The Dishwashers

Some girls like doctors. Some like cops. Some like lawyers. Some like football players. Some like guitar players. Me? I seem to have a fondness for Republicans, for all types of conservatives who hate everything I stand for, but beyond that I don't have a "thing." I don't have an all-encompassing crush on guys who do a certain thing, who look a certain way, or have a certain job.

Except for dishwashers. I am a girl who has a crush-history that is littered with dishwashers. Not the Maytag variety but the boy variety, the ones who work at small country cafes or the ones who take too-frequent breaks to go outside and stand behind the dumpsters to sneak a beer with the cooks.

I started waitressing when I was sixteen years old. I got a job at one of those small country cafes where the parking lot was gravel and the menu included things like ham steak, breaded veal cutlet, meatloaf, and the popular four-piece fried chicken dinner. There was a salad bar that had on it potato and macaroni salad and ambrosia, all homemade. We had an entire cooler devoted to desserts--pies and puddings the owner and her daughters brought in from their own kitchens. That's where I spent most of my daily meal allowance. On pie.

It was in this pie-filled place that I developed my first dishwasher crush. His name was Matt, and he was the type of boy I loved when I was sixteen years old: tall, thin, blond, blue eyes. He was quiet, which made me want to make him talk to me. He would spray down ketchup-crusted dishes while I went on and on and on, asking questions--How many people are in your graduating class? Do you like your school? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you like this job? What's your favorite pie?--because that's what I do. I ask questions. I am a question-asker. A professional one. I can think of enough questions to keep a person answering all night long.

One night Matt and I were both standing at the dishwashing sink and he was showing me a dish that was covered with dried-up old gravy. "How am I going to get this off?" he asked. He looked lost. He sounded hopeless. "I think I'm just going to throw it out."

Why do people insist on hiring fifteen year old boys to wash dishes? That's exactly their attitude: if the machine can't get it off, they might as well throw it out and start over. They don't believe in things like soaking or scrubbing.

Matt extended his arm, and the pan hung from his hand, hovering over the garbage can.

"Oh give me a break," I said, taking the pan from him. "Just soak it. That's why these two giant sinks are here." I ran some hot water in it. I soaped it up. "There," I said. "Just let it sit for awhile."

And then he smiled and turned the hose on me. He sprayed me from head to toe. I shrieked and shrieked, but I didn't run far away because, really, that was what I wanted. That was exactly what I had been after--the kind of flirting that only boys are capable of: spraying a girl down with a hose.

When I was eighteen years old and home from college between freshman and sophomore year I was hired on at the restaurant where I would spend three summers and Christmases waiting tables and working banquets. It was also where I would meet Josh, but he comes later.

First there was Robbie. He came during my first summer there, when I was still trying to find my place in the restaurant staff's strange social circles. It took me a few weeks to figure out who hated each other, who had slept together, which cook would do you favors, which bartender you could charm.

But in the meantime there was Robbie in his white apron. He was tall and skinny. He had brown hair and big brown eyes. He was really, really nice to me, which I appreciated. It can be hard to find your footing at a new job, and until I figured everything out, I could at least look forward to working with him. We had a running joke about leaving everything--my tables, his dishes--and going into the cooler to make out.

The next summer I came back and he was gone. But Josh was there in his place. I didn't decide I had a crush on Josh (seen here at, like, seventeen years old and standing with another dishwasher he wasn't crazy about--isn't he doing a great job hiding it?) until halfway through the summer. He and another dishwasher were best friends, and they had already been there for a few months while I was away at school. They had inside jokes with the waitresses. They had inside jokes with the cooks. They had inside jokes with the bartenders. They had no inside jokes with me.

I actually thought Josh and his best friend hated me. So when I first came back to work, I decided my summer crush would be on yet another dishwasher who had been around the year before. He was snarky and had a good jaw. But he was short, and my crush ended shortly after I realized for us to kiss comfortably there would have to be some sort of strange positioning. I didn't want to have to position myself to get kissed. I just wanted to be kissed. Easily and often.

On a night they were off, Josh and his best friend came in to eat at the restaurant. They wanted pie. This restaurant, like the one I worked at before, had good pie. The peanut butter was my favorite, and I ate an awful lot of it while I worked there. The boys knew about the good pie, too, and they wanted me to bring it to them. They sat at a booth like regular customers. I didn't know exactly what to do--was I supposed to give them a bill? Would they expect to get the pie free because they worked there and knew me? Did they want me to use my peppy waitress voice on them? What, oh what, did they want?

I felt like my waiting on them that night was pivotal. It was a pivotal moment. It could determine whether or not they accepted me into their fold. These two had a complex system of labeling the waitresses, and they discussed it openly when we were all there on Friday night. It was like a badge of honor to be named a favorite.

The favorite waitresses tipped the boys well when they bussed on Friday nights. They pre-bussed the tables as much as they could for the boys. They didn't stick drinks with the straws still in them into the buss bins, because that meant extra work for the dishboys and they would want to know why we couldn't just take the extra two seconds to take the straws out. The favorite waitressed didn't yell and didn't swear at the boys when they didn't clear the tables fast enough.

One Friday night I had heard Josh and his best friend discussing their current favorites while they poured themselves giant glasses of Coke from the pop station. I agreed with one of the waitresses they named, but when they spoke the second one I almost dropped the stack of dishes I was carrying. The waitress they'd just named was a fakey fake, a bitch, a girl who would stab you in the back just as soon as you'd turned around.

Surely they should love me more than they loved her. I was nice. I didn't yell or swear at them. I took the straws out of the glasses. I tipped them after they bussed for me.

So the night they came in wanting pie I thought this could be it: a chance to dazzle them, to make them my own. I wanted to be a favorite. I wanted to be their girl, their go-to waitress, the one they secretly hoped to be scheduled with.

I did up their pie extra special: I twirled caramel and chocolate on the bottom of the chilled plates. I shook powdered sugar on the bottom. I cut extra-big slices. I gave them lots of whipped cream. After they went away I hoped I'd done a good job and that I'd impressed them.

I think I might have. After all, I soon made it onto the favorites list, and Josh started greeting me like this: "Hi, Jess. I love you."

I think I did a very good job.

But since then there has only been one dishwasher for me: my Joshua, who stayed at the restaurant the next two summers I worked there. In late July of 2003 I moved to Minnesota for graduate school and Josh stopped working at the restaurant shortly thereafter. I'd like to think it was because I wasn't there anymore and that the fun was gone, that it just wasn't the same to go to work and not be asked to make out in the cooler, downstairs, or out in the gazebo.

Sometimes I miss those days very, very much. I liked the simplicity of those summers: going to work, shuffling through the All-You-Can-Eat pasta, steak, rib, and crab leg nights, sweeping the floor, washing down the waitress stand, hugging those boys--always damp, always humid--just behind the swinging door that led to the kitchen. Those boys were the types boy I loved back then, and my summers were filled to the brim with them.

And tonight I went back to the restaurant where I used to work, and I stood in the kitchen and let the cooks make fun of me and say filthy things to me. They said, "See? Nothing has changed. Not one bit."

And I said, "You want me back? Do you want me to come back?"

And they said, "Yes, come back. We need you back."

And I stood there and missed it and those summers and those boys and the way I used to feel back then very, very much.