Diners seem to be a place where drunks gather and do some really funny stuff. I want to hear your late-night, drunk-as-a-skunk diner stories. I’ll start with a couple.
Story #1
In Hampton Bays on Long Island, there is a diner on Montauk Highway at which you can be reasonably sure that no one is sober. I went there once at about 2 AM hammered out of my mind with about 5 friends from a share house who were in a similar state. Before the waitress could come and take our order, my friend Fish took everyone’s silverware, bent it in half, and then placed it back on the table. The waitress came over, started to read the specials and then noticed what my friend had done.
“All right, Mr. Geller. Get the hell out of here.”
No Reubens for us that night.
Story #2
Same diner, same guys, different night. My friend John put on an entire three-act play using things on the table as characters. There was Monsieur Mustard, a tragic figure whose wife (the jar of parmesan cheese) had been cheating on him. Then there was Kei-Chop (the bottle of ketchup), a mysterious Asian character who had swept the parmesan cheese off her feet and was schooled in several martial arts from the far east. In the end, Monsieur Mustard confronts Kei-Chop with the truth, but is killed after being momentarily distracted by the Fork Security Guard. Almost every utensil and condiment played a major role in the play, including about a dozen straw wrappers, napkins folded origami-style, a couple of table tents and Fish’s wallet. It was cool, but it made a giant mess and we were once again asked to leave.
Have you ever been wasted in a diner? Did you cause a scene? Are you a diner waitress who has had to put up with nonsense like this? Tell me all about it.
I have never stumbled into a diner at 4am, never seen double while reading the menu, never bought a streetwalker a cup of coffee in said place, and never had to sneak out while said fictional streetwalker was in the ladies room because she was creeping me out.
Anyone who claims to have a story like this about me is a fucking liar.
Actually, Iampunha, I was the best behaved of the bunch during those diner trips that never happened. Anyone professing to have any knowledge would, as a matter of course, have even more infamous tales associated with their presumed late night dining habits.
I seem to remember someone getting threatened with a gun because they noticed a girl in a showy outfit a little more loudly than her jealous boyfriend would have liked.
Ah yes, my younger days of drink and dance. There was one particular club that my friends and I haunted. This particular club would be packed during race weekend at Rockingham (NASCAR). Only two diners open in the whole town after midnight. My favorite thing to do, I’d pick a table of guys, complete strangers, and my friends and I would just go over and sit with them.
We sure surprised a lot of guys, but we also made a lot of friends. We always paid for our own food, and we always made sure the guys knew right off the bat that we weren’t out for a pick-up. You can imagine the initial reaction.
Most of the time it took all the engery I had left to order breakfast. If there was any extra engery left, I was too busy laughing at what others at the talbe were doing.
This was way before I even knew Cal existed.