I circle this place for five minutes until I decide to go to the next street down, Lincoln and Ninth, to park my car. As I get out, I immediately regret wearing heels because there are many puddles that I have to dodge. I walk up to the building and from the outside glows luminous lights that are changing colors. In front of these doors, familiar smiles form on the faces of the big macho bouncers that I’ve met before. We exchange our Hi’s and they open the door to let me in. I walk in and look around. The building has a round shape and the lounge chairs are as white as snow, set to perfection looking like an actual airplane inside. Plasma screens are built into the walls and a huge projection screen is on the stage replaying images advertising DC10.
DC10 is a bar that I work at doing coat check; it’s a side job where I earn extra money. DC10 refers to the name of a specific type of airplane model. The inside of the bar resembles a luxury private plane. The cocktail waitresses wear cute little black and gold stewardess outfits. Near the door a sign reads, “Baggage Claim- Coat Check” and an arrow points to a door whose top half is cut off. I walk into this little box which is referred to as the coat check room. Along the cream colored brick walls are coat racks and what seems like millions of hangers hanging on them. I see a table on one side of the wall which has the bank and in it lays two hundred dollars as change money. On the other side of my coat check door is a sign saying,” Coat Check - Three Dollars” and next to it is a big clear bucket with a sign in front of it saying, “Tips Appreciated.” For customers to get the hint I put some bills in it before hand.
An hour passes by and the time is only 10:30 pm, “This place doesn’t pick up until 11 or 11:30pm”, or at least that’s what I heard from the cologne sprayer in the men’s bathroom. Surely time goes by; my first shock of the night is a transvestite. He puts his make up on better than I do and probably most girls too. He still needs a little more practice walking in his four inch heels as he walked up to give a friend of mine, the manager, a hug. As I look past them, I see the door men spotting that out too and they wait until the transvestite leaves to start clowning on the manager. The manager tries to defend himself but he miserably fails.
As the night goes on I stand at the door watching people interact. There are different kinds of people with their own personal styles. I wonder about everyone, they all have a story behind them, and checking in their coats only shows how cheap or generous they are. I go out for a smoke break and talk to a bouncer. I found out that he was a high school teacher, teaching math by day and a bouncer by night.
It finally hits 12 am and I start seeing underage acquaintances that should be at home with their babies. Instead they are here getting drunk and knocking over my coat check sign and tip jar. They are completely wasted and smell like alcohol as they try to get their coats checked and talk very loudly and obnoxiously. This guy was standing there yelling out, "That's real talk, that's real talk" for no apparent reason. Not to mention you can see a lot of make up caked onto girl's faces. It’s also a shame that girls can’t fit into the clothes that they choose to wear. I see a lot of girls with clothes on that are way too tight for them. Their meat is hanging over their belt and every few seconds I see them struggling to pull up their pants. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
By the end of the night people start filing out and coat check starts to get busy. By this time, everyone is drunk. My tip jar starts to fill up with all this green paper. I hear the manager announce, “Last call for alcohol,” and people hurry to the bar to get their last drink. As the night starts to wind down, and everyone is asked to leave and I look back and see that all the coats are gone. Just as I thought the night was over, suddenly a fight breaks out. For about thirty seconds, it was complete chaos. The most memorable moment of the fight was when the bouncer picked up one of the guys by the neck and carried him out with his legs dangling off the ground. I thought the fight was over until I saw the bouncer and management run out the door to try and get the license plate numbers. A guy ran in and yelled, “There’s another fight.” Sadly I didn’t get the information on the events that occurred outside.
I counted the money and calculated my total for the night, tipped out, and was waiting to be checked out. The wait took forever because of the fight. I watched as everyone lent a helping hand to clean up the bar. Finally, I was checked out and made a total of one hundred and forty eight dollars for my five hours of work, not bad. I was walking out and a bouncer asked if I needed to be escorted to my car because it was 2:30 in the morning and I had to walk to a different street alone. I declined his offer and said I should be fine. I lit up my last cigarette of the night and made my way home to get some sleep for another days work tomorrow.
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