What I wouldn’t give to be
Jay for a day: speeding by
on his roller skates, balancing
dirty dishes and coffee
as he swivels around and
refills mugs with a smile.
He moonwalks through life
takes every turn, adds another
plate to the wavering tower
and still slides forward.
After-hours when the pace
slows down and the chairs
have been pushed aside he spins
until all he sees are streaks of light.
“J” stands for joy, and joy is the judge and jury to deliver justice. She is the waitress of the Mastermind.
She serves him knowledge and wisdom as she blends information in the carousel of dead horses, running in a vicious circle. The Mastermind resides in a crusted medieval fortress with a gate of raven wings and walls of shady skulls, a mosaic of death seeking to bring life to the lifeless surroundings.
Like a parasite of truth plaguing a land of lies to remove the masks from the dull headed faces.
“Jay what is the cauldron of life is offering today?”
“Regardless… get me my knife and fork.”
The Mastermind is always hungry for more, and Jay is always ready to mother and smother. She learned how to access the tree of knowledge through pain and hardship.
“You won’t need knife and fork for this cluster, Mastermind.”
Everything is in a process of change, and nothing lasts.
Life is a journey into the unknown.
And understanding things backward is the only way forward.
“Hmm bittersweet, nevertheless… tasty. Have a seat jay…”
“I never really questioned; who you really are?”
“Me? I am… an idea. That ignites your senses, I am your curiosity, your closed doors, your fantasy, your dreams and your imaginations. I am your pointless fears, your source of courage, your insanity and audacity. I am the volcano boiling your blood, the furnace blasting your head. I am your immemorial memories, your sexual desires. I am your remedy, your white noises, your endless thoughts, your companion of the dark nights, your acquaintance of the lonely ones too. I gave birth to your instincts, I sparked your tunnels, I tasted your tears and sang your laughter. I am your soul, your hunger for more.
I am your Waitress.”
Waitress
20s
Another table to be served
Will they look me in my eyes this time around?
If I act nice will I get a better tip?
Does it even matter?
It will matter when the rent needs to be paid, what am I talking about.
I need to get out, why am I here.
Why am I doing this? . . .
I need to get out.
How did I get here, waiting tables?
This is not me. I don’t feel like me.
I need a smoke. Just one more. Last one.
Who am I kidding it’s just the first of many.
Here I go again. Chain smoking.
I thought I’d quit. This. Just one more puff.
I thought I’d quit. This job. What’s holding me back?
I can do more. I’m better than this.
I’m smart. Why am I still here?
I need to get out.
Something is missing. I feel lonely.
I need a man. Maybe that will change my life.
What if he leaves? What if I do?
I need to get out.
I need to get out of this job. I need to get out of this city.
I need to get out of this mind. I need to get out.
I just need to get out.
I have never loved and loved without loss. I have never stepped inside anything so beautiful without a piece of me breaking. She is still sitting on the counter. Still whisking flour and baking soda, breathing in smoke she doesn’t not allow me to see. She is drinking coffee without me, then drinking it with me on mornings where it is too beautiful to be inside. She is still hugging me from behind, pressing soft kisses to the top of my head. She is still saying hello to regulars and welcoming the new. She’s slipping slowly. Every time I scrub the floors, every time I lock up for the day, I see less and less of her. She says goodbye faintly in the night, and I can see her disappearing into it. One day she won’t come back. One day the only images of her will be at the front of the menu. When Sal asks, I’ll tell him she’s doing alright, no matter how many times I’ve told him before. She’s doing alright, Sal. She’s doing alright.
It was a night of silent darkness. I closed up the café and headed towards the bar where he’s waiting for me. The full moon looked suspiciously bright that night. I didn’t know if it’s because of the overwhelming darkness that surrounded my aura, or if it’s shining bright to juxtapose the reality of my intentions. My senses were heightened. Surroundings amplified. My sure stride seemed to lose its balance. Then again, maybe it’s all in my head.
It took what seemed like years for me to get there. He was sitting by the exit, as if knowing he’d need to run. I sat across from him and said nothing. He looked at me with infatuation. With fear. With certainty. The past 6 months were a splendor of good food and intoxicating euphoria. All of which have been in preparation for that night. I extended my hand to him in a gesture to leave that place. Hand in hand we walked hungry with anticipation.
The sun shone the next morning with incredible warmth. I was satisfied. I drank my coffee as I examined the room with amused eyes. Maybe next time I won’t use a saw.
“I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, you know?”
