“Just one tonight?” said the hostess.

“No, well – I’m meeting someone.” The woman quickly scanned the dining room, not knowing necessarily whom she was looking for, but not wanting to make it entirely obvious she was on a blind date.

“I don’t think he’s here yet though.”

“Alright, well let me get a table set up for you. Be right back,” said the waitress with a smile.

The woman looked around nervously, but kept a closed-lipped smile glued to her face. She was wearing jeans and a blouse with a delicate floral print of small yellow, orange and red flowers that faded to a pinkish-beige haze from a few feet away, and she still had on the pea coat she had worn as she walked from her car to the restaurant. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a ridge of short bangs hanging down over her forehead in the front. She had fretted for forty five minutes before she left over what to do with her hair, and finally decided that this would be the easiest, and besides, she thought it made her look cute. She was wearing a thin layer of makeup, and bright red lipstick. It wasn’t too much, but it was more than she was used to wearing and she felt a little self-conscious.

“Follow me,” said the waitress, grabbing two menus and leading the woman toward an empty table.

The waitress laid out the two menus, and the woman sat down, choosing the seat that was facing toward the front door so she could watch as people came in. She set an orange rose down on the table, trying to make it inconspicuous but still visible. She had told her date on the phone the night before to “just look for the woman with the orange rose. That’s me!” She slid her coat off and draped it over the back of her chair. She picked up the menu and studied it, although her focus kept drifting over the top toward the door.

The waitress came back with a basket of bread and a small bowl of olive oil with a globule of balsamic vinegar suspended in the middle.

“Can I start you off with something to drink?”

“I’ll have a glass of the Sauvignon Blanc,” said the woman.

She looked down at her cell phone, which was sitting on the table next to the rose. She tapped the screen to illuminate it. 7:05. They had agreed to meet at 7:00, but she figured he was probably just running a little late. Anyway, she thought, it was good that she got there first. That would give her time to sip her wine and smooth over her nerves.

She drank her wine slowly, raising it to her lips in carefully timed intervals so as to make herself look occupied. She looked out the broad windows that ran across the front of the restaurant and watched cars going by, waiting to see if one would stop. Of course, she told herself, he might not being able to find parking near the restaurant, so she also kept an eye on the sidewalk, waiting to see if one of the figures that came into focus from the distance could be her date. A car pulled up across the street from the restaurant, but a woman got out and walked into the gas station on the corner. She didn’t see anyone coming down the sidewalk, and picked up the menu again. A watched pot…

She looked at the menu and ran through each section quickly. She passed over each item without really taking any of them in. She was too nervous still to focus. She took a few more sips of wine. Her glass was half full now and she felt a little more at ease. She looked at her phone again. 7:15. She checked her call log, making sure that she hadn’t missed anything. There was nothing new though; just a phone call from a friend earlier that evening, whom she had consulted about what to wear, and the call from her date the night before when they finalized plans for dinner.

The waitress came back around.“Are you ready to order yet?”

“No, I’m going to wait for my friend to get here, thanks,” she said with a smile, trying to look confident. It was 7:20. He must be stuck in traffic. Maybe he can’t find the place. But you’d think he would at least call.

The woman looked around the restaurant at the other customers. About half were couples. All of them looked like they thought they were the only ones there, intently leaning over the table toward each other, their eyes locked as they slurped noodles like Lady and the Tramp. She looked toward the door again, thinking that’ll be me in just a few minutes. He has to show up soon. By 7:30 he would be inexcusably late, but he was still safely in the realm of the absent minded for a few minutes. She fiddled with the rose, thinking maybe it was too hidden and he just hadn’t spotted her.

The front door opened and her head shot up. She looked off into the distance just past the foyer, and in her peripheral made out the shape of a man. She casually let her gaze shift to door. The man looked a little younger than the person she was expecting, but she didn’t mind. He was handsome, well dressed. She recalled the voice she had heard on the phone and thought it could fit him. He said something to the hostess, and she looked out to the dining room. The woman couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought she looked at her table. She said something to him, then walked away for a moment. Behind him the door opened again. An older couple and a younger woman walked in. The younger woman slid her arm into the man’s. She said something and they all laughed.

The woman looked back out the window and took another sip of her wine. The glass was almost empty now, and its effect was slowly turning from confidence boosting to numbing. She checked her phone again. 7:32. She sighed and drained the glass of wine. She looked back outside. It was getting darker, and the window was starting to show more of her reflection than the people outside. She looked pretty, she thought. Everything else looked out of place though – the empty wine glass, the flickering candle, and the chair across from her still pushed all the way in with the menu in front of it untouched. She looked back to the dining room. It was getting too dark out to see anything anyway.

