Long story......
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Back in the mid '70s, when I was playing tournament tennis it ultimately became a serious venture for me.
I was working part time during the day and wanted more time to work out and practice so I attended Bartending School in SF for 5 days/4 hrs. per day.
I wanted to work at this high-end (high tip) steak house (Equinox) that I would sometimes frequent and pretty much not work any where else.
So I interviewed 3 different steak houses to get over the jitters, etc., prior to my interview at the Equinox.
Landed the job that I wanted.
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Talk about quite a place...located in Piedmont, CA, an affluent community in the hills above Oakland, CA...it attracted some of the most beautiful professional women on the Peninsula and on Fri. & Sat. nights it was 4 deep at the bar.
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Lots of stories that I won't bore y'all with.
But in those days I had a Bruce Lee body (5' 11" with a 28 inch waist), well tanned, and polite...however, I was quite shy around women.
The hot cocktail waitresses for the restaurant liked to flirt with and tease me and I quietly enjoyed that until a few became somewhat assertive.
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Anyway, there was this ONE lady who'd come in alone on a weekend night and sit at the bar. OMG!!!... every swingin' dick in the place fell all over her.
But she tended to more and more fuss over me the more that she came in.
As I said, quite a shy guy, I was...26 yrs. old and not terribly "experienced".
She finally showed her hand one night when she ordered her first Chardonnay and slapped down a $50 bill. After one more Chardonnay she said 'good night' to me and all of her suitors, walked out and left me a tip of the $36+ change on the bar.
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I was grateful but also nervous...I thought, "Oh no. Now what?"
She was so much more high class and professionally developed than I was (a SF corporate attorney), her subtle overtures & her smiles simply intimidated me.
She came in a couple of other times and then we no longer saw her.
But she was definitively stunning...and everyone in the place knew it.
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I worked there for 3 months or so...finally quit. I got tired of getting home at 4:00 AM and having my house, bedding, pillow cases smell of cig. smoke just from me being at work for 10 hours.
But oh man, quite a place.
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OK, one more.
They kept the white bar wine filled in carafes in a fridge under the bar. They had the same kind of carafe catching the drips from the condensation pipe inside of the fridge.
You guessed it...I grabbed the wrong carafe and poured a fellow that crappy water instead of white bar wine.
He gagged and spit it all over me as I stood in front of him.
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But oh man, quite a place.
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