(no subject)
I did so much yelling and chuckling and attempting to prove that I can feel things other than raw-nerve spite at work today that I sound like wet sand in a blender when I talk.
Work. Work. I guess there’s not much else. Suppose I don’t hate the idea of working 7-10 hours a day, knowing that I do not have to go to another job when I leave, and that it only takes one bus 42 minutes to get me home. I get paid more than minimum wag, which should be higher, and I get more than 35 hours a week, every week. It’s actually one of the reasons I didn’t want to step above dishwashing, and it’s the reason I give everyone when they ask why I wouldn’t. The cooks in this place work a maximum 5 hours a day, and they makes $1.50 more than I do, if they’re lucky. Most of them have other part-time jobs. They also have kids and (in the case of Rodolfo, the supposedly most virile Mexican in the world at 52), several “baby mamis” to take care of. Then again, that OTHER job pays him $900 a week and he’s there 13 hours a day, so…
It sounds like I’m comparing myself to them. I do, almost every day. Not just in terms of what I make, because it is much less than everyone else there (except the poor, beleaguered servers, all of whom I love and whom are, unrelated, either straight women or gay men) and yet my hours are longer, because it’s what I want. It guarantees my tiny paycheck in lieu of an obviously tinier one that would require that I get a second job.
In that respect, I feel I am lucky.
In terms of whom I work with, I feel much less lucky. And I say that only as someone who has to put up with the sexist pirate monsters who populate the kitchen, all of whom touch the servers without asking (Rodolfo actively catcalls) and since I have the most contact with the servers, I hear them complain that they’re not comfortable, that it makes them unhappy and that they feel unsafe. And, sometimes, in their stead, without their express knowledge, I will say to the kitchen staff, “hey, guys, you ever stop and think that maybe what you do to the servers isn’t so great for them to experience? Like, what happens when people touch you when you don’t want them to?” (Not that anyone would; one is a walking psoriasis scab in his late 40s who once licked his lips upon approaching one of the servers and it made her immediately head in the other direction, at which point he approached faster.)
The answers are invariably the same. “Issokay! No big deal!” “Don’t worry about it so much!” “I’m a man, what do you expect?”
So, I’ve given up on that. I now do my best to simply work my way between groping hands and actively, hoarsely and abruptly booing catcalls. One guy (Calvin; I don’t care, he’ll never read this, and if he does, I know what to do) watches girls pass and dry-humps whatever surface is handy. I make loud puking noises and say things like “aaah, GROSS!” It’s gross.
Who cares? It’s a kitchen. That’s actually another thing I am strangely grateful for; I can be as loud and as crass as I need to be as long as I’m not in our one hallway screaming something insane or obscene.
It’s not wall-to-wall grimness. There’s a server named Kia who has real-life Janelle Monae hair and is a terribly sweet but vicious young lady. She’s a dishwasher at HER other job so she’s actually extremely sympathetic toward me and likes that I can still be amiable after doing it 5 days a week. She also only works Mondays, and for 4 hours. One time she came in in sheer black leggings before she changed for work and everyone who was caught staring had plasticware thrown at them. Whatta kid.
I know all kitchens are bully havens and sexist shitpits. Where else can I go? What do I have to look like to answer phones? Would I have to get two jobs at both a pharmacy and a grocery store to make up for what I make now, which isn’t a lot, but more than minimum wage? Do I have a creative bone left in my body from when I thought I did almost 6 years ago? And how would it be applied to the point where I could make money from it?
Anxiety that never sleeps, which may account for something. Or nothing, I’m having a hard time deciding which. Maybe it’s not up to me.
Rob Delaney and John Darnielle have both personally told me that my financial situation and my life as it stands are not permanent, and that it may change sooner than I think, and that my happiness either way is not guaranteed. I should seek some lesson in that, seeing how they’re both formerly addicted people who have managed relatively consistent lives despite those past addictions.
Guess you can’t plan your life. You know what, though? Like to get some of these cavities filled. Like to be able to make my apartment presentable enough for a girl to come over. Like to be able to say, in reference to my job “yeah, it’s full of assholes, but only a few of them make me feel a light-sucking hole of despair in my chest when I hear them talk.”
My letter to the President remains unanswered. I’ll send it again, I have it saved. Maybe I’ll word it differently. Either way, you’re making my mom suffer and I refuse to abide that, Obama.
(Innit weird how now “Obama,” “Nintendo,” and now, as I just learned, “innit” are recognized by spell-check?)
Can I visit some of you in the spring/summer? I’m saving money by eating like I always do and never turning on the heat.
Love,
Dennis.