Confused? Read Part 1 HERE and Part 2 HERE
My first day at the
Trout, I was paralyzed with fear. I froze up under pressure, becoming
temporarily blind, deaf, and dumb. When I was sent out to find a box of chicken
strips in the middle of what I thought
was a dinner rush, I couldn’t see the coffin-sized box at my feet. I just about
burst into tears and quit on the spot, not wanting to come back empty handed to
the red faced Chef. I was terrified at having any kitchen snarkiness directed
at me, fearing it would mean I’d be fired in the probationary first few shifts.
Luckily I figured out early that the majority of spats in the cramped kitchen
were due to the pressure from obnoxiously drunk customers and not personal
On my second shift I
insisted on being the one to wash because the other dishwashers, all young
guys, did a consistently half ass job. They chose to ignore the fact that a
sanitizer doesn’t actually wash the dishes, but blasts them with water near its
boiling point. I knew from experience working with grease-saturated burger
holding-trays that it was best to soak the dishes in soapy water, give them a
scrub and blast them with the high pressure nozzle before sanitizing. I took
pride in being fast and efficient. The seasoned staff noticed my attention to
detail and joked that I should train the other dishwashers.
I started to feel sick
with stress on my fifth night. It was by far the busiest, a massive rush that
broke down all attempts at organization. I was scrubbing dishes like a madman,
sweat coursing down my temples while the appetizer cook spun around wildly, tossing
ingredients at four large plates of nachos. The mountain of dirty dishes kept
growing but I was too anxious to wonder where they were all coming from, sure I
would be fired if Chef had to holler for ramekins one more time. Cortez, my
dishwashing partner for most evenings, was the only one not on the verge of
exhaustion or mental breakdown. He sauntered still through the walk-in cooler
to do a pan-pickup from the line, the third time in ten minutes. Craning my
neck, not wanting to lose even a millisecond of time in the battle against the
leaning tower of plates, I wiped sweat on the shoulder of my kitchen whites. The
sink was full of battered frying pans, fresh off the line and covered in
sizzling grease which couldn’t be mixed with regular dishes. I was feeling the
pressure to keep up both with cooking and serving gear.
“Have some water,” my
partner said, noticing the state I was in. I thought about how gross I must
smell, swimming in the heavy coat, thick pajama pants and Donald Duck ball cap.
I must look disgusting, I thought, feeling self-conscious before my snarkier
voice of reason put in that it wasn’t like Cortez could fairly say anything
about it. The stained paisley bandana holding scraggly blond hair out of his
face was damp with sweat and he’d had a musky over-incensed smell to begin with,
a mixture of patchouli and heavy smoking.
“I don’t have time!” I protested
hurriedly as he tried to hand me my water. The plastic cup had been sitting
ignored on a nearby shelf as the evening went on. Cortez studied me curiously
and after a second his girlish lips tipped into a soft smile.
“Relax. The dishes aren’t
going anywhere,” he said in his low, quiet voice. It was at best a whisper,
matching his laid-back demeanour and odd moon-bounce strut. My head snapped to the right to stare at him,
mouth gaping. To be honest I hadn’t expected anything intelligent to come out
of the twenty-five year old drop-outs’ mouth. He shrugged and moseyed off to
fetch salad greens for the line.
The best part of being a
dishwasher was how much time I had to think relatively uninterrupted. Washing
dishes isn’t particularly hard, and by my second week I looked forward to going
on to autopilot. An eight hour shift passed in what seemed like three, probably
aided by my peaking addiction to painkillers. Already back in the habit of
coming to work stoned, I wasn’t confident enough to fetch ingredients for the
line for fear of screwing up. Thankfully Cortez was more than happy to be the
gopher while I remained planted in front of the stainless steel double sinks,
not moving save to empty my bladder. That is, once I relaxed enough to drink
water during my shifts.
There was time to grieve
for the loss of Erika, who had left my life suddenly after a fight over a guy,
of all things. I had time to think about The Energy of Life, a
mind-blowing new book that put forth some interesting theories about modern
society and its internal motivations that had me questioning everything I had
been taught. My whole life was changing, yet again, and I was suppressing
growing anxiety and fear about the future. I still hadn’t got my head around
all that had happened in the last year, and I just really wanted to feel safe
and taken care of. More than anything I wanted to be able to be comforted by my
mom. Since the betrayal with the journals, I had been repulsed by her to the
point that I would literally gag when she tried to touch me. Who can comfort
you and make you feel safe if your own mother can’t? The realization that I was
emotionally on my own only intensified my vulnerability.
I thought about Cortez’s
comment for the rest of my shift, and my day off the next day. “The dishes
aren’t going anywhere,” I mused, sprawled on the balcony to restock my Vitamin
D levels. It was true: the dishes would sit there, dirty, until I washed them.
Chef, with his comically tiny head, could call for plates as much as he wanted,
but if the dishwasher was full and there was another tray waiting to go in –
what? Nothing! There’s nothing to be done until there’s room for plates in the
dishwasher, no reason to stress or beat myself up thinking it would change
things. It was so simple that I couldn’t
see it.
My second week, Cortez
invited Eric and I to smoke a joint after work at his apartment. Natalie, the
only female cook, politely declined, shooting me a concerned smile when she saw
that I was going with them. I shrugged it off, fingering the cellphone in my
pocket. If worst came to worst, I figured I could gouge Cortez or Eric’s eyes
out with my keys. Along the leisurely walk, we found out that Cortez was a
medical marijuana grower, albeit unlicensed. He did the work for an elderly
fellow with a license who wasn’t quite up to cultivating in recent years.
Because Cortez wasn’t legally entitled to a pay cut, his licensed friend
instead gave him a hefty fifty percent of each harvest.
It was cozy in the quiet
dealer’s dingy basement suite, where his bedroom was just a corner of the room
cordoned off by thin blankets. A “temporary settlement”, it was a cluttered
bachelor pad run rampant. The gray linoleum was peeling up around the edges and
the beige walls had a grey tinge from the quantities of smoke to which they
were exposed daily. It screamed cool to me at the time; I guess what my parents
would mean when they called something ‘hip’ or rock and roll. Nuggets of sweet-smelling
weed taken for granted dotted the worn carpet and several branches were hanging
from the ceiling to dry.
Cortez loved pot, and
especially hash, the way some guys love their mothers. His hazel eyes lit up
with a passionate, fiery orange light when he talked about making it, smoking
it, selling and trading it. Eric and I listened to him, captivated by his
experimentations with salvia, ecstasy, heroin and just about every other drug
available in Canada. He talked non-stop as his calloused fingers deftly plucked
crumbs off a sugar cube sized chunk of hash. Cortez flicked each piece at a driver’s
manual on Eric’s lap while the nacho master lit a cigarette. At first I
hesitated when he held the pack out to me, not wanting to rekindle my habit
before clumsily accepting. Cortez tossed me a pink lighter. It was all smoothed
and practiced, as if we had always smoked together. A smile from the feeling of
acceptance was creeping across my face.
“I went there with the
clothes on my back and a bag of rice. And of course some hashish,” Cortez
rasped, sucking on his own cigarette as he told us about his adventures on
Bards Island. He packed a huge bowl of tab that I was sure was meant to go
around. I cringed, thinking: you can’t share a bowl of weed and tobacco; the
smoke will be acrid enough to make the second or – ugh -- third person vomit. “Met
some cool people, and oh man, these Turkish guys! Traded them some hash for a
camping stove. I lived off rice and fish that I caught using a paperclip for a
hook.” He paused, bending over the medium sized bong. I watched in amazement as
he inhaled the contents of the whole bowl, holding it in for a solid twenty
seconds. “And I’ve never had so much luck fishing,” he finished, exhaling the
remains of the monster toke with ease.
“You know, if anyone else
was telling me this, I’d say they’re full of shit,” I blurted, feeling brave
from the nicotine. “But you don’t seem like – oh, thank you – you don’t seem
like you’re lying.” Cortez passed the dirty bong to me, skipping Eric in poor
stoner etiquette. I quickly took my toke and passed it back, not wanting the
witty cook dislike me.
Every cell of my skin
startled to tingle and burn. It spread until it became a cold, wet sand feeling
in my legs as the rush of tab hit me hard. The room around me was spinning in
circles that shimmied up and down, and the paisley patterns on the make-shift
walls danced like feathers in the wind. I felt like I was sitting on a high
speed Lazy Susan rather than a lumpy mattress. I had to lie down, suddenly
hyper-aware of gravity. The embarrassment I would’ve felt with anyone else was
blissfully absent as I squirmed in Cortez’s blankets. I felt
uncharacteristically flirtatious and sexy noticing the way my coworkers were
looking at me. I hadn’t felt desired like this since the raving days, when I’d take
a ‘boyfriend’ for the night.
“You okay there,
darlin’?” asked Eric sweetly. I had squeezed my eyes shut and a painfully large
grin was spreading across the lower half of my face. I waited for the
vertigo-meets-the-Spins to fade away.
“Ohhhhhhh, yeeaa, I’m
just dandy,” I slurred, giggling. “I can feel gravity working really well
tonight!”
“She’s just peachy!”
Cortez laughed, a hungry look flashing briefly in his eye.
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