John Bonica
I Was Laughing at How He Ran
The temperature gauge in the kitchen rarely went below 95º. I learned from another dishwasher, a man in his 60s and a month into remission, to freeze a rag and place it on the nape of my neck. Within the first hour of my shift I could feel the chilled water trailing down my back, my chest, pooling in the dips of my collarbones, mixing with grease and sweat.
Sweating was good for you—men were supposed to sweat. I was well versed in the language of Broken Fathers. It was good to sweat, and in this way I was raw.
“Sweatin’ like a pig, don’ even have to piss,” the other dishwasher grunted. I laughed, rather than respond. That was the extent of our interactions, acknowledgments that the other had said something. The only other instance of his breaking down the wall that stood between us was when he would present me with a charred skillet that one of the line cooks had thrown down in his tub, asking, in his way, Can you believe those fuckers?
For the entirety of that summer, I worked in silence and sweat.
I got the job through a few friends who had been hired a month prior. Other than our boss and two other waitresses in their late 40s, the place was ours.
The line cooks, in the middle of a rush, were constantly in need of clean cookware. “Hot, behind!” and “Heard” were the only words we’d hear from them when more than three order tickets were up. I yielded to them. During one rush, one of the line cooks—two grades above my own—came up behind me, calling, “Hot, behind!” and letting another charred skillet into my sink, splashing oily, dirty water and soaking me.
I yielded to him.
I first saw him the year prior at a home football game. I had met his girlfriend in a beginners theater class and she had invited me to sit with them next to the pep band. He would try to strike up a conversation, and the trumpet section would drown him out. After the third quarter we left and sat in the bed of his truck until the rest of the crowd had gone home: “Are hotdogs sandwiches?” and whether or not the color of English is blue.
In the two months that followed he and I curated a handful of inside jokes and went out at night and smoked. When passing the joint, he would feel my hands more deliberately, tell me my hands felt like the ridges of mountains on a raised map. He placed his hands behind his head. I took a long drag—my eyes on his. I’m already behind.
We were friends.
Which was reason enough to constitute never speaking of that night, or the night we sat on a friend’s couch and, when she left to use the bathroom, moved our legs closer, his bare knee touching mine through ripped denim. I didn’t do this to make assumptions that this was what we wanted, but instead: it is okay to touch me! to be near me! He never moved. We didn’t speak. To question our friendship was to question each other, and Men were not to be questioned.
That was Dad’s second lesson.
On the Fourth of July, I had only served one couple who had returned after they joined a group of 40 swingers who reserved the restaurant once a month. They liked me, and I had grown fond of them. After they left, our boss decided to close early because the day was A Disappointment. The floor of the kitchen was grease from the fryers and sweat from the workers. If you got enough speed, you could slide on them like an ice-skating rink. I would know if he was in a good mood because he would slide around. I asked myself: could he be fun?
Our boss gave everyone their checks, mine a week later than the rest. He hobbled up the stairs on his bum hip to his office. Once the work was done, his relationship with us reverted to acquaintanceship. We went to the ice cream shop down the road and spent the rest of the night there.
He ordered a strawberry-flavored ice cream in a waffle cone, and then went to his truck to find his Lactaid pills. While he was gone, the friend on whose couch we’d spent time said, “I see you two.” Paper when held up to the sun.
I said, “Thank you.”
We finished up, crammed into his truck, and set off. In the summer, we stayed out late and took advantage of the night. He swerved the pickup into a defunct gas station and flung his door open, had to piss and he dashed into the woods.
The rest of them laughed at the urgency of it, how he was running into the dark forest to avoid pissing himself, and I was laughing too. I thought of my coworker, who taught me how to keep myself cool and that with enough tenacity one can avoid a bathroom for hours on end. And of my father, at once the laughingstock and the virile pulse of the company he kept.
And, in a way, I was laughing at how he ran from the truck with only him and myself in it.
John Bonica lives in southern Maine with his family. He is a student of Theatrical Literature and Education at the University of Southern Maine.
@ohbonjohn
Malasaña | Hudson, NY| Cargo Collective | Portland, ME | 2021