Facebook Publication Date: 1/28/2018 2:01

Before bed, a pre-Ask reflection.

I want to tell you about the best job I ever had.

In my early twenties, I worked the graveyard shift at a Carl’s Jr.

The ‘restaurant’ (can you call a fast food joint a restaurant?) was on the corner of 30th and El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego.

It’s much nicer now than it was then. Hipster chic. Back in the day though, it was seedy and dirty, soot from the buses and the cars, people to whom life had not been kind.

The corner was notorious, deservedly so, for prostitution and drug deals. Every night from 9 to six in the morning, I would work the ‘dining room’, another euphemism for the plastic chairs and scarred tables.

And every night I would fall in love. With the ‘agents’ for the working girls, who used the Carl’s as an office. For the taxi drivers in for a quick bite. For the men who came in, hands trembling as they spilled their coffee to wake them up from the pint they had downed minutes before. For the ‘patrons’ of the girls, who brought them in, sweaty palmed and furtive, feeding them cheap burgers either before or after, so it would feel less illicit, more like a date.

For the women in multiple layers who insisted on bringing their laden carts by the window so they could watch their prized possessions, who unwrapped their Famous Star carefully, so carefully, slowly smoothing out the paper so it would be a placemat; delicately dipping their fries in ketchup like dowagers.

For the punk kids, fresh from moshing, who called me, a 22 year old, m’aam.

And for the girls themselves, most of them younger than I was, with barely anything on at all, pretending to laugh at their patron’s jokes, looking furtively at their ‘agents’, straining to go back to the street and make more money. For the girls from the strip club two blocks east who came in counting their dollars, loud and boisterous, who at first treated me like the uptight Wesleyan girl that I was at the time, but who came to trust me. and like me, and who gave me wadded dollars as tips. I pitied them. They pitied me.

But the job itself was wonderful. For 8 hours I would work that dining room, filling coffee umpeenth times, listening to the same jokes, dancing by perfunctory grabby hands, who later learned to treat me with respect, wiping down spills and nodding quietly in response to apologetic, rhuemy alcoholic eyes.

For them, this was Mr. A’s, that rooftop bistro that laid out the city lights. For them this was their refuge. For them this was their church, and I treated it that way. The tables were cleaned, and then dried with another cloth so sleeves wouldn’t get wet before another shift at the lampost. The coffee flowed. I learned to hold the hand of the man, once a nameless alcoholic, now my regular named Dave, so the cup would not shake when I poured. Only half a cup so he wouldn’t spill. That was all right. He knew i would come round again.

I loved them all.

I loved that job so much I took my breaks among these souls who were now my people, my friends. I heard their stories. I heard the women tell me how they wanted to go to Marinello, the beauty school, but they never did. The alcoholic, now Dave to me, who was once a teacher. The ‘agent’ who told me i was pretty enough to turn out, but that i was meant for different things. That was a complement. I took it as such. They would leave me tips. Dimes, quarters. Once a 10 dollar bill.

I would leave, get into my 1971 Dodge Dart, smelling of coffee and french fries and table cleaner, bone weary, but knowing I had given my best.

That was my best job ever.

Till this one. I wanna pour your coffee, dry off your table. I wanna slip you an apple pie. I wanna take my break with you. I wanna hold your hand so nothing spills. I wanna serve you.

I know, I know. It sounds off, doesn’t it, for a descendant of slaves declaring her desire to serve?

Welp.

Like other words, humility, modesty, and the like, the word servant has been perverted and distorted. It is conflated with servile and subjugation. ‘Having a servant’s heart’ was once a complement. No more.

But the difference *is* stark. Servile is from the bottom of the fetid pool of oppression. It is not service when it comes at the threat of the lash.

No. Service, in this context is finding the light in all you see, and meeting that light with your very best effort. Even for the girls on dates. Even for the ladies with too much red rouge with salty fingers from their fries. Even from Dave with his tremens that we never talked about, but always worked around.

Even for you.

I promise to give you my very best here. I promise that I will give you no less than what I will ask of you.

Thank you for loving me into what is now the best job I have ever had. The one I made for myself, to give to you.

Till I steel myself for The Ask,

Your servant (in the very best sense of the word),

Lace on Race

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