“Yes, go on…”
“Laa’- oh my god- I don’t know how to express this. I just woke up feeling like today something is going to change. I didn’t know what, though. It was one of those shuffle shuffle tap tap days, everything was normal, but I wasn’t. My brain wasn’t normal. One of the switches in my head was just turning fluorescent and pounding. You know? So when he yelled “Jassim, your orders are all wrong. What’s going on with you today, is everything okay with you?” That fluorescent switch erupted like Shiveluch on steroids. And I was just like yup – I’m done – that’s it. I’m fed up of all these broken promises to myself to leave this place. I’m fed up of all the maybe’s and the tomorrow’s. I want to feel free. I want to let go of this shit! Abi atnafas! Every breath I’ve taken for the first twenty years of my life was pungent with the stench of regret and longing over all the time I wasted. Bas. That’s it. I’m peacing out of this bitch. Oo you know how good the Kuwaiti in me is at dramatic exits? Fa I tore off my apron and exhaled ‘FUCK. YOU. SALEH.’ I then flattened out my frustrated forehead, he’d love to be the reason my face is full of wrinkles in five years, wouldn’t he?” He smirked. ”Anyways, having imagined this moment a million times over I thought I’d have more to say than these three words. Bas somehow, and for some reason, they sufficed. I threw my apron on the ground and ran out. Ya’nee I don’t need the money from the job tech-ni-cally. Baba covers necessities, so I just got it so i’d be able to afford a laptop case, which I technically got. Months ago. So, it’s fine. I’m fine. I can live without new nice things for a while…”
Silence devoured the room whole and erupted within them. They were now lost within their colossal trains of reflection, which they both struggled to barricade and contain. After a deep minute, she finally prevailed to halt the silence and annihilate it. She anchored her pen back in its natural habitat between her fingertips.
“How do you feel now?”
“You know, this moment reminds me of one of my mother’s favorite stories about me as a kid. I dressed up in my sisters cinderella gown, and rushed to show my parents how pretty I looked in it, too. All I got as a response was a lecture on how it was ‘wrong’. Ya’nee I still don’t quite fully understand why it was wrong. I was like five, for fucks sake. I just wanted to be pretty.”
“Why does it remind you of that, exactly? What parallels can you find between both situations?”
“I don’t know, really, I just remember how I erupted then, and how I erupted today. I refused to speak to my parents for a week after that. I just wanted to be pretty! My mother painted her face and straightened her hair day and night. But when I mimicked her I was wrong! Of course I was met with the ‘you’re a man- you should be strong’, but I never comprehended that, either. My strength doesn’t have to be physical or emotional, what’s wrong with that ya’nee?”
He looked up examining the room, exhausted from all the gray he divulged. She didn’t respond, preferring to treat that question rhetorically. They sat in silence, mentally picking at his embers.
“So, you’re saying the only relationship you find between both experiences is your self expression?”
He nodded. She scribbled more attentively into her notepad, then looked up at him with a small smirk on her face.
“So, what now?” She asked.
“Now!” The question caught him off guard, causing a million thoughts to flood back into his mind. In reality, he hadn’t thought of ‘now’ at all. “Um, What now?” His hands automatically sought each other for solace. “I don’t know. I want to do something I’m good at. I’m good at writing, I think. You know they say every writer’s worst critic is him or herself. Wallah If i’m being really honest, I only applied for the waitressing gig because of baba, he refuses to pay for things he considers ‘luxuries’, whatever that means. I needed that Balenciaga laptop case, just like I needed the Bulgari sunglasses after that.” I paused. “I mean, we do live in a dessert! The sun is blinding. Does he want me to go blind! It’s not like I asked him for a private jet!” He immediately recognized that he was going to dig himself into another tantrum, so he interrupted himself by flattening down his ruffled forehead. “Wallah, at this rate, i’m going to get wrinkles faster than a homeless cokehead.” He smiled.
She studied his face, posture, hands and his face shape. He looked to her like someone who was once full of passion.
“You’re saying you don’t need to get another job?”
“No. I’m going to eventually need the money. But for now I’ll look. Maybe I can get some freelance work?” Having realized she was reading his body language, he was starting to get self conscious about his facial expressions and manually flattened his forehead again gently.
“You said you have a Bachelor of English Literature, and a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing?”
“If you want to be technical about it, yeah.”
“Have you tried to pursue being a teacher, or a writer?”
“Hellz no!” He burst. “Me, a teacher?”
She looked at him patiently waiting for an explanation.
He gulped a mouthful of air. “Okay, this is how I see it. I can’t teach just because I love the language. It’s not enough. I don’t love teaching. I just love literature. Ya’nee imagine what I’d do to the little fuckers they put me in charge of!” His eyes zoomed in on her zealous pen and notepad. “Look, I love the mystery behind it. I love figuring out what makes writers write. My dream is to find a physical entity within a writer that is the part in their brain that blends in all their experiences at that moment in their life and just create using it all.” He looked down at his hands, “just CRE-ATE! You know? And as for being a writer; let’s be realistic. Before the crash it was hard to make a living writing, and now it’s actually impossible. Even if I wanted to sell my soul to the devil and write for a newspaper, i’d be making more more money as a waiter.”
“So, is it about money or not? As a young adult today, where do you think this need for luxury comes from?”
“I think that’s an unfair question. Where does anybody’s need for luxury come from?” He started getting agitated. “I just needed those things. I didn’t spend that money on things I didn’t use. It’s just like things I needed.”
“That doesn’t answer the question. Why did you need a laptop case that you would only be able to afford after months of saving. Why not just a regular decently priced one?”
“For the quality, it is decently priced.”
She gave him a blank expression. She wondered how he can still give such a response.
“Inzain, there was this one kid who at school with me. His name was Mish’al. The only honest way to describe him is if you call him an ogre. He was rude, foul, smelly, and just weia’. Nobody wanted to be his friend. His idea of ‘joking’ with you was to wipe his snot on his hand and hunt you down, threatening to wipe it on you. He did it to me TWICE. Am-baih. I’m still tormented by him today. You can imagine that he had no friends, and he made up for that by eating his heart out during recess.” He giggled “Once we all signed a petition to get the school to kick him out, which led us all to get recess detention for a week. Fa anyway, I was in seventh grade at the time and faj’aa Mish’al shows up to school with a Nokia in his hand. That was a huge deal. Ya’nee the only people I knew with cellphones were Stacey Dash and my dad. You know? Suddenly, his eating habits were “cute” and his popularity boosted to the extent that people huddled around just to watch him play Snake. Suddenly, he had the ‘cool’ parents who let him bring his phone to school. Suddenly he was invited to everyone’s birthday party. Suddenly, I started seeing his face everywhere. And all he needed for that was a phone! So, before I knew it, I was begging baba for a phone. But by the time I got one it wasn’t good enough because there was this new thing called an iPod, which became the more exclusive thing to have. I just HAD to be the first to get one. And the cycle began. If you didn’t get nice things when they’re the thing to have, you basically don’t have a social life anymore.”
“You’re saying your need for things is directly related to your popularity. You still haven’t answered the question though- where do you think your need for luxury comes from?”
A puzzled look sculpted itself on his face. “I don’t know,” He whispered to himself.
Hey Cutie,
I’ve been coming here quite often, your cherry Chapstick left a mark on the straw paper you helped pull off for me. I kept a piece of it just to remember you, Jay, the patch on your diner cloth. You’re the cutest girl in this pit and you carry yourself around like you know it. I’d do the same if I were you… I’d like to sit by you on a warm evening at the theater chairs and ignore the hour and a half film to just side gaze at your defined cheek bones and curling episodes of brown-golden hair lines while every once in an occasion you turn to me and catch my eyes.
Sorry, this is supposed to be short and brief, but you probably deserve a book of poems, or books if I could. That asshole in the kitchen who treats you like shit always burns my hashbrowns, overcooks the eggs and “accidentally” dumps a pound of salt all over the sausage, basically your diner is shitty… Needless to say, I only come here for you.
I go on the rest of the day dealing with high blood-pressure headaches and bacterial black coffee just to catch a glimpse of you. I stutter and forget my order when you look down on me, as if you’re the pedestal and I’m the stone, oh I’m stoned by you that’s for sure… You just sing with your honey-molten telephone operator voice of yours “I guess it’ll be the usual if you’ll stay quite like that…”
Look, I know I’m not the first guy to hit on you, but I’d like to ask you when was the last time you were worshiped in the dead of midnight? I’m sleeplessly lucid dreaming of you. Or how about a painting of you hanging over my one-room apartment? I dried the oil on it myself. Not washing my hands for days on end after you mistakenly touch it with the tip of your polished nails…
Your fragrance, your ponytail, your ankles flexing, your fingers playing with the number 2 pencil, your eye brows cornering, your earrings bending, your hazel eyes, your Goddess-designed nose, your smart-but-acting-dumb moments, your “I work two jobs” line to reject me moments, your playful smile, your Victorian handwriting I can tell you’re cultured… Your yawn behind the counter on a 6 AM Monday, or your palms touching my cup feeling the cooling thermal equilibrium between your touch and mine. Excuse the “cutie” line, but I’m a good man…
Call me? 1-800-NOTACREEP
THE EVERYDAY© NAPKINS – The best Napkins money can buy!
Kuwait Writing Club 