Keetologue Interview

Broken Pencil Interview

Cortez - Starlight Diner, March 17, 2004

      “Aimee, just admit it!”
      “Admit what? I'm not a hipster.”
      Cortez shook his head slowly, a longsuffering grimace working at the corners of his giant mouth. He dug his thumbs into his temples and gazed down at the menu. You are the one with the problem Cortez, not I. Do you know what it is? Of course not. We are, all of us, blind to our own flaws, so instead we go around diagnosing other people. And here’s your problem, Cortez: you become principled over stupid, inconsequential issues. All the way to the Starlight Diner you would not shut up about my ‘identity problem’ and worse, you click your tongue on the ‘d’ of identity. It makes you sound like a schoolteacher on a fucking bender.
      Nothing fans his sense of injustice more than a car edging into the crosswalk before the light turns green, or a cashier who bags the tomatoes with the canned goods. It’s a matter of principle, he says. When he gets home from the grocery store, he checks his receipts to make sure they didn’t overcharge him. And if they did – maybe they double charged him for an orange – he’ll march all the way back to the store to confront that cashier. He’ll ask to speak with the manager. He always wants redress.
      “What are you getting?” I asked, hoping to draw him toward another topic.
      He just kept shaking his head. He wouldn’t budge. Then he raised his eyebrows.
      “Hmm,” he grunted, running a finger down the list of sandwiches like a speed-reader. We come to the Starlight every Wednesday after his Media Law class lets out. We hover over cups of sludgy coffee and talk. It’s been like this for months, and I happen to know that he’s long since memorized the entire menu. So this pretend reading – this tortured consideration of the menu – was obviously some kind of passive-aggressive diversion tactic.
      “Let me guess, Pastrami Reuben, light kraut, extra dressing,” I scoffed, drawing back to watch the giant Russian behind the counter fidget with his white paper hat. That’s what Cortez gets every time we come here, which, come to think of it, is another problem: he’s a compulsive habit-former! No flexibility. Like a fucking toy soldier. It was starting to rain outside. The local news flicked silently across the five little televisions hoisted to high ledges around the diner.
      “Well I don’t know about you,” I said. “But I cannot stand whitefish salad.”
      “Mmm,” he said.
      “It’s so fucking salty, you know? Every time I eat it, I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack. Why doesn’t somebody just tell them not to make it so salty? Do you think the actual fish is that salty? What the hell is a white fish anyway?”
      He clapped the menu closed, pushing it aside, and pursed his lips into an asshole shape.
      “What?” I asked. “You like whitefish? Have I offended you?”
      “It’s not the whitefish,” he said. “Although I do happen to like it.”
      “What then?”
      “I’m not speaking to you anymore until you admit it,” he said, re-opening his menu for another look around. Personally, I think he’s unstable. I mean, what kind of friend won’t talk to you over something little like this? Grow up!
      “Fine,” I said. “I guess we won’t be speaking then.”
      “Fine,” he said.
      “Okay, bye,” I said.
      “Bye.”
      We both returned to the Starlight menu. Their plastic sleeves are all covered in a fine mist of cooking grease and pocked at intervals with cigarette burns and clumps of dried condiments. These menus have been around. They have gold-colored corner braces held by tiny rivets, like armor. They have pages and pages of weekly specials clipped to them like badges. These menus are actually heavy enough to do some serious damage to a person’s face, or crotch, or shin, if flung at the appropriate angle and speed. These menus have seen more of human nature within the walls and stalls of the lonely Starlight than most people see in an entire lifetime. They’ve probably passed through the hands of every ass-scratcher, nose-picker, finger-fucker, hair-twister, knuckle-cracker – pointer, prodder, flicker, puncher – and what stories they could tell! The arguments! The indecision! And this? The two of us sitting here, embroiled in our little cold war? It’s small potatoes. I can practically see the menus smirking and sneering at us. ‘Your petty little problems!’ they seem to say. ‘You young people with your short little lives. You’re nothing! You think you have it hard? Try getting hot gravy spilled all over you twice a day! Try getting splattered by mustard and dripped with slaw juice! Try getting gnawed on by toddlers! Hell, try getting gnawed on by grown men! Try spending the night sandwiched between the pages of the New York Post! That, my friends, is suffering. You? You’re nothing. Incidentally, try the meatloaf sandwich. It’s excellent today.
      Cortez looked up at me with the same shorn expression.
      “Meatloaf,” he said, brushing the menu aside. “I?m getting the meatloaf.”
      “I believe that qualifies as talking, Cortez,” I said. “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”
      “I’m not,” he said. “Since you asked me what I was getting before we agreed not to talk, my response doesn’t count against the current policy.”
      “Bullshit,” I said.
      “Technically,” he continued. “My response was pre-cold war. And anyway, it’s the special today. I never get the special.”
      He twisted halfway around to motion for our waiter, an old wiry man with a harelip and a pack of Camels poking from his breast pocket.
      “Can’t we just forget this?” I groaned. “It’s so stupid.”
      He made a zipper motion across his lips and waved to the waiter again.
      “Cortez! C’mon man! I can’t eat when I’m upset. You know that. I get indigestion!”
      There’s the smile I know. It was creeping out at the corners of his mouth, threatening his whole composure. But his eyes were clearly resisting. Any talk of bodily function hits Cortez right in the kisser. Doesn’t matter: he could be at his mother’s funeral, but if somebody farts, he’ll be on the floor laughing his fucking guts out. Real principled – oh yeah. Suddenly I wanted to grab him by the ears and slam his head on the table and give him a great big noogie. But no, that would only strengthen his conviction. Then he might never shut up about his new cause. Oh Cortez. Stop with this petty argument. Come back to me!
      The waiter arrived with his pen and pad, and we ordered. None of the Starlight waiters speak English very well, so we just hold up the menu and point at what we want. It’s a good system. The waiter nods gravely, tapping his foot, and then says: “To Drink?”
      “Coke,” I said.
      “Do you have Surge?” Cortez asked.
      “Surge? No.”
      “Umm, Sprite?”
      “Yes, Sprite,” he said. “What else?”
      “Light ice,” Cortez said.
      The waiter clicked his pen and shoved it back in next to his smokes.
      “Thank you,” he said.
      Cortez squinted at me.
      “I can’t believe you won’t just admit it,” he said.
      Then he opened the menu again – as if he were actually reading it!
      “Alright,” I said, tearing the menu from his greasy fingers and tossing it onto the grimy tile. “I’m not going to sit here and plow through a plate of chipped beef on toast with this poison air between us! I am not going to ruin my meal because you’ve got some fucking axe to grind with me. My stomach is very sensitive you asshole! And by the way, Cortez, did it ever occur to you that maybe – just maybe – it’s none of your business? Huh? Did it?”
      He slid my menu over, scanning it anew.
      “Chipped beef? Where?”
      “It’s under sandwiches, off to the side, in the little box.”
      His face lit up and he flicked the menu.
      “Huh. I never saw that. Looks good. How’s their gravy?”
      “I’ve never had it. But I’ll let you taste it if you’ll talk to me again.”
      “I’ll talk to you again if you admit it.”
      “What’s the big deal?”
      He slouched down over the table, deep in contemplation.
      “Honesty Aimee. You may not realize it, but there’s a principle at stake here.”
      “It’s a fucking blog! Who gives a shit? I haven’t even updated it lately.”
      “This isn’t about the blog,” he said.
      “Oh yeah? Because I could have sworn this whole argument started when we were talking about the fucking blog.”
      “It did and it didn’t,” he said.
      “Don’t try to pull some slippery legal crap on me. It’s about the blog – and I’m telling you the blog has nothing to do with anything! And don’t think you’re some hotshot lawyer just because you’re taking one law course. You fuck.”
      He tore the top off a sugar packet and poured it onto his tongue in a big mound, smiling.
      “That’s disgusting,” I said, stretching out on my side of the booth. The waiter arrived with our drinks. Cortez took a long drink of Sprite to wash down his sugar. He wiped the excess sugar from his hands and hunched down over the table again, straw in mouth.
      “You can’t go around pretending to be somebody you’re not,” he said. “Even if you are trying to tell the truth. You’re telling it under false pretenses. That’s dishonest. In fact, I think it’s more dishonest than if you were telling lies. It’s deep-rooted. It’s rotten to the core. It stinks to high heaven. Don’t you see that?”
      “Grow a sense of humor you fucking Nazi! It’s a joke. It doesn’t matter.”
      “I agree,” he said. “So just admit you’re a stank-ass hipster and we’ll forget it.”
      “But— !”
      He held up his finger in contemplation, blowing bubbles in his Sprite.
      “I mean, you go around talking about how fake hipsters are – how inauthentic, how full of shit – yet you yourself are lying, and have been from the very beginning.”
      “Well,” I said. “You can just forget about tasting my gravy.”
      “That’s okay. I just realized that the meatloaf comes with gravy too. So there.”
      The waiter came back holding two plates. As usual, he set them down and scurried off into the greasy diner mist, a cigarette already in hand, before we had time to say thank you or ask for another glass of water.
      “What the fuck is this?” Cortez asked, staring down in horror at his plate. Then he looked at my plate. “And what the fuck is that? They totally fucked up our order! Fucking Russians!”
      Staring up at Cortez was a pastrami Reuben on dark rye, with light kraut and extra dressing. His usual. He slammed his fist on the table.
      “This has got to be some kind of joke,” I said, lifting the top of my Kaiser roll to reveal a pale clump of whitefish salad.
      “It sure doesn’t look like chipped fucking beef,” he growled. “This is exactly why I don’t like coming to this goddamed place.”
      “Then why do you always want to come here?” I asked.
      “Me? You’re the one who always wants to come here.”
      “Only because I thought you liked it!”
      “Well I don’t,” he said.
      “See what happens when we don’t talk Cortez.”
      “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” he said.
      We stood. On our way out the door, Cortez grabbed a stack of the battle-torn menus and flung them all over the floor, grinding his heel into the top of one. I could practically hear the menu moaning and groaning: ‘See where your idealism gets you, wiseguy! See how much your precious principle matters! You’re no better than a brute animal! You should be ashamed of yourself, crushing the face of an innocent menu! Haven’t I suffered enough already?”
      It was raining when we got outside. We both opened our umbrellas and hustled down the block. I could tell Cortez still wasn’t talking to me by the way he held his umbrella angled close over his solemn face.
      “Cortez!” I yelled, but he didn’t answer. “Hey Cortez!”
      Still no answer. I stopped dead on the sidewalk. When he’d gotten about ten feet ahead, he stopped and turned around.
      “Okay you bastard!” I yelled. “You win. I‘ll admit it.”
      He took his time, and swaggered back to me, smiling a victorious, shit-eating smile.
      “I want you to know that I’m only saying this so we can have lunch in peace. I don’t really believe it.”
      “Fine,” he said.
      “Okay,” I sighed. “I, Aimee Plumley, am a hip – ah fuck it! I can't do it. I’m not a hipster. Look, do you want to go eat or not?”
     Cortez shrugged and nodded.
      “Oh well,” he said. “It was a good try anyway. Eventually I’ll get you to admit it. Mark my words.”
      “'Mark my words?' What are you? My hipster nemesis? Eat shit Cortez.”