The Fast Food Life
The bars are closed for the night, and this is where the party has gone. I can hear the deep bouncing rumble of the bass being pumped from the stereo in the car ahead of me vibrating some of the loose change on my dashboard. One of our noisy neighbors leans out of their car window yelling at the other cars in the line. Suddenly a beer can appears in his hand and he throws it. The orange street light glints in the liquid spewing from the can as it spirals in its trajectory through the parking lot. Our neighbor laughs and pulls his head back into his vehicle. If the cops knew about the Jack in the Box drive through at two in the morning they would never leave. Luckily they don’t know. I’m hungry and this line is long enough.
I’ve been coming here for years. Not to this line, but lines just like it that exist on the fast food strip of every town in America. These burger box shaped buildings have arisen seemingly by their own will from the asphalt wreckage of some sad lot that used to house a family store or an undeveloped park. Swings hung from trees here. People went on walks with their loved ones and happy, leashed pets. Now there is only this pallid building, full of pockmarked twenty-somethings who have been forced by fate or drug addictions to work the late shift. These small but speedy food services are the same everywhere. Only 16 states in the union have Jack in the Boxes, but every town in the developed world knows precisely what their food experience is like. There’s something about fast food that makes you feel like you can never leave.
We slowly move toward the colored screen as the song changes in the car ahead of us. I’m thinking about the bacon potato wedges I’m about to consume, a delightful mélange of potato shards floating in an orange, gelatinous cheese like substance, melted fat and bacon all nestled in a cardboard box that inexplicably reads “everything.” It’s a dish that, while sober I would avoid like a face full of debilitating acne, but after a few beers it becomes the driving force behind my very existence. I will cradle it in my lap, and eat it, and hurt, terribly tomorrow.
Maybe it’s the Pabst or the slow line, but something is conjuring some memories. I used to think about Sally a lot, but years have passed and I’ve all but forgotten her until tonight. I met Sally while working in a plastics factory that was charged with the manufacture of the disembodied yellow sheaths of automatic external defibrillators for some nameless medical company. The workplace was a large warehouse filled with old machines, loud noises and a redolence that can be described only as meth-like. Sally was a sixty two year old expatriate of Laos. She had lived in the United States for over 20 years but still had a great difficulty with the English language, which had oddly manifested itself as an intense joy. She laughed and grinned constantly. Her problem understanding people was perhaps due in part to the fact that after arriving on US soil, she began working at the factory where even the loudest shout was as audible as a whisper. In the mornings she shoved balls of cotton in her ears, further exacerbating the situation. She was about a foot shorter than me, probably four foot seven, and had a conspicuous mole above her top lip that sprouted several long strands of hair. Her hands were well worn and looked painful. During her breaks she would run them under warm water and sigh. Her teeth were perfectly uniform and white, leading me to suspect dentures at first, though I confirmed later that they were, in fact, her own perfect teeth. Sally and I became workplace friends immediately.
Throughout my life I have frequently found myself in non-sexual, mutual friendships with much older women. These relationships are satisfying, partly because they provide such a great deal of confusion among bystanders, but mostly because I am perpetually confused by and terrified of women, and these much older ones seem to hold all the secrets of their gender in one small wrinkled package. Sally laughed at almost everything I said, and though I knew I would likely elicit the same response if I quoted Ginsberg or the Necronomicon, it felt like she was listening, so I continued. “That funny,” she would say, “that reawy funny.”
The two of us ate lunch together every day and scheduled our “days on” together. She would request the machine near mine and throughout the day she would throw pieces of plastic at me, like a pestering child, as a joke.
Sally had come to the states after marrying her husband, a military officer that met her, married her and brought her to Idaho. Despite the fact that she began working at the factory the same year I was born she hadn’t made any friends there. She described her life as “work and sleep,” and she told me that she hadn’t done anything other than watch television in her off time in about 17 years. She stated it as a simple fact, not as a complaint, but as I am thoroughly American I have a great passion for my leisure time, and this struck me as being particularly depressing. I asked her what she liked to do, she said “bowing.” When I asked her if she would like to go bowling with me, she was excited. We picked out at time and place. Tonight, Sunset Bowling ally, eight o’clock. She never showed up.
The next day Sally avoided me. At lunch she ate in her car. When her shift was up she promptly left the building before I could say goodbye. The following day I walked up to her machine and greeted her. She didn’t say anything at first, and I mentioned that I was having lunch at noon if she wanted to join me. She hesitated, wringing her bony hands together. “I’m mawied,” she said, looking down. “That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow?”
After that it was all pleasantries, “hi,” “bye,” but that was the extent of it. I was laid off in December, just before Christmas. When I left on my last day I caught a glance of her watching me through the window. She watched me with the face of an old dog through the chain link fence at the pound.
The woman who hands me the potato wedges through the square sliding window is over excited and nearly shouts “Have a good night!” The potato wedges are worth it. They’re salty and saturated with cheese, precisely what I knew I’d be getting. It’s nothing new, but it doesn’t matter because I’m used to it. The line, the taste, the sights and the smells, they’re all familiar. And even though I know that it isn’t, I like to think that’s a good thing.
I’ve been coming here for years. Not to this line, but lines just like it that exist on the fast food strip of every town in America. These burger box shaped buildings have arisen seemingly by their own will from the asphalt wreckage of some sad lot that used to house a family store or an undeveloped park. Swings hung from trees here. People went on walks with their loved ones and happy, leashed pets. Now there is only this pallid building, full of pockmarked twenty-somethings who have been forced by fate or drug addictions to work the late shift. These small but speedy food services are the same everywhere. Only 16 states in the union have Jack in the Boxes, but every town in the developed world knows precisely what their food experience is like. There’s something about fast food that makes you feel like you can never leave.
We slowly move toward the colored screen as the song changes in the car ahead of us. I’m thinking about the bacon potato wedges I’m about to consume, a delightful mélange of potato shards floating in an orange, gelatinous cheese like substance, melted fat and bacon all nestled in a cardboard box that inexplicably reads “everything.” It’s a dish that, while sober I would avoid like a face full of debilitating acne, but after a few beers it becomes the driving force behind my very existence. I will cradle it in my lap, and eat it, and hurt, terribly tomorrow.
Maybe it’s the Pabst or the slow line, but something is conjuring some memories. I used to think about Sally a lot, but years have passed and I’ve all but forgotten her until tonight. I met Sally while working in a plastics factory that was charged with the manufacture of the disembodied yellow sheaths of automatic external defibrillators for some nameless medical company. The workplace was a large warehouse filled with old machines, loud noises and a redolence that can be described only as meth-like. Sally was a sixty two year old expatriate of Laos. She had lived in the United States for over 20 years but still had a great difficulty with the English language, which had oddly manifested itself as an intense joy. She laughed and grinned constantly. Her problem understanding people was perhaps due in part to the fact that after arriving on US soil, she began working at the factory where even the loudest shout was as audible as a whisper. In the mornings she shoved balls of cotton in her ears, further exacerbating the situation. She was about a foot shorter than me, probably four foot seven, and had a conspicuous mole above her top lip that sprouted several long strands of hair. Her hands were well worn and looked painful. During her breaks she would run them under warm water and sigh. Her teeth were perfectly uniform and white, leading me to suspect dentures at first, though I confirmed later that they were, in fact, her own perfect teeth. Sally and I became workplace friends immediately.
Throughout my life I have frequently found myself in non-sexual, mutual friendships with much older women. These relationships are satisfying, partly because they provide such a great deal of confusion among bystanders, but mostly because I am perpetually confused by and terrified of women, and these much older ones seem to hold all the secrets of their gender in one small wrinkled package. Sally laughed at almost everything I said, and though I knew I would likely elicit the same response if I quoted Ginsberg or the Necronomicon, it felt like she was listening, so I continued. “That funny,” she would say, “that reawy funny.”
The two of us ate lunch together every day and scheduled our “days on” together. She would request the machine near mine and throughout the day she would throw pieces of plastic at me, like a pestering child, as a joke.
Sally had come to the states after marrying her husband, a military officer that met her, married her and brought her to Idaho. Despite the fact that she began working at the factory the same year I was born she hadn’t made any friends there. She described her life as “work and sleep,” and she told me that she hadn’t done anything other than watch television in her off time in about 17 years. She stated it as a simple fact, not as a complaint, but as I am thoroughly American I have a great passion for my leisure time, and this struck me as being particularly depressing. I asked her what she liked to do, she said “bowing.” When I asked her if she would like to go bowling with me, she was excited. We picked out at time and place. Tonight, Sunset Bowling ally, eight o’clock. She never showed up.
The next day Sally avoided me. At lunch she ate in her car. When her shift was up she promptly left the building before I could say goodbye. The following day I walked up to her machine and greeted her. She didn’t say anything at first, and I mentioned that I was having lunch at noon if she wanted to join me. She hesitated, wringing her bony hands together. “I’m mawied,” she said, looking down. “That’s okay,” I said. “Maybe tomorrow?”
After that it was all pleasantries, “hi,” “bye,” but that was the extent of it. I was laid off in December, just before Christmas. When I left on my last day I caught a glance of her watching me through the window. She watched me with the face of an old dog through the chain link fence at the pound.
The woman who hands me the potato wedges through the square sliding window is over excited and nearly shouts “Have a good night!” The potato wedges are worth it. They’re salty and saturated with cheese, precisely what I knew I’d be getting. It’s nothing new, but it doesn’t matter because I’m used to it. The line, the taste, the sights and the smells, they’re all familiar. And even though I know that it isn’t, I like to think that’s a good thing.
posted by sean_garmire at 7:53 PM
1 Comments:
I was recently at a fast food restaurant in Queens listening to a very lively discussion between three teenagers. One of them was expressing her disgust at the male phallus, which she said she found odd and unpleasant. Her friend was surprised by her reaction, as she held the opposite sentiment. She referred to the member belonging to one of her more recent lovers. In an attempt to express her fond feelings for it, she was left without words. She paused and said, "it was...it was... mmm, mmm, mmm, I'm lovin' it." I have never heard a better description.
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