Dishes

Sometimes, in prison, I would be assigned to dishes. We didn't have dishes though. We ate off of plastic trays and used plastic sporks. So, I was really assigned to trays. I would rinse off dirty trays for hours and to keep me busy, I'd invent little games. If mashed potatoes were served that day, I'd flip a tray over that had a mound of mashed potatoes on it and count how many seconds it'd take for the mashed potatoes to fall off. The highest I ever got to was 132 seconds. Sometimes, I'd look for Jesus in the gravy. Dish duty was the worst. Minutes felt like hours. Hours felt like days. But that's how I met Homes.

Homes didn't talk very much, which was nice. I liked to concentrate on my games, and sometimes, I'd be assigned to dishes with someone who talked about the last girl they stuck it to, which was...well, something I didn't want to hear about while I was washing trays. Homes, he understood. We worked hard together. Our silence was conversation enough. And when we did talk, it meant something.

I thought about Homes when I went to wash dishes at Belle Star's diner yesterday. I miss him. Belle Star has dishes and metal utensils. She has plastic coffee cups that go upside-down on stackable trays. She showed me how to arrange the coffee cups on the trays. There is a radio that's always on in the kitchen and instead of silence, there is pop music and the sound of people talking in the dining area.

Yesterday, it was just me and Belle Star. She said her "help" called off because "who the f*** knows why!" Needless to say, Belle Star was not in a good mood. But I did the best I could, washing the dishes as soon as she handed them to me, cigarette in her mouth. I must have done alright because she only called me a psycho a dozen times!

At the end of the day, Belle Star offered me a cigarette and I took it, even though I don't smoke, because I knew it was her way of saying thank you.

"Why did the pirate say he had a steering wheel in his pants?" I said.

Belle Star looked at me. "Why?"

"Arrr it's drivin' me nuts!" I said.

"Go home Curt," Belle Star said. "See you Thursday," she said.