2022 and Still Human
January 1, 2022
kathy Larson
Jen. Jen. Jen. You are my spirit guide.
It’s January 1, 2022 and I know what I am going to do next. We are kindred spirits. I have your thirteen years working as a waitress beat, but, what a great metaphor for living life full out it has been (for both of us?).
So from your book, ON BEING HUMAN, here is my inspiration in the New Year. To all my patrons and my employees of that restaurant I owned and had to let go of years and years and years ago…Thank you. Your names and my memories of you are not as clear. Just make believe I wrote something like this to you.
I wrote a thank-you letter. To the restaurant I worked at for thirteen years and to all the fucked-up people I waited on, all the wonderfully peculiar and quirky customers, all the big-hearted ones, the overtippers, the assholes. I wanted to thank them all. I wish I had written more down from that era but I was half-asleep, so it was hard to pay attention to anything other than my survival and Tables 32 and 43. I do think, however, that they all left imprints in my DNA, or rather, I pray that they did, because without those imprints, I have no proof that I existed. I have no journals of all the times people were rude to me or said awkward things like, “Is there something wrong with your ovaries? I have a feeling you have a cyst. I can feel that by your energy,” or the exact words they said when they insisted on buying me a plane ticket to see my newborn nephew across the country. I wondered, if I was that professor drinking brandy from that weird Wyoming glass, would I be happier? Would I have written down all the moments that led me to whatever moment I was in, in my professorship or famous authordom? Maybe. But wouldn’t I at some point still weep at the sink? Doesn’t everyone? It was then that I decided to say thank you to my past. Thanks to all the weirdos and inappropriate old men, and also thank you to all the kind people. Thank you to my coworkers, the ones who escaped and the ones who still haven’t, who are off working at other restaurants, with another slew of demanding hungry customers. Thank you to those who believed in me and thank you to those who didn’t. Thank you to the talent manager I met at the restaurant who told me to lose ten pounds. Thank you to the guys in the kitchen who would make me food when they weren’t allowed to. Thank you to the douchebag who, just because you had a hit TV show, thought you could humiliate me. Thank you. I loved running into you recently when you couldn’t place me and said, “It’s so good to see you. You look great. Really great.” Thank you to Kevin Smith, the director (also from New Jersey), for always always tipping 100 percent of your bill. Every. Single. Time. And to Patton Oswalt, Titus Welliver, and Sarah Silverman for being great customers, big tippers, and treating me like a human being. That helped. Thank you to the lady who told me she thought I would’ve made something of myself by now. Thank you to the people who paid attention. And those who didn’t. Thank you to the women who couldn’t ask for what they want, who let their voices get really high as they singsonged, “Um, can I, like, get extra dressing?” Thank you. Thank you forever to Laura Louie, Woody Harrelson’s wife, who told me my pants had a big slit in the back and that my ass was showing. I would have done the same for you, for anyone. Thank you to those who made me laugh or sit down at the table like I was an equal. Thank you to those who said I looked good. Thank you to the lady who asked if I had herpes. Thanks to the guys who asked me out and thanks to those I went out with. Thanks to the famous songwriter who always asked for plastic cutlery. But mostly in those years, I learned how easy it is to confuse grief for body fat, your job for your worth, your lack of knowing who you are with the fact that you are nobody and nothing. I wish I could go back because I remember all the table numbers and how to put an order in and what was on the menu and I would not wear high shoes or makeup or sneak booze in the back or hide myself in all the ways I did back then. I would let myself get slammed, in the weeds, in waiterspeak, when you are utterly unable to catch up, and I would ask for help. And I would realize that it wasn’t that big of a deal, asking for help or being stuck. That the world was going to keep spinning. And I would slowly make my way out. Somewhere in me those experiences and memories have an inner life, and somehow, despite the pathetic head banging in the walk-in freezer at the restaurant, I made it. Not only had I re-created myself as someone who was not dead inside, but I was teaching other people how to feel more alive. I was married, I was teaching yoga, leading retreats, writing. I no longer believed that I didn’t deserve to take up any space on the planet. I sat on my living room floor and rolled back until my head hit the carpet. I stared up at the ceiling of my apartment and wondered who I’d thank in fifteen years. Of course there was no way to know that I would be thanking my son, so I simply said, Thank you, Robert, thank you, apartment, thank you, ceiling, thank you, sink. Thank you, everything that is anchoring me to this. Thank you. May I be a Human Thank-You. And not an asshole.
Jennifer Pastiloff