. This is usually followed by a shrugging of shoulders, as if it’s common knowledge that God delivers personal messages about birthday gifts, wedding invitations, deaths and the imminent shut down of electricity if the bill is not paid by such and such date. Apparently, God does not rely on the mail or humans to convey such messages; and, more importantly, if God wants you to go to a birthday party or someone’s funeral, he will inform you personally.

2

One Coffee Per Shift

I was sitting at the bar drinking my coffee when the phone behind the bar started to ring. I looked at Mary and watched her expression change as she spoke. She rolled her eyes while looking at me. She said, Yes sir. No sir. Yes sir. Maybe. Not sure. Okay. And then she hung up.

Timmy wants you up in the office, right now, she said to me. Then she stuck her head back into the beer cooler.

Fucking hell, what could he want now?

Timmy is the Big Fred’s son; and Big Fred is the proprietor, owner and CEO. Timmy is also a lap dog who delegates whatever his father tells him to do. Lately, Big Fred has been giving Timmy more and more responsibility. He’s trying to teach Timmy how to run a restaurant business and manage roughly twenty-eight employees. This isn’t easy when the only other responsibility you’ve ever had is trying to decide which football game to watch.

I tried to get up, but I was stuck to the plastic bar stool cushion. The plastic was tied to the arms of the chair in order to secure it into place. I couldn’t get unstuck from the chair. I started rocking the chair left and right, before finally keeling over sideways and crashing onto the sand below. I sprained my wrist. Again.

I looked over the bar stool and screamed, Fucking hell!

The green plastic cushion was covered in my sweat, which had acted as an adhesive. The green plastic cushion had become dangerous. It had become slinky as Saran wrap and stronger than Super Glue. Many bar patrons have simply gotten up and walked back to their hotels, their green plastic cushion and chair stuck to their behinds.

I looked up at the thermometer. The temperature was ninety-five degrees in the shade and it was fucking hot. Despite this, I marched up to the office stairs to the second floor. When I reached the office door, I couldn’t see inside the office. Timmy had recently had his office door and windows tinted. He did this to block out the sun and to prevent anyone from accidentally walking in on him while he was watching porn. He wants to be able to see people coming up his steps. He needs a fair amount of warning before people reach his office door. He’s had too many people accidentally walk in on him.

When I opened his office door, I was hit with a blast of cold air that nearly knocked me back down the steps. I had to hold onto the doorframe to secure myself. I couldn’t believe it. It was freezing in there. It felt heavenly. I wanted to take off all of my clothes and lie down on his linoleum floor stark naked.

You simply cannot imagine how wonderful air conditioning feels until you’ve been stuck to a plastic seat cushion and sweating in 95 degrees in the shade.

Have a seat, Franky, Timmy said to me.

Thank you! My god, it feels fucking fantastic in here, Timmy, I answered, wiping the sweat off my forehead.

Don’t get too comfortable, Franky. We got a lot of work to do.

Yes sir, I answered, looking around his office. He still had porn on his computer screen, but it was on pause. Timmy has absolutely no shame. None whatsoever. The word doesn’t exist in his lexicon. He was sitting in his ivory tower, surrounded by blissful A/C and watching porn. Meanwhile the rest of the staff was downstairs in a scorching inferno, nearly passing out from heat exhaustion and fatigue.

His office set-up was interesting to say the least. To the right of his computer screen was a half-gallon of pump hand lotion. To the left was a commercial size roll of hand towels, the kind we use in our public bathrooms downstairs. These rolls were massive and when they were new they stretched over a thousand meters — nearly to the moon and back. He had enough towels to cover the island twice over.

I’m going to be honest with you, Franky. The staff is drinking too much coffee, Timmy began explaining to me. Our overhead costs are through the fucking roof. We cannot afford for this to continue. This is totally unacceptable. We need to start implementing new rules.

Uh-huh, I answered, staring at the frozen porn on his computer screen.

Effective immediately, Franky, I want you to inform the entire staff that they’re not to drink more than one cup of coffee per shift.

Wait! What? One cup of coffee per shift, Timmy? I asked shocked. I nearly fell out of the chair.

Yes, one per shift, starting right now.

But these are Dominicans, Timmy. They’re raised on coffee from infancy. Before children begin to walk, they’re fed coffee. It’s inside their milk bottles. They fall asleep with it inside their mouths. Beer and coffee are the only two liquids Dominicans understand.

That’s not my problem, Franky. I’m trying to run a business. It’s one cup of coffee per shift, you understand?

Yes, sir, I understand, I answered. But I knew his idea wasn’t going to work. How could it work? Dominicans love coffee. They worship coffee. It’s part of their daily liquid refreshment. Germans love beer, Russians love vodka, Dominicans love coffee. It's simple.

Depriving Dominicans of coffee would be committing suicide. This could start a revolution. This wouldn’t be pretty. People have been known to get beheaded after trying to deprive a Dominican of his or her coffee. And, well, I wasn’t losing my head over this. I didn’t even have children yet. Coffee is more important to a Dominican than water. I wasn’t going to have blood on my hands. I’m not even a registered voter.

Good, now get back downstairs and stop stealing my precious air-conditioning.

Yes, sir, I answered.

I got up and opened the office door and walked back into the most intense and insane heat in the western hemisphere. It hit me like a brick wall. My hair instantly frizzed and nearly touched the live wires crossing above the office steps. This was insane. The heat was fucking unbearable. I barely made it down the steps. I stumbled back to the bar. I was dizzy. I was dehydrated. I was starting to hallucinate.

Mary, give me the coldest beer you can find, please.

She handed me an ice cold Presidente. It was covered in ice. It looked delicious.

I have to go back to the walk-in cooler to do some inventory, I said to her, winking. She knew what I meant. Now look, if Timmy or Big Fred come looking for me, come get me, okay?"

Yeah, yeah, she answered, winking back at me. And then she inserted her head back into the beer cooler.

I walked back to the walk-in cooler and locked myself inside. I drank down the ice-cold Presidente in one swallow, and then lay down on top of some beef patties that were thawing out. They felt fantastic. They felt beautiful. They were cold and moist. I lay on top of them and I tried to take a nap.

People came by every few minutes and tried opening the cooler door from the outside, but I’d put the pin in place on the inside, effectively locking the door. No one was getting in. A grenade couldn’t open this door. This was a fifty-pound cooler door. A rocket launcher couldn’t penetrate this door. I yelled out, I’m doing inventory right now. I’m not to be disturbed. And then I laid back down and fell asleep.

I dreamed I was in a Hollywood movie and I was the star of the movie. I had lots of girlfriends — there were tall ones, short ones, round