Diner

It has happened before, often when a storm or fog rolls in and the roads empty of cars and the streetlights shine weirdly in the hazy dark outside. Customers stop coming and soon the restaurant is completely empty. Standing inside Denny's looking out, I begin to feel like there is no other reality beyond the dimly lit parking lot, as if the very ground ends abruptly into black nothingness at the edge of light. It is in these conditions, where I can trick or convince myself, that I have died and am now in some kind of middle world... a spirit trapped in purgatory or some strange no-place.

Leaning against the counter, I think to myself, this is all there is or ever will be... any thoughts of home or my after work life I imagine as being just dreams or some long ago memory... the only reality is this diner and I am a ghost trapped inside.

I have played this little mind game more than once. I played it tonight when those strange storms came through. And more than once I have thought, maybe there is some truth to this fantasy. Maybe my overextended employment at Denny's is some kind of penance or sentence that I have been ordered to carry out. Maybe I am paying for certain sins of my past. Perhaps it is a Karmic balancing in this life as opposed to the next, or maybe I am being purified before I move onto the next stage of my life.

The diner is a strange place to be stranded. It has a special loneliness that can only occur in places of transit. Because, when it comes down to it, a diner is most often a place one eats out of necessity and not mainly for pleasure: it is a place between places, not usually a destination. There are always exceptions, but this is the general way of things.

Tonight a shade from the past came to visit me. His sole reason was to see me and visit with me, but there was an unnerving air about him. We chatted across the table for a while when finally he says, "You know, I never saw you waiting tables... is this where you thought you'd end up?"

Leering faces of old friends, lovers and enemies have been paraded before me for the past three years of this job. Even in some of my closest, oldest friends, I have detected a sinister gleam and gloating flashing behind their eyes. A hissing suggestion of, "And you thought yourself so special..."

I have been a right bastard in my day. So much pride and stupidity in my youth. I thought myself a savior. I thought myself a genius. I thought myself above so many people. Maybe it's that pride that's being burned off.

Perhaps my stay in purgatory is drawing to an end. I have to stop now and work hard to remember the person who I am paying for, because that person is no longer me. So much change has acted upon me and in a lot of ways, I am a different person altogether.

All of these thoughts swirled around me today as I cleaned the back dining room, preparing to go home for the night. Catching my reflection in the window I thought to myself, but how much longer do I have to stay here and repay my debts? And immediately the thought: as long as you think it takes.

Because in the end, it was always my choice to stay.