She Drives Me Crazy
(Steele, D / Gift, R) Performed by Fine Young Cannibals
I can't stop the way I feel
Things you do don't seem real
Tell me what you've got in mind
'Cause we're running out of time
Won't you ever set me free?
This waiting 'round's killing me
She drives me crazy like no one else
She drive me crazy and I can't help myself
I can't get any rest
People say I'm obsessed
Everything you say is lies
But to me that's no surprise
What I had for you was true
Things go wrong, they always do
She drives me crazy like no one else
She drive me crazy and I can't help myself
I won't make it on my own
No one likes to be a lone
She drives me crazy like no one else
She drive me crazy, and I can't help myself
She drives me crazy like no one else
She drive me crazy, and I can't help myself
She drives me crazy like no one else
She drive me crazy, and I can't help myself
As I left off last week, I started working at Sha Na Na's in the fall of 1989, and within no time at all, it became an incredibly popular dance club in downtown Edmonton. As the only full time cocktail waitress, I was there for all the busiest nights, and along the way, I became the focus of a few customer crushes. Dave's friend Paul said that that was totally predictable in his opinion: as someone who acted reliably friendly to these young guys as they were shot down by other women in the bar, I would come to represent sex and drugs and rock 'n roll; guys were likely crushing on the idea of me -- because they didn't actually know the real me -- more than the facts of me, and either way, that was a one way street. I had already been with Dave by that point for six months or so, and it was no secret that I wasn't interested in hooking up with any customers. Now, about my song choice this week: Yes, it's a totally over-the-top representation of what I'm talking about, but I loved Fine Young Cannibals, this was a song that was in heavy rotation at the club during the time I'm talking about, and I wanted to place it somewhere in my personal discography: let's say I'm more interested in the idea of this song than the facts of it; I'm not saying I was routinely driving anyone crazy.
I would work from Tuesday to Saturday every week, and if I'm remembering correctly, I would start at seven every evening, just as happy hour was ending. During the next couple of hours, I would clean down the mostly empty lounge, help the bartender (usually Delight) get ready for the evening rush, and spend time talking with the quiet hours clientele. True to its origins as a Fifties throwback lounge, there would be a loop of early rock and doo wop playing over Sha Na Na's sound system until the DJ showed up at nine (and there were a few couples who would come in for some dinner and jitterbugging during these hours), and it was inevitable that I would develop friendly relationships with those customers who I had the opportunity to talk with in the relative calm. In particular, there was a group of nearby casino dealers who came in sometimes, and as they were in a similar tip-reliant service industry, we got along fine. I was friendly to everyone without being flirty, and I would have said there were no misunderstandings happening; I kept it all professional.
And yet, one day, during the quiet pre-rush, a young guy came in with a package and said he had a flower delivery for me. I was confused (Dave sent me flowers at work?), thanked him, and went to walk away with the still-wrapped package. He stopped me and said that he was a friend of the guy who had bought the flowers, and his instructions had been to watch me unwrap the package and report back my reaction. Well. That's awkward. I unwrapped the flowers (which were expensive-looking tea roses like the header picture up there), I proclaimed them beautiful, and asked the young guy who had bought them. He threw out a name, and I drew a total blank. He described his friend, someone who had thought we had made a real connection, and I had no idea who he was talking about. This guy was supposed to ask me if I would be interested in going out with his friend, so at least at this point I was able to hide behind Dave's name and explain that I was already in a relationship, and this guy who had been smiling delightedly through the whole exchange had to leave deflated. Here's the worst part: I never did figure out who had sent me those roses, and if he ever came in again, I didn't know it; couldn't even thank him in person.
That was the extent of the grand gestures I received, but during the crazy busy, boozed-up, music-blasting, shoulder-to-shoulder dance club hours, I heard every line imaginable; knowing full well that most of the guys using them on me were making a last ditch effort after being rejected by their fellow customers. And just a note: Working at Sha Na Na's during the height of this frenzy was like being the hostess of the best party in town every night. As soon as the DJ came, all the staff started drinking, and no matter who was the waitress station bartender (usually but not always Delight), I would be handed a generously poured vodka tonic in a beer mug; I can't begin to estimate how many I'd have every night. So, out on the floor, we waitresses were loose (but never sloppy) with booze, and we'd mingle with the guests, laughing and dancing and singing along to the music, ensuring everyone was having a good time; like the hostesses of the best party in town every night. And like I said, I heard every lame pick-up line but remember two as particularly inventive: a guy said to me once, "Oh my God. Julia Roberts looks just like you". This was around the time of Pretty Woman, and while we both had long curly hair, I knew I didn't look anything like Julia Roberts, but had a good laugh with the guy about the meta-flattery at the heart of that line: Julia Roberts looks like me, eh? The other best line I ever heard: "Look at me for a moment. I was right -- your eyes are the exact same colour as my Porsche." It took me a beat to recognise that the straightforward beauty of this line was enhanced by both commanding me to look him straight in the eye (at which time he gazed deep into my eyes with a practised startled wonder) and giving him the chance to say (to most likely pretend) that he owns a Porsche. Good line, but I laughed and asked him if he was really bragging about owning a muddy-reddish-brown Porsche (this line would probably work better on someone with eyes in the pretty blue-green range). He waited a beat and then laughed with me and said, "I had to try."
So, at Christmas of that year, Dave's parents sent him a plane ticket to come home for a couple of weeks, and while he was gone, I was doing some real soul-searching about whether this relationship was what I wanted. Dave was the only guy I had dated since moving out of my parents' house, and with us now living together, it felt like there was no going back; I felt guilty about our arrangement, like what I was doing was wrong, and the only way to make it feel right was to double down on the commitment...or end the whole thing.
Another thing about working at Sha Na Na's: The bar would be cleared out by two a.m., and after cleaning and cashing out and having a few more drinks, many of us would then go to an exclusive after hours club (The Greco-Canadian Businessmen's Association) that was on the next block and which had offered all of us full-time staff free memberships (since their members drank at our club, too). We'd enter into this nondescript vestibule of an office building with our provided keys, press a buzzer, smile at the security camera, and listen for the satisfying clunk of a heavily locked door unbolting. Going up the stairs, we'd choose our comfy chairs and start drinking Bailey's and coffee, often ordering the home-cooked Greek food that the mother of the owner, Costa, would be dishing up from the back, usually play some euchre, and unwind 'til the sun came up. Over the next couple of years, Dave and I would go to Greco's many many times, but I want to tell a story about one time I went without him.
So, Dave had just moved in with me and was back in Ontario for Christmas, and after work one night, Delight and I went to Greco's with an assortment of co-workers. When we got upstairs, we happened to sit with the DJ from our bar (who was a very popular DJ on Edmonton radio) and a friend of his (who was a radio DJ down in Calgary). Over the next few hours, this friend kept chatting me up, and what I found the most flattering was that he kept asking me questions that made me seem more interesting than I felt. He asked where I was born and was fascinated to learn it was P.E.I. He asked out of the blue if I had been to Paris, and I could answer yes. He asked if I played a musical instrument and his eyes went wide when I said I played the flute all through high school; that I had been invited to audition for the Canmore School of Music; an exclusive institute of higher learning of which he had obviously heard. The point is that for hours, he kept asking the right questions to make me seem fascinating, and I was flattered by his fascination. At the end of the evening (or six or seven in the morning or whenever), the DJs asked me if I needed a ride home, and when I gestured over at Delight who was supposed to drive me, she leered devilishly and said it would be a great favour to her if they drove me. The ride only lasted a few minutes, and the entire time my mind was whirling: am I somehow sleepwalking into a hookup? Am I expected to invite this relative stranger into the apartment I share with my boyfriend? When we got to the apartment building, the Calgary DJ walked me to the entrance door, and I turned and breezily thanked him for seeing me safely home, pointedly ignoring the longing and expectation radiating from him, and then turned and escaped inside. And never saw him again. But if I had been wondering how committed I really was to Dave, I now had my answer: I had met someone who found me more interesting than Dave obviously did (Dave liked to mock me for being from the East Coast [still does, lol] and couldn't care less what unique life experiences I brought with me), and this DJ -- an accomplished and attractive man with a cool job -- looked at me with the awe-filled fascination that I had found so soppy and phony on the faces of my previous boyfriends (but which I was now kind of missing). If I had been looking for some way to get out of my relationship with Dave (which was feeling beyond my control), this was it. But in the end, I doubled down on what we had, and Dave never knew how close he came to coming home to a request to move on out again.
And back to Sha Na Na's: I honestly never flirted with anyone, and I didn't have any respect for the waitresses who did. There was one girl (I don't even remember her name; maybe Pam?) who started about a year after me, and she was really popular with the male clientele because she dressed sleazily and flirted hard. More than once she would promise some guy that she would meet him after work, but then hide in the back while a bouncer escorted him out. There was this one older, wealthy man who liked to come in on busy nights, and he would drink Courvoisier and tip big and he liked for Pam to serve him -- even though he always took up an entire table in my section -- because she would flirt and bend over him with her loose-fitting blouses, etc. She was welcome to him. It was obvious that he had a huge crush on Pam, but a couple of times she invited her single mother to the bar and arranged "accidental" meetings between the two; but even though they sat together a couple of times, this guy was too rich and self-important to settle for the older model. For Halloween of 1990, Dave and I dressed up as Ginger and the Professor from Gilligan's Island (even though we were each working at different bars that evening), and by the end of the night, this old guy leered at me, "You know, if you dressed like that more often, I guarantee you'd double your tips". And that made me feel really icky -- I was dressed as a character from my childhood, and I definitely thought of the SS Minnow dress I had made as more playful than sexy.
When I read Amanada Lindhout's A House in the Sky, I could totally identify with what she wrote about being a cocktail waitress in Calgary around this same time -- there was plenty of money to be made by serving workers from the oilfields (these guy would rain money on the bar staff after being at the camps for a month or more), but I was a bit turned off by her particular money-making methods: she describes having used pushup bras and teetering high heels to improve her tips, and while I appreciate that she was trying to make as much money as possible in a short period in order to fund her real life of exotic adventure travel, I'll stress again that that was not my strategy; and I made money faster than I could spend it. And looking back now, there isn't much I've ever done that I'd be embarrassed to have my own girls find out about; which is rather the point of this blog.
