Best esophagus ever.

Lead entry for Still Following the Leader.

Midnight.  Or thereabouts.  A late night valet attendant walks the cold sidewalk, wading through the persistent crowds of drunken partiers.  He walks up to my valet stand, looking as though he just walked in on his mom bent over a couch with the mailman behind.

“Oh.  My.  God.”  He proceeds to tell me and my fellow valets what happened.

He worked as a valet for the same parking company as I did, at a hotel kitty-corner to mine.  A guest of theirs needed a ride to the Hard Rock, though the Hard Rock Hotel was only three blocks from the valet’s hotel.  The valet dutifully hopped into the driver’s seat of the Bentley Continental and the man and his accompaniment got into the back seat.  Moments into the three-block trip, he started hearing some odd noises.  Following that, he heard the words that are sure to go down in hospitality lore:  “Best esophagus ever.”  When they arrived at the Hard Rock, an attendant opened the rear door only to display, to all of the waiting attendees of a very popular club, a woman going down on the guest.

The passengers were denied service by the valet staff, and in a huff, he and she drove off, leaving the valet to walk back with a story burned into his memory.

The overnight valet attendant position that I once filled was very unique in my work history.  Sometimes I hated it with all my soul, others it was the most entertaining job ever.  It was an overnight job, so all in all I felt like a perpetual zombie. I was going nowhere in the company, so after 2.5 years I moved on.  But man did I come away with some memories.

In the city and county of San Diego, there are many party districts.  But as a valet I had the (mis?)fortune of working in the Gaslamp, THE party district in San Diego.  Many a man was dressed to the nines, many a woman dressed their sluttiest.  Street performers played their guitars, pedicabs blasted mixtures of pop dance music and Middle Eastern music.  Homeless people meandered through the crowds asking for any change that could be spared.  Taxi drivers literally ran over drunk guys, who got up and ran away as if they were at fault.  Ferraris, Mazarattis, Lamborginis, even got to see a Bugatti Veyron.  That is a snap-shot of the Gaslamp on any given Friday or Saturday night.  Oh yeah, forgot to mention the bloody fights, police arrests and public urinations.

Then 2 am hit and all hell broke loose.  New Yorkers pissed that the bars close so early, everyone upset that they can’t buy any more booze.  The worst fights broke out at that time.  I remember one fight where a man was attacking a man and woman.  The woman got in her car and the attacker smashed her windshield like he had a baseball bat.  I can’t however, recount all of the times I called 911.  Harassers, people who didn’t pay attention to the midnight closing time of the gated parking lot and driving through the chain-link fence that locked it—a more common occurrence than you might think—and through all of this, it was my job, or at least part of my job, to make sure no non-hotel guests got into the hotel.  But hotel guests could be just as bad.  One of the hotel owner’s friends was caught skateboarding down the stairwell.  Guests were always trying the get the night auditors to sell them beer after hours.  An almost weekly occurrence was guests disconnecting the smoke alarm in their room so they could smoke.  Little did they know it set off an alarm behind the desk and security proceeded to escort them out of the hotel to find a new place to sleep.

Ah, the memories are coming back.  If you want to see it all, work overnight in the hospitality industry in a party district.  You’ll come away with more than you can remember: A taxi hospitalizing 17 people after the driver falls asleep behind the wheel, crashing into the doors of one of the most popular nightclubs not two minutes after closing time; a guy asking his girl why I would even talk to him right after I greet him; couples having sex in the backs of pedicabs; $100-tips for recommending a good bar; finding out that black men may be the most polite and nicest group of people I encountered; people telling you to fuck off after offering them a discount at the hotel because their car was in lockdown ‘til 7 am; driving Bentleys; calling the cops; getting threatened; women shouting out “I want to get fucked” to her friends who are trying to get her away from the guy she just met; random women telling you you’re hot.  I can go on, I have years of this stuff.

In the end, I have mixed feelings about that time of my life.  That job broke me out of my shell, mostly.  At times I feared for my safety, but I met some good friends.  I felt like a VIP when I walked around downtown when I wasn’t working, but I always felt like a zombie.  I had the time of my life and had some of the worst stress I have ever been under.  Any way you look at it, it was a valuable experience that I don’t think I would undo.