a wet bar rag in the face

Speaking of social games and the opposite sex, I remember an incident at a high class hotel in Urbana some years ago.  Jumers was the name of the high class hotel, they came in from Iowa and classed up an old hotel in Urbana.  A high class bar and restaurant came with it and I was hired to tend bar there.  It was a class gig, I was making maybe double minimum wage, more money than I would make until five years later when I got a job at the post office.

They brought in their own managers, a bunch of guys in three piece suits with snooty attitudes, whereas we workers were a motley crew of college students and drop outs.  We were closing the place late one night when I turned a corner and there were one of those snooty managers and a little cocktail waitress involved in an animated discussion in a secluded corner,  Uh oh, I thought, she better watch her tone or she will get fired from this classy double minimum wage job, and then she slapped him, with a wet bar rag, smack across the face, hard.

Holy shit I thought, there goes her dream job, but he didn't fire her, he started, well it seemed like he was apologizing, and then it all became perfectly clear.  They were fooling around.  In ordinary life a little cocktail waitress would never dare smack a three piece suit guy,  but if they were fooling around that made them in a sense equals, and being hit in the face with a bar rag (I assume he had done something dastardly) was all part of the dance of romance.

But that's the way it worked in a hotel in mid America.  If you were working in Dumbo's hotel among his yes men and women I imagine that wet bar rag would have led straight to the street.


I don't know about not playing the game.  That won't work if you are playing chess or baseball, but I suppose it will work if you are playing the game of life, where the goal of many is to become rich or some kind of big shot.  A lot of pressure, and a lot of work too, I guess none of the three of us has played that game.