The waitress came back again. “Do you want to start with an appetizer while you’re waiting?” she asked.

The woman could tell the waitress knew what was going on, but appreciated her pretending not to know. She had been there for almost half an hour already and was starting to feel uncomfortable sitting there with only her glass of wine, so she went ahead and ordered. She hadn’t even thought about what she wanted, and ordered the first thing on the menu she saw. “I’ll have another glass of wine too,” she said, motioning to the empty one on the table.

“I’ll be right back with that,” said the waitress as she whisked the glass off the table and walked away.

The woman looked back at her phone, but looked away quickly, not even wanting to see what time it was. She picked up the rose and smelled it, looked at it skeptically, and set it back down on the table. She had stopped at a florist on the way to the restaurant and bought it. Orange roses were her favorite, and the scent had filled her car, wafting up from the passenger seat where it laid next to her.

The waitress brought another glass of wine, and set it down. “Thanks,” said the woman.

She still thought he might show up. Maybe he was running late, and in his hurry to leave the house, had forgotten his cell phone. He could have been out of the house all day and his phone had died, and he hadn’t had time to go home and charge it before he came. Who am I kidding, she thought, taking another sip of wine. He’s not coming.

The waitress had left the other menu on the table so that at least it would look like someone else might be coming. The woman wished she hadn’t. Now it just sat there staring back at her, a feeble stand in for the man she had thought was going to be there. She felt herself starting to get a little drunk as she kept nursing her wine. She hadn’t even touched the bread. She wanted to keep drinking, but figured she should slow down if she still had to drive home.

Her food arrived quickly. She took a bite, but the anxiety brewing in her stomach spread up into her mouth making the food tasteless. She wasn’t even hungry at this point anyway. She tried taking a few more bites but the last thing she wanted to do was sit there at the table eating alone, the menu across from her and the rose next to her phone mocking her solitude. She flagged down the waitress next time she came around.

“I’m just going to take the rest of this to go.”

“Sure thing,” said the waitress. “Let me box this up for you and I’ll bring you the check.”

The woman finished her wine. She looked at her phone again. No missed calls, but she had a text message. She opened it – it was from her friend whom she had asked for advice earlier. “How’s the date going??” She hit ignore and set the phone back down. She reached around and pulled her coat off the back of the seat and put it on. The waitress brought the check and her box and she signed the receipt. She got up, grabbed the box and walked quickly toward the front door, trying not to look like she was rushing to get out.

The waitress grabbed the empty wine glass and napkin from the table. She spotted the rose, and looked up to see the woman walking toward the door. She was about to yell to the woman that she had forgotten it, but she was already outside. She picked it up and smelled it. It looked fresh, and it was a beautiful deep orange color. She took it along with the rest of the things from the table and went back to the servers’ station just behind the door that led to the kitchen. She stuck it in a glass that was filled with pens and took another whiff before grabbing one of the pens, picking up another check, and going back out to the dining room.

finger rough draft

Approximately 11,000 people lose a finger every year. Most of them are accidents, but a small percentage are on purpose, in the name of body modification. It’s hard to understand what would drive anyone to cut off their own finger. I don’t even like cutting my fingernails for fear of going too far and pinching the skin underneath. As shocking as this may sound as an abstract idea, it’s even more so when the result is suspended in formaldehyde, inches from your face on a kitchen table.

The aforementioned finger was in the center of a buffet containing all finger foods: taquitos, mozzarella sticks, egg rolls and French fries, and accompanying bowls of red dips. The finger’s former possessor was standing in the kitchen, chatting with the guests who had been invited to see the premiere of his autoamputation.

About thirty people had come to see the video, and everyone was milling around anxiously waiting for the computer to be hooked up to the big screen TV in the living room. While someone fiddled with the cords trying to get the computer hooked up, people started filing in and staking out their spots for the showing. Only three people had actually seen it; the star, and the two camera people who documented the whole process.

I settled in next to the couch on the floor as we waited for the video to start. People were getting antsy, nervously cracking finger jokes and passing around plastic bags in case anyone found the video too revolting to stomach. People were passing around a bong, but somehow the idea of watching the video stoned didn’t sound appealing; pot’s supposed to alleviate nausea but I suspect it would have the opposite effect in this case. Behind the bong came a case of beer, and the cracking open of cans followed the two. I grabbed one; it seemed like a more appropriate substance for the occasion.

