SUNDAY, JULY 10, 2011 So let me just give you an idea of how Klara fits into the universal puzzle. Today I woke up at 3:35 PM, twenty-five minutes before I had to be at work. I decided, screw it, I’ll be a little late this morning. I feel shitty. I’m allowed.
It takes forever to get ready when you have a crater in your leg. It can’t get wet, so showering is some kind of acrobatic routine, and I have to wrap my leg up tight with an ACE bandage every day because spreading staph at Brazeiros would probably be a disaster. I have a fucking staph infection because of the immune-suppressant biologic drugs I’m on. I honestly think all of my ailments and illnesses are signs of my soul being ready to leave my physical body and exist in another dimension, and the fact that both my intestines and my skin are self-destructing is merely a way to transition into my fifth-dimensional light body. Or something like that anyway.
I’m really just on drugs. A lot of the time. Most of us are, here. The house favorites are alcohol and caffeine; I just tend towards hallucinogens. Anything works, though. I’m so prone to seeing things that “aren’t there” that even caffeine can make me trip. At present I have some Percocet in my bloodstream, running through my brain. I must still be high from last night, too, because I just told a customer it was lunchtime. … It’s 5PM.
Sorry, I get sidetracked when I start writing. So! I managed to wash my little dreadlings before work — God knows they needed it. I carefully combed my bangs into place to hide the undercut, decided to skip the makeup and just put on some moisturizer so I didn’t look like a fucking creature of the dead, brushed my teeth, grabbed a waffle, and I was out the door.
I try to walk to work when I can, but today I got a ride. My commute is fifteen minutes on foot, but I was late and felt too shitty to brave the 93° Knoxville heat for more than the three-minute car trip. Even as I write this I am periodically fanning myself with a menu. I am a hostess, forever doomed to brave the temperature extremes that blow in through the front doors. My job is to spread love to everyone who seeks all-you-can-eat MEAT.
But on a day like today, my job is to make small talk with the manager, obsessively sanitize my hands, not get caught texting, arrange highliters like Stonehenge, and write. I am the lighthouse keeper. I was once told the story of a young thinker who asked Einstein what job he should get to help further his understanding, and Einstein said to be a lighthouse keeper. The student was at first offended. What a menial task! But old Albert explained that a lighthouse keeper had ample time to sit alone and think, and that would allow his great ideas to flourish.
Now, I’m not any scientific wizard or anything, but I do think. A LOT. There’s not much else to do up here at the hostess stand on a slow Sunday. So, I write. Maybe I’ll take home these little pieces of paper and copy them onto a blog or write a book or something. Hell, it wouldn’t hurt to share my occasional revelations with the world.
05:55:59 PM The ironic thing about being hostess, charged with spreading love to all who enter the restaurant, is the isolation. I don’t get to interact much with my coworkers. Like, at all. The most contact I get with them is when I sit with one or two kitchen workers to eat dinner after our shifts are over. Sometimes I work cashier, which is nice. I actually get to sit! (I’m standing right now, as usual.) And cashiers get to interact a little more with the servers and such. Otherwise, I have been to a couple work parties, and even though I’m good friends with the other hostesses, I’ve yet to connect with anyone else in the restaurant…
Ahh, work parties. I’ve been to two of them, and the experiences have been completely different. The first was Gilberto’s birthday. He’s one of the gaucho chefs (the ones who carry around swords of meat), and he lives in a nice little apartment with a couple of the servers. I remember the vibrant paint on the walls, the sangria, the delicious little fried chicken tortilla bites, the salsa dancing– oh god, these Latinos can salsa dance in their sleep. It just comes so naturally to them; it’s so intriguing.
Then there was Blake’s going-away party. (He was a bartender. Very knowledgeable. He got a real job with some fancy wine distributor.) Krystin drove me out there. I remember we got lost in the absolute sketchiest part of town, but we eventually made it. The group that attended was a rowdy, charismatic bunch. The drinks were professionally mixed, and the bud was absolutely magnificent. That’s where I met that California-blonde guy with the angel-blue eyes.
Man, you know what? I should throw a Brazeiros party! But gah, I don’t know anybody. Hahaha I’ll keep an eye out for people I’d like to party with. Zenzen is hiring a lot of new people lately, and they seem pretty quirky. We shall see.
06:51:18 PM Speaking of quirky, the newest bartender just sauntered in the check his schedule for next week. Seeing servers in their street clothes rather than bowties and button downs really emphasizes the humanity in them, y’know? Haha, this guy though. He has a mohawk. He hastily brushed it down before he walked in – I can tell; I do the same thing with my hair. He’s got a sense of style that kind of hints at European punk, but he certainly doesn’t put too much effort into it. It seems like he’s so tall that his limbs are way too long for the rest of his body. He’s kind of attractive, though, in his own way. I like majestic noses. I’ll have to learn his name.
08:03:00 PM Oh gosh now I’m in party planning mode. Klara parties are unlike any other. I’ll get a small group together, some caffeine, some sugar, a little of whatever substance I have on hand to share. Then it’s always fun to bust out the three-foot speakers my Dad had in the eighties. Still work like a charm. They make the beat so irresistible, even the shyest of guests ends up dancing. It becomes infectious. Darkness falls, the strobe turns on, and we all float away to another land. A mystic world of bass and melody, of sweat and sex.
Dance parties are a shamanistic thing. For eons, humans have moved their bodies on beat with the music as a way to achieve a trance state. Raves are a sacred mass meditation on the divine through music and dance.
