One of my last day jobs was selling Italian suits at a fancy boutique owned by a Lebanese gangster.

I grew up in Washington D.C., and during the '80s, I worked for a guy named Ziad, the John Gotti of Lebanon, who had a clothing empire in the Georgetown area. Ziad was a Middle East rags to riches success story and was both admired and feared by all his competitors. He was ruthless, religious, and he always carried a rusty box cutter in the pocket of his slacks, which he would produce at the slightest provocation. He went from selling suits out of the back of his car, to owning a string of stores staffed with brothers imported from Lebanon to work for him, which they simultaneously appreciated and resented, secretly cursing behind his back after he yelled at them to "sell suit!" There was Ihsam, who changed his name to Sam, and assigned inanimate objects a gender, all the while speaking in the past tense. For instance, instead of saying "take that cardboard box in the back and break it down", he would say "took her and broke her cuz she is in the way." Agnan became Danny, who eventually broke off and started his own store. Joe, the African tailor who always smelled like he had just bathed in Polo cologne and wouldn't lift a finger to do alterations unless there was a tip involved. There was an implicit threat that if the customer didn't tip Joe, one pant leg might end up shorter than the other. There was also Archie, a Chilean homosexual, who had to sit down before a joke was told because the constant sodomy he was a recipient of had rendered his anal muscles a liability when he laughed. That's as diplomatic as I can put it.

Ziad's cousin Abdallah oversaw the crew, and while very nice, was not too bright. He had changed his name to Boudi, some sort of nickname in an effort to blend in with the American public. Unfortunately, Boudi was pronounced "booty" which was a real hoot to the black drug dealers who made up about 60 percent of the customer base. "Yo, where Booty at? I need some fass-achie gators!" (Versace alligator shoes). Boudi lied to everyone and said he was Sicilian, an idea he got from an Iranian named Farhad, who shaved his chest and told everyone that his name was "Mario" and he was from some nonexistent Sicilian town like Corleone. Mario was also known as "Deesco." He would always show up late, having spent the night dancing in pleated pants to Depeche Mode at a club called Cafe Med, completely populated by Iranians pretending to be Sicilian. And by blond American college girls.

When Mario/Deesco showed up late, Ziad would yell at him, and Mario would say, "So kill me, I like to deesco." That is how he became "Deesco."

Perhaps some of my favorite characters were the customers, the lifeblood of all the stores on the block, heavily competed for. There were the black drug dealers (this was the '80s and crack was all the rage) who Ziad specifically bought loud colors for. Offsetting the loud colors were the solid black ties, always in demand for the constant funerals of drug dealers killed in the line of duty. Sadly, black ties were always in season. There were also the gay guys who trickled over from Dupont circle and demanded items that didn't exist. "I want this shirt but in salmon with French cuffs." We palmed them off to Boudi who would appease them with stories of his boyhood in the mountains of Sicily. Then there were the Nigerian credit card scammers. Well-dressed, schooled in England, with a friend at the post office that siphoned them credit cards before they could be mailed to the rightful owners. I don't know how many times I had to refuse a credit card with a name like Chong Li from a guy who looked like Idi Amin. I found out later that the FBI had a whole department devoted to Nigerian credit card theft.

We also had a few televangelists who came in with bodyguards and bought everything in their size. God wanted them to do his work in Versace. Can't preach the word in denim. Occasionally we would get an '80s entertainer like Peabo Bryson, or a local go-go music star like Chuck Brown. Anything with sequins would go like hotcakes. Bolero jackets like Prince would wear. Those went too. Plus tight pants. God likes the package advertised.

We also had clothes stalkers. Guys who would come in weekly, try on the same suit, spend 20 minutes posing in the mirror and then leave. Every week the exact perverse ritual, never buying, always trying. Twilight Zone.

The Japanese were the heavyweight champs of shopping, bringing new subtleties to materialism. Their M.O. was always the same. Buy a suit in navy blue that was too big in the sleeves. And not tailor the sleeves. It drove me crazy. I couldn't understand it. I would get them on the tailor stand, call Joe, he'd mark the pant bottoms for cuffs, and when it came time to do the suit sleeves hanging over their fingers, they would snatch their hands away. "No No No. Sleeve good." I was baffled. It turned out that when Italian suits are imported to Japan, they are cut shorter to accommodate the Japanese stature. But if the sleeves were longer, it meant that you bought the suit abroad, thus paying more, meaning you had so much money that you could buy clothes that cost more and didn't fit. So subtle and yet so ghetto. They may as well still have the price tag attached to the athletic shoes (an '80s housing project specialty later copied by white teens).

I was never a very good salesman, probably because I was tired out from waiting to perform at crappy open mikes every night I could and trying to balance a relationship doomed to fail. I'd stagger home after waiting two hours to do five minutes in a dive bar for an oblivious crowd of seven and try to explain to my girlfriend that I was a comedian. She'd give me a salty eye and push a stack of bills across the kitchen table. It didn't last.

I was a horrible salesman. I don't know why Ziad kept me around for as long as he did, probably because I made everyone laugh and diffused the reality that the job sucked for us all. But every once in a while, when there were no customers, Archie, Sam, Adnan, Joe, Boudi, and maybe even Ziad would sit down, look at me, and say, "Do Mario!" I would then open my shirt to show chest hair, do a new wave dance and say "So kill me...I like to deesco!"

Catch DC Benny on the first Friday of every month at the Zinc Bar at 9 o'clock. Also check out www.DCBenny.com.