After much (effort/work??? need to find better word) the first frame of the video appeared on the screen. Before it started, the amputee got up to make a speech.“Two years ago, I had an accident that resulted in me getting third degree burns on seventy percent of my body. I had to have skin grafts on my legs, which had almost no skin left on them. For the first two weeks I had to have my wounds and exposed muscle washed several times a day, and I had to go through two months of physical therapy. It was the most painful thing I’ve ever gone through, and I hope to never experience anything like it again.

“I’ve always had a fascination with people who have lost fingers, and nub fingers, and although I had thought for a long time about cutting off one of my own fingers, I never actually thought I’d have the nerve to go through with it. But after my accident, I realized that regardless of how painful it would be, it wouldn’t be as bad as my burns, and if I could live through that, I could handle cutting off my finger. Around the same time I also met a man who had lost one of his fingers, but he didn’t let it effect his life at all; in fact, he said that after a while he rarely even noticed it was missing.

“After a lot of research and planning, I decided I was ready to do it. My parents knew about it, and although they weren’t happy, they understood why I thought I needed to do it, and were ok with it. My friends kind of thought I was crazy. I can say now having done it that it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made, and I’m happy with the results. Anyway, that’s about it, so let’s watch the video already.”

Everyone clapped and cheered, and the movie started. It was taken with a shaky hand held camera, and showed the future amputee sitting in a chair describing what he was about to do, shirtless, wearing a skull mask. The reason for the mask, he explained, was that he didn’t want to draw attention to himself, and anyway, the finger was the real star here.He started off by tying a black rubber band around his finger to cut off the circulation. After doing this the frame jumped and the film resumed half an hour later, with the finger already one foot in the grave – without blood flowing to it, it had changed to a grayish-yellow color and didn’t even look real. The next step was to numb the finger by soaking it in ice water. This, he said, was the most painful part, as he was essentially giving himself frostbite. Periodically he would take his hand out and poke it with the tip of a knife to check its sensitivity.

The audience was full of anxious laughter, the bong continued its circuitous route, and people chatted nervously, being sure to look one another in the eye so as to divert their view from the screen. The suspense was building, the finger now out of the ice, and on a chopping block. One of the amputee’s masked assistants handed him a knife, and he tested out various angles and techniques, coming down almost to the finger but each time letting the blade come to a dull stop on the doomed appendage.

Several knives were tested and discarded due to insufficient sharpness, and finally one was decided on. At this point, it became uncertain which attempts were tests, and which one would be the final blow. Each time the knife started undulating and gaining momentum, the audience winced collectively, letting out a sigh of relief when the knife was pulled away, the finger in tact.

The longer this went on, a good ten minutes at least, the more restless the audience grew, their laughter and joking growing inversely from their disquietude. The frame jumped again, and an image appeared of the amputee holding a pair of pliers, which he would use to break his first knuckle, assuring a clean cut through the skin and cartilage. He pressed down and there was an audible crack. Everyone laughed, but this time more quietly, less out of nervousness than disbelief. The room got significantly quieter, and the skittish energy manifested itself in the fogged up living room windows.

Finally the knife came down for the last time. The first shot of it was from behind the amputee, then from in front, but by the time the angle switched the finger was already almost completely off. It seemed anticlimactic initially, not seeing the initial severance of the finger. With the circulation cut off, there was no blood either; the grey lump of skin simply broke away from the hand, lying on the counter as the rest of the amputee moved away. It wasn’t as shocking as I had anticipated, but watching the amputee’s reaction on the screen, and remembering his speech, shock wouldn’t have been the right emotion. Nobody laughed, or screamed, and nobody had to use their plastic bags. The weight of the action sank in not only for the audience, but for the amputee himself. It was a surreal scene, and for a few minutes, the first and last time that night, the room was eerily quiet.

Sitting on a bench outside a farm exhibit at the Puyallup Fair watching waves of people move past, I feel like I'm the sole visitor in a giant open zoo, watching a strange species of human move all around me. The configurations of our bodies are the same, but theirs are slightly out of proportion, like the tumorous pumpkins on display in the agricultural hall. Their faces look all gaunt and stretched out by smoke, obesity or some secret hidden beneath their visages that only the wearer knows.

Among this subspecies there are interesting variations that become apparent the more I watch them. There are an inordinate number of people in wheelchairs, though few of them are missing legs, and none are wearing casts. Rather, they seem to be victims of lifestyle related ailments – all are overweight, and though I’m sure they blame their girth on their being in a wheelchair, I doubt they looked much different when they could still walk. In addition to the wheelchair, many of them have other extracorporeal aids helping their bodies function. I see one man in army fatigues missing a leg; he is the only person I see all day who is in a wheelchair solely because he’s lost a leg and walking is too difficult. I see another morbidly obese man in a wheelchair missing an arