Part
2: The Diner
The
diner stood like a forgotten relic, a grease beast from the 1950’s,
leftover in a wilderness of sleek, stretching skyscrapers. Inside,
repellent homey smells of burnt toast and bitter black coffee snarled
towards Michael’s nostrils. Overbright artificial lighting made
plastic booths glisten with primary colour starkness, and 8 x 10’s
of long-gone 1950’s cool kids lined the walls. Bud crashed into the
first available booth like he owned the place.
“What
would you like?” He grinned.
“Coffee,
black, unless they have sugar cubes. Then I’ll take it with sugar
cubes,” Michael replied.
“It
has to be cubed?”
“Loose
sugar makes me uncomfortable. It gets everywhere. I like things to be
complete, in one piece,” Michael explained.
“Ah.”
Bud nodded.
Michael
drummed his fingers on the laminate table and looked around
anxiously. A waitress leaned over the cash counter and was counting
out bills, her scarlet nails fluttering from wrinkled president to
wrinkled president. Nails ready to scratch your heart out,
nails ready to dig into your back;
Michael’s mind wandered. She
turned around, dressed in a ruffled cotton apron, her blonde hair
tousled in a low-slung who-cares ponytail. A shimmer of grease danced
over her upper lip; American grease. As she approached the table, her
hips swayed with bored sexiness, or maybe that was just her walk.
Michael felt like an old perv.
“Hello.
Two black coffees please... and if you have them, sugar cubes,”
ordered Bud.
Her
candy apple lips twisted into a smile-scowl, and she nodded and
snapped her bubble gum, like a one-dimensional tacky diner waitress
cliche, but what more could we ever know from this snapshot? Her other dimensions remained
unknown, mysterious, and so she fell into a long procession of Sartrean
waiters, with movements too precise, movements too predictable. Michael’s
eyes darted away from her like frightened mosquitoes, predatory at
first, and then, with an annoyed wave of a hand, fleeing and
flustered. He let out a massive sigh.
“Well
sunshine, tell me why you don’t like your job,” queried Bud.
“Umm...
well I don’t want to seem ungrateful – you know it is an income,”
Michael started, unsure if he was softening things or making them
worse.
Bud
put a finger to his own parched, wind-split lips as if to silence
Michael by proxy.
“I
know all about these things,” he began. “Do you think I’ve
always lived like this?” He gestured towards his scruffy countenance. “I
worked for years. I have a business degree. What does that even
mean? I’m damned if I know but it was a boring form of torture.”
“Boring
torture sounds familiar,” laughed Michael.
“Yes,
yes – see you get me. I really wanted to study human behaviour,
human minds. No, no – not psychology – because that’s just
quick to tell you what’s ‘wrong’ with everybody,” he
paused... “Do you know what’s wrong with everybody, Michael?”
Michael
shrugged.
“You
do! What’s wrong with everybody, is that we are made to feel like
something’s wrong with us if we are unsatiated
by everyday life. Well the
crazy ones are the ones who are satiated,
if you ask me. Anyway, I wanted to study philosophy... but I bet
you’re wondering why I didn’t.”
Michael
wasn’t really wondering.
Sartre’s
waitress returned, and forcing a smile, placed two saucers and mugs
on the table with a dainty clink. The coffee carelessly swirled and
overpoured onto the yellowed saucers in disjointed pools:
disappointing real life scenes. And then – a spark of hope as the
waitress returned with a small glittering pyramid of sugar cubes. Not
all was bad.
“It
was because of a girl,” Bud continued seamlessly. “I knew I could
make money in business... and I wanted to make money to give her a
good life. She had eyes, cinnamon eyes... and we dated in college. I
did the whole laying my dreams at her feet thing...” he trailed off
and sipped his coffee.
“It
didn’t work out...?” Michael asked.
He
was slightly curious, but had also started to feel antsy about the meeting he was missing, and began to fiddle with the phone in his
pocket. Impending files and piles of orders and disordered emails
tied around his neck like knotted scarves. Did he really want to hear
this man’s life story? A pang of guilt washed over Michael again, as
Bud surveyed him with puppy dog sadness; he would stay for one more
soapy dishwater cup.
“No.
She didn’t want me in the end. So, there I was, trapped working a job I hated, without the girl I loved. And I lived that way for years.
I never found anybody else. Then one day, in the eloquent words of my
psychiatrist at the time, I ‘snapped,’ or – as I see it – had
a moment of clarity. I quit. I could no longer live that life, making a
boss I couldn’t stand rich, and paying taxes to politicians I
didn’t trust. I quit - and lived off whatever money I had left, and
that soon disintegrated – and then, here we are...” he spread his
hand out demonstratively.
“Wow,”
started Michael. He wasn’t sure if the man was insane, or gutsy, or
prophetic.
“I
couldn’t live for someone I loved, so I live for myself. I can’t
say it’s easy, at times it feels fucking impossible – but I don’t
belong to anyone, or
any system.”
“And
that’s why I despise
my job, if you were wondering...” began Michael, “Because I don’t
care. I only care because it puts a roof over my head, or food in my
fridge, but I live in beige, mundane, systematic decay. I
feel like I never had any say in the matter, like I just fell into
life, and am forced to accept it as this.”
“But
people respect you, eh?” Bud asked.
“Do
they? Or am I just a drone sitting at a computer, hurling my way through
middle age with nothing to remember except desks and meetings?”
“They
call me a filthy old rummy,” Bud interjected. “And I don’t even
drink rum...” he sighed.
Michael
laughed and thought, “fuck that meeting.”
“They,
they, they,” moaned Michael, “They say I’m a boring old guy
now.”
“Well
most people respect boring because they’re that way too – or are
they just conditioned to be so? There
is something freeing about seeing how pointless life
typically is. It comes on,
slowly, as a dull ache,
doldrums, then as soon as you’re aware of
how your life has turned out – it’s PAINFUL. And then, suddenly –
you take that pointlessness and feel free.
Well, what else can you do with it?” Added Bud.
“I’d
rather be miserable and make my own rules than be miserable under
someone else’s rules,” replied Michael, thoughtfully.
“You know, I used to play guitar, and I used to hitchhike. It was
fun.”
“The
last thing they want
is anyone to have fun. Fun is uncontrolled... fun is loose sugar,”
Bud winked.
Michael
smiled and crushed a sugar cube with the back of his spoon. The
sugar exploded in little dazzling particles, all over the table.
Bud
slapped the tenner down, and Michael took his phone out of his
pocket, and left it behind in the booth.
