I got Chinese food today on the way home.
This afternoon after I did my mandatory lunch shift, I stopped on the way home to get something to eat. I had a little extra money.
Weekday lunch shifts are often completely wastes of time, but I'm on the schedule because everyone is supposed to work one.
I let myself spend some fraction of the money I make from these on whatever I want. Maybe food, maybe I can stop at the record store, whatever.
Chicken N Egg Roll is a good example of the weird, repurposed, architecture that happens so much in this town. The restaurant is obviously just a house converted haphazardly into a restaurant. There are two doors. The main door goes to the proper dining room. But that section sucks. I don't enjoy eating solo in a dining room.
There is another door, a door that is on the side of the house. That door doesn’t look like a door you’re even supposed to use if you’re a customer. It goes into the kitchen, but there is a high counter with like five bar stools and you can watch the cooks because the grill is right there.
This area feels like it was designed for people eating solo. And it feels like you're in on a cool secret.
And there's something to watch while you wait for your food or while you eat.
I like watching the cooks while they work. Any cooks really. On the one hand, working in kitchens often pays less than working for tips. But they’re the ones that actually do the magic. I just learn how to pronounce words and act charming.
I see it all the time but it always thrills me how cooks transform really mundane ingredients like green onions and potatoes into dishes that are so delicious that we feel emotion. Sometimes, the flavors even haunt us for days afterward.
We all have access to these ingredients, but somehow, we don't have the magic touch.
I remember one time watching the cooks at my restaurant make roux gumbo. There is nothing fancy involved in each step.
Today while I waited for my food, I thought about a conversation I had with a regular.
His name is Rod. Been going to the restaurant for years, apparently. That's what Carla the hostess said anyhow.
One time Rod was in my section and he was reading a book that I had read, and it turned out we had both read a lot of the same stuff. 1950s science fiction mostly, back when being a scientist was really cool. When everyone thought that we would be vacationing on the moon. Shit my dad would read. Shit I had read to try to feel close to my dad.
Last week, I remember Rod saying he always wanted to be a writer. And then he said, looking dead at me, "but what the heck do I have to write about?"
It stunned me. In that moment, I got the feeling that Rod had looked at his entire life and did not think any of it had any intensity.
It's one thing to look at your life, and conclude the joy didn't outweigh the pain. I can comprehend that.
A life of pain and frustration? That's definitely worth writing about!
But to say that there's just nothing there at all woth recording? That the whole thing has been so unremarkable?
I can’t comprehend that idea. I got a glimpse at a degree of self-loathing that stunned me. But why does he get out of bed every morning? Why not set fire to it all?
Here he was, eating the greek salad and oyster gumbo for maybe the five hundredth time, telling me he didn't think anybody would care if they knew his life story.
Like I said, I can’t comprehend it. It's not sad. It's not hopeless. It's more like utterly pointless.
After a pause, I think I made a joke and said he could make shit up about a ceiling fan store on a space colony.
The writer that we both liked clearly just made up stuff, like luxury cruise liners that went to the asteroid belt.
He said nobody wants to hear his story. I realized that he wasn't talking about publishers or market demand.
I didn't like that moment. Being a waiter involves me stepping into a persona. I'm somebody that acts amused or even delighted to meet people, and I'm just always so happy making other people happy, and life is great, and I'm full of hope for my future.
That's the character that seems to get the big tips out of diners. I've tested others, and that's the most consistently successful one.
But Rod just obliterated my ability to pretend to be that guy.
Here was somebody thirty years older than me, but somebody I kinda felt some similarities with, telling me that his life was completely empty, meaningless, unremarkable, uninteresting. Infinitely forgettable. Not worth experiencing.
That moment added a new fear to my head. A relatively pain free but meaningless life.
Other version
I worked the lunch shift, made a little extra money, and so on the walk home from the restaurant, I decided to buy myself something nice at the Chinese takeout place that I really like.
I sat at the counter and watched the cooks work and I thought about the conversation I had today, with one of my regulars, Rodney.
I have no idea how old Rodney is, but he's old enough that he was a boy in the golden age of science fiction, back when they thought our solar system maybe had life and wasn't just a bunch of icy rocks. Probably the same age as my dad I guess. But Rodney is pretty successful. I guess he owns a few stores that sell stuff like ceiling fans and fancy lights.
I knew the authors that Rodney liked because my dad read those same authors and still had all the paperbacks and I read them voraciously. It's weird to read stories written thirty years ago about the future, since now I'm alive in the future of the authors. And real life is not like what they thought it would be. All the old problems remain and the world is way less magical than they had hoped.
Anyhow, Rodney said today while I was refilling his ice water how when he was younger, he had every intention of becoming a writer.
And then he said "But what the heck do I have to write about?" and then he kinda looked up at me, and then looked away.
I didn't know what to say. I'm 23 years old. I don't know anything about his life. But this seemed like a terrible thing that he believed about himself. His life was so boring, so dull, that in fifty something years, he never found one moment that snapped him out of his stupor? No heartbreak, no outrage, not even a good night of drunken boasts.
Like I said, Rodney is a regular. He comes in once a week, sits by himself, orders some variation of the same three or four dishes, often has a few cocktails.
Once or twice, he's come in with his mother.
God, now, writing this out, watching these cooks put together my noodle dish, I realize that ending up like Rodney terrifies me. Maybe in a different way than I have nightmares about being locked up in a windowless prison cell.
But Rodney is like a ghost of a man.
Fuck that. There have to be more choices in life than well-cushioned mediocrity or incandescent self destruction. But what? What are the other choices? Everyone around me seems to be somewhere between those two alternatives. Holy hell that's depressing.
This conversation was running through my mind when I heard a voice I recognized. Freddie, from the other night, at Prehistory.
I wondered if he would recognize me. I wondered if he would remember me. He's a cool artist and I was a customer.
But hell, I went for it.
I called his name.
He was standing in the less cool part, the part over where the actual sit-in diners sit.
I yelled his name again. He saw me and smiled. He said, "how'd you get over there?"
I said I'd show him, then I walked outside, then around the side, then to his door.
When we walked back together, he said, "So THAT's how you get back here, huh... I've seen people sitting over here, but wasn't sure how!"
We both got our food.
While he ate, Freddie talked. He said he'd stayed up late the last few nights, drawing.
I asked him if he knew about the Pullman Porters.
I gave him my paper on Melvin Goodrich, the Pullman Porter that was lynched in 1930.
I said it's a sad story, but it deserves to be known more.
Then Freddie said how the night that we were at Prehistory, and we saw that woman beat up that guy, he found out who the guy was. He's a a writer from New York City. He teaches a class here in the fall every year.
Freddie said he has a reputation for banging anything he can while he's in town.