Jon Bon Jovi Was My Nemesis for One Day – An Excerpt From My Forthcoming Memoir
For nearly 14 years, I've helped individuals navigate the complex landscape of addiction in order to achieve recovery. Nicknamed "The Casual Counselor", my approach is unconventional but undeniably effective.
On the topic of lasagna, on one particular Sunday, we were short-staffed. It was just another server and me, and we got absolutely slammed with customers. Anyone who has ever worked in food service can describe in gory detail how difficult that job can be when you’re “in the weeds.” Nothing is going right, and you’re forgetting things amidst the chaos while you attempt to serve upwards of 15 tables at a time all by yourself. There’s not a huge amount of reciprocal teamwork on days or evenings like those. You just do your best to survive it. It’s a frantic pace of constant movement, yelling and running from here to there and back again, sometimes for four or five hours without a moment to spare.
A party of five or six guys, probably in their 40s, all wearing sunglasses and all with the douchey look of Los Angeles (LA) during the new millennium, tight pants, feathered hair, the glossy and chic presentation, were seated in my section outside on the patio. I was so busy that it took me at least ten minutes to go greet them and get a drink order, bring bread and olive oil with red pepper flakes and Parmesan, and pour water from the pitcher. They were already pissy about how long they had been waiting, never taking a beat to notice two employees trying to scaffold the whole lunchtime affair, or even to care if they had noticed. They had the air of being the only ones in the packed restaurant and were not happy about not being treated as such.
I got their drink order. Then, about a dozen other things happened within the span of minutes, and I forgot to get their drinks. When I got around to remembering, the group at the table was escalating from pissy attitudes to collective and obvious frustration and disdain for their server. Me. I immediately got their food orders into the computer, fired them off to the kitchen, and mentioned sympathetically that it might be “a bit longer than usual, you can see how busy we are, blah, blah, kill ‘em with kindness spiel,” and returned to the madness.
It took at least 45 minutes for the lasagna bolognese and all the other selections they had ordered to come to the line. When I showed up with the plates of food, their frustration had started bordering on volcanic anger. You could actually, viscerally feel it. They brusquely thanked me without looking up while simultaneously expressing their disappointment, muttering about what “could have been just a normal fucking lunch,” and that was seemingly that. I left them with their silverware, growling tummies and pissy attitudes.
I remember being inside pouring glasses of wine for a lovely young couple who were patient and understanding that things had gone a bit off the rails at the fine dining establishment that day. I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, some sort of commotion coming from the patio, and I heard yelling. I looked out the big window and saw my very confused, one and only coworker peering inside, looking for me. It was the bunch of feathered-haired brats. Something was terribly wrong at their table. More focaccia? I walked outside to find out.
What I found out, when a very short man stood up, got just inches from my face and took off his sunglasses, was that I was being taken to task angrily by one Jon Bon Jovi. I hadn’t realized it was him and his entire band. Richie Sambora. All those guys. They were the pissed-off customers at my table on the patio. Jon was giving it to me. I politely asked him what the problem was.
He very dramatically held up what the problem was: he had found a small, blue marble in his lasagna. When order slips went to the kitchen, they’d be printed out and moved down the line on a metal strip that was loaded with ball bearings that made for easy sliding. The problem with the design was that if you were to lift up one of these strips to wipe down the counter underneath and hold it diagonally, at an angle, there was just enough of an opening on either end to allow a marble to roll its way on out.
“Plop!” Right into the meat sauce. Who knows when it happened? What we know is that it landed on Jon Bon Jovi’s plate, 45 minutes after he had ordered. This was one pissed-off 80s pop icon.
The first thing that struck me when I realized who was yelling at me was how little he was. Like so many other celebs I saw in the flesh, I’d be surprised if he was 5’6” or an inch. For all I knew, he was even smaller. Perhaps he wore lifts in his boots. The rest of the band were all little guys, too. I towered over him. Jon getting in my face required him to look up. In the era before smartphones and cameras, I also noticed tourists with handheld cameras gathering around our patio to get a good look and a good shot at the hair metal star giving the business to a young waiter. What a scene!
Additionally, I didn’t know how to address him. “I could have been killed!” Bon Jovi screamed at me.
Trying to de-escalate the situation, I gently replied to him, “Mr. Jovi. Err. Mr. Bon Jovi, listen, Mr. Jon Bon Jovi, sir, I understand that finding a marble in your pasta sauce is completely crazy, but I seriously doubt it would have killed you.”
Enter Richie Sambora, who was now standing and reprimanding me.
“Of course it could have! What if it got lodged in his intestines?!? Ever think about that?!?” the guitarist yelled.
“I mean, it’s pretty small,” I said, and at this point, I started becoming distracted and kind of enamored by the fact that I was being chastised by the guys who sang “Livin’ on a Prayer” and how ridiculous the whole affair was. I remember sneaking a glance at my coworker, who was trying to help me calm the man down while also trying to stifle his amusement.
“Listen,” I said, “I get it. But maybe you might’ve chipped a tooth at worst?” I offered. “Are your teeth okay? I’m sure glad you didn’t swallow it.” I was losing patience. I had other customers to attend to and orders waiting in line to be served.
He went on for a while, wanting to talk to the owner and declaring that they’d never return to the restaurant ever again. “Ever,” JBJ stressed. The other customers on the patio and the passersby were thoroughly entertained by the scene unfolding on that beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon. He swore. His face turned red. He was not intimidating. Not at that height.
I asked him for the marble so I could “investigate the origin,” and we ended up comping the entire meal, hundreds of dollars of the finest Italian cuisine this side of the Mississippi, for the one man who could probably buy the entire restaurant with a check from his checkbook. I got a call from Primo later that evening.
“Hey, babe,” he said to me. “I heard we had a little problem with Bon Jovi at the restaurant today.”
I recounted what had happened, and he quietly listened. He paused for about 20 seconds, then told me, “Well, fuck him and fuck New Jersey anyway. I’ll see you tomorrow, babe.” He hung up. No harm, no foul. No broken tooth. Just a pissed-off, washed-up rock-and-roll giant of very small stature and a story for the ages. It just so happens that we share the very same initials: “JBJ.”
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Joshua Bennett-Johnson, Licensed Counselor & Owner of JBJ Counseling
After working for 7 years in an amazing clinic, I launched into private practice in 2018. I love my job. I can say that without reservation. Watching people rebuild their lives is worth more than any dollar amount.
