That growing list of enemies

Some fan mail

Once, long ago, I had a restaurant. It was a tiny stylish jewel box of a place with palm trees and billowy curtains and candlelight. It didn’t have a sign and it opened 5 nights a week at 6pm. I had 12 tables and a small menu. Late 90s to mid 2007, I took reservations, served boutique wines in fine stemware and flew in Australian beef and Alaskan fish. I made a curated mix of world music and new “lounge” from cool dj types. We had quiet, accomplished well trained servers who wore their own clothing and it felt like a dinner party at that friend’s house that I always wanted to have. It started in an old Victorian house I rented in Atlanta and grew to a small commercial space that was a defunct ice cream parlor. After months of peeling wall paper, acid staining floors and making copper tinted steel tables I opened. It was “cool” I suppose. The kind of place you slid into on date night but as one reviewer said, “like on the third date…not right away.”

Sometimes, despite working 18 hour days forever for no money and trying to do organics and support locals in a time when everyone got a drop off from Sysco Distributors, I’d get hate mail. In the actual mail. This was before social media thankfully. We still had food critics and newspapers and just one cranky old blowhard could make or break your opening season. I was 29 when I opened and broke. I had quit a soul deadening copywriting job in NYC and so the hubris, freedom, entrepreneurial spirit had me dizzy with Can Do Confidence.

And still I’d get hate mail.

“The five course Aphrodisiac Dinner was ridiculous and we were still hungry afterwards…too expensive”

“Too dark inside, can barely see menu”

“Charges $25 for ‘organic’ beef, what the F is that? All beef is organic”

“No kids menu”

“Owner is kind of a bitch”

Ah, there it is.

I was not of the Customer is Always Right ilk. I gave amazing service but only if you Act Right. It was European. French even. If you know, you know.

Sometimes I got hate voicemails. We used to use voicemails back then kids. You’d leave a message and then someone heard it later. It was not about your car’s extended warranty. Mostly it was people setting up a reservation. We checked messages and returned calls. It was a different time.

We hired servers based on a hunch and let them work a couple nights to see if they fit with the other staff, could follow my direction, play along with the theater of the thing and be well spoken about the dishes. Not everyone made the cut. I had low turnover for 10 years and it was good money and I offered health insurance, benefits and free meals and wine. Imagine!

I would not say “fired” but I’d just not put you “on the schedule” if you didn’t make it. One gal just didn’t fit the vibe. She broke a bunch of glasses. Pulled down a shelf of mixing bowls that made more noise than a train car derailing. She couldn’t pronounce any wines from foreign lands, the servers didn’t like her energy. She didn’t make it. She left me the longest, nastiest, hair raising voicemail of my life. Littered with profanity, I was a miserable b—-, an ugly c—-, she hoped I d—-, blah blah. Wasn’t about the restaurant, it was personal. My tall Venezualan host Carlos said in his handsome silly accent, “Oof, that one is just a big dirty Teddy Bear!” and we all laughed and drank wine.

But it hurt my feelings.

A couple days ago I got some social media predictable rhetoric from a real estate agent I never hired ten years ago. A bimbo you might say, if you can still say that, it’s the bread brand of low brow baked goods in Mexico. But I didn’t think she was sharp enough to sell The Hacienda. Ten years ago I met this chick who is in a friend pile on Dinosaur FB which I only use to post about the dogs and to unfortunately use Marketplace to look for a new home.

She was still in there lurking apparently and waiting to pounce on me. You can’t pick a fight with a volunteer stranded in the desert old lady dog rescuer, can you? Aha! There it was, a repost on Instagram of a speech from Tucker Carlson! Get her!

The speech was well written and eloquent about how he loved nature (he lives in the Maine woods) and how he missed his country and will do what he can to be a voice of support and moral high ground yada yada. We’ve all grown up. Even Tucker. We all see that left is right and up is down and politics has turned into a circus. I made no comment about it, I just reposted it. You’re not allowed to have an opinion without someone pushing their face into your room and saying you can’t like that. Oh, the part of inclusion? Get off my lawn.

“Tucker Carlson is such a douche,” she wrote. “I can’t believe someone like YOU would post something like that. I thought you were XYZ honk honk and well you should blahty hoot. Someone like ME? Who DAT? ”

I hate being bothered. I should have just deleted and blocked but after I realized who it was (she changes her name a lot, I think there’s been some marriages and uncouplings) but I put her on blast and said I will not tolerate people in my private messages telling me who I can or can’t listen to. And then I blocked and deleted.

Of course she found me elsewhere and gave me the Dirty Teddy Bear treatment. “You’re just an Arrogant American, SHOCKER. You’re just a bitch. I used to look up to you, but no more!” a good three scrolls worth.

How many glasses of the grocery store 1.5 LT Chardonnay do people tuck into before writing nasty messages to strangers on the internet? And the pills? or are y’all knee deep into that “legal weed” the government is pushing on you up there in the USA? Or are you mixing the Rx with the Tequila that my amigos are cooking up down here.

Never mind I actually live in Mexico in one of the poorest pueblos I could possibly get van rolled in, and have been an advocate for immigrants my entire career, apparently my miserly dog rescue efforts make me arrogant. Do I think the border should be wide open? Nope. Maybe she couldn’t find the right words. I think she meant confident in my convictions and not towing a party line? That unravels people. It’s why Tucker gets hate. But Tucker is so cool he lets it slide. Also Tucker is a zillionaire. That always helps a little with the deflection of hate mail. But is it so uncool to miss your Country? want to protect wildlife? advocate for the end of mindless terrible wars for money? I don’t want anyone’s kids tossed in to the wood chipper. I want to turn off the pressure cooker.

Because I’m older and I know that people are having a hard time with the crumbling systems in the world and the creeping new order that is seeping in under the door, I can conjure up empathy. Imagine being so desperate for a sounding board or a friend that instead of reaching out to someone to say,

“hey, cool dog rescue, do you have a Wish List I’d like to buy you a dog bed! Also, you listen to Tucker Carlson? Maybe I should check it out, it might be interesting, I’ve always thought he was a douche. but you’ve always been open minded and astute, I’ll check it out and decide for myself. How’s it going? I’d love a chat…!”

No, she chose vitriol. Out of my 5000 posts of puppies and doggos and good news and sorta funny vids, I’m gutted for sharing TC. Reminds me of something, what’s the word? McCarthy something. cE nSoR sHiP?

She said, among other things, that she’d join my Growing List of Enemies and that I could F off and more! My quick deletion and lousy memory for trivia makes it vague. Ohhh, there’s a LIST? Do tell. I’ve been stuck down here alone for three years, is that what everyone’s been doing? Making a LIST for me? Please also send a minivan.

From someone who has been a bit of a hot head most of my life, there’s nothing I need less than someone popping out of the ethers while I’m pulling ticks out of stray dog butts, trying to feed everyone that others ignore. I will show you the door. Perhaps a boot in the old backside on the way out. I wouldn’t suffer this person if I was in the penthouse tossing raspberries into my Prosecco but a blazing Sonoran desert summer with more irresponsible people tossing piles of dogs into the streets, sours my mood.

The creepy neighbor who kills dogs was out complaining to me that he left a hose on in his yard in a hole to water a tree and Calico and Border street dogs came in his open gate and laid in the hole on a 100 degree day. I told him to get a shovel and maybe close his gate, I’m not responsible for everything that happens. Also, how smart are those dogs! (I can’t bring any more inside here, the females will fight, it’s already 11, and this is a small place, the only thing that keeps it cohesive is pack balance) But it’s hot out there. They look for shade. He has a tree. No llores! (stop crying) I told him.

Gosh, maybe I am just “a bitch”.

New puppy showed up this week. A small litter that was quickly dehydrated, run over or who knows what, this one survived. Teddy Bear is her name. She’s the size of a fuzzy yam.