Kitchen

We'd stumble through the swinging oak doors, into the commercial kitchen every night around 3AM. If someone had recently mopped, we'd slip across the red tile to the butcher block island, occasionally hitting our heads on the hanging pots above both long sides of the island. If we were lucky, most pots and pans were still in the sink, waiting for whomever was assigned the lovely task of cleaning them.

Most nights one of us would turn on the fryer. On a good night, we produced normal fried foods with which to stuff our drunken mouths. On a bad night, well, there were experiments with the fryer. Too many forgotten experiments led to the fryer being unplugged at night, or set on a timer, or something that our drunk asses couldn't figure out. Perhaps they simply started locking the pantry.

Before we got shut out, we'd all sit around the island on stools eating and talking and laughing. Whenever I had cramps I'd sit on the stool with my legs behind my shoulders. I can't imagine trying that today. I think my flexibility was directly proportional to my drunkenness.

Sometimes I'd cook. I earned the awe and respect of some older guys when I served up food that was actually hot all the way through, which was something they had never been able to accomplish at 3AM before that night. Sometimes if I knew one of my closer friends was on pot and pan duty, I'd try to help. Unfortunately, I ended up making more work a few times. One instance I remember clearly was running hot water into a grease filled pan until the grease melted, then dumping it down the drain because it was liquid and I could. I never repeated that mistake.

I used to get phone calls in the kitchen on a fairly regular basis. One of the guys who paid to live there would answer the phone, while someone else would roll his eyes, point a thumb in my direction and say, "I bet it's for her. No one else ever gets calls in here". Most of the time it was one of my friends calling from upstairs to tell me that he was getting ready to go to sleep and if I wanted to sleep in his room I needed to get my ass upstairs ASAP. Sometimes I'd get calls from around the country. That didn't always go over so well.

The thing about the kitchen was that it wasn't just a drunken hangout. I remember spending a lot of time in there during the day, doing daily domestic tasks with some of my closer friends. I suppose it was like any other "family", the kitchen was a focal point in our days. Life always seemed more normal in the kitchen.