Good Things Comes To Those Who Wait
I’ve been waiting tables for 18 years. A work that has defined and designed every facet of who I have become since before moving to New York at the ripe age of twenty-two. A work so physically and emotionally demanding that upon our collective and untimely exit my body was busted open with random and tirelessly unfixable injuries. Sciatica in my left leg slowly spreading to my right, plantar fasciitis in both feet, a ganglion cyst in my wrist , a dwindling but very current dependence on weed and alcohol, an inability to eat at the pace of any normal person, and a level of exhaustion no amount of sleep could quell.
To say this work is hard is a gross understatement. It is not simply: serve, smile, repeat. It’s men and women your age treating you like the help while they order their chicken fingers and dirty vodka martinis without making any eye contact. Its older men resting their hand on your hip and gently rubbing while they order “another g&t hunny”. It’s married women sharply telling their husbands to tip you 5% while they side eye you from across the room in jealousy and disgust. It’s learning to only address the woman at the table in those situations in the hopes she won’t think you’re trying to flirt with her husband. It’s getting fired for declining sexual advance after sexual advance from your manager. It’s rude customers yelling at you because “…the salad was too cold, the wine wasn’t soft enough, “ I asked for onion on the side not ON the burger!”. It’s absurd requests “Can you cook half of the steak medium and the other half rare?”, It’s graciously smiling through it all. It’s your family telling you to take yourself seriously, to “get a real job”, and friends who have never worked in a restaurant feeling sorry for you as they become nurses and marry their high school sweethearts and have babies and buy houses. It’s partners telling you to go to college and get your life together. To settle. It’s breakups. It’s handsome men not taking you seriously but still trying to fuck you. It’s 9 hour shifts with no break. It’s bleeding through your jeans on a Friday night because the bathroom line was long and the place was packed. It’s micromanaging bosses and sexual harassment and backstabbing coworkers. It’s demeaning at times and relentless and never ending. It’s cocaine until it’s not. It’s alcohol until it’s not. It’s weed. It’s guilt for not spending more time with your dog. More time at the gym. More time on your art. More time on yourself. It’s feeling guilty for missing your nieces birthday, father’s day, Christmas. It is constantly second guessing your choices. It’s always coming back to that few shifts a week gig after the shoot ends. It’s never quite making enough money to put away any meaningful amount of savings. It’s unlearning ideologies around “success”. It’s shame at being a 37 year old waitress. It’s giving your whole self to your art. Every. Fucking. Day. It’s freedom and excitement and discovery. It’s a $1000 tip that one time. It’s meeting the world through an invisible self. It’s knowing how to move and speak to people from all walks of life. It’s connections and collaborations and inspiration. It’s compassion. It’s showing up for work everyday so you can take that guitar lesson, method class, six week writing intensive, dance class. It’s life long friendships. I6ts resilience. It’s worth it.
Imagine for a moment, our beautiful city devoid of communal space. No music venues or bars. No galleries or museums. No spaces to dance together and sing together and eat together. Without these jobs en masse, art in New York dies a slow death leaving in its path the haunting remains of empty skeletal structures of a once vibrant world. Service work is the single most important supporter of artists in New York City. Roughly two million people depend on this work to survive and three months ago that lifeline was withdrawn, possibly forever. We were left scrambling to file on an outdated unemployment system with the promise of a few hundred dollars a week in regular circumstances and, until July 31st, an additional $600 per week. Serving a massive financial blow to all of us. Yes, rents will go unpaid and credit card bills will continue to rise as credit scores fall. But we, struggling and often demoralized artists know this dance all too well.
This is not the end, but merely the beginning of a new world filled with actual possibility. Where the almighty dollar no longer decides our hair color or sound of our chords or body type or theme or focus or inspiration for that contemporary dance piece or words. Where we go back to creating for the sheer joy and soul need like when we first discovered what it sounded like to strum a guitar or film heartbreak or brushstroke across an empty canvas. This is in fact our time. We are needed now more than ever to show the rest of the world how beautiful life is in the middle of the storm. To document this time with the great empathy and love and rage and despair that all humans find themselves in. This is our sacred duty. As we continue to peel away the layers of fear, procrastination, excuses, ego, depression, loss, the fact is there is nothing else BUT to create. As Toni Morrison so beautifully wrote, “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” And heal we shall. One day at a time. One poem, one song, one essay, one photo at a time. Let your art be your medicine and your medicine be your art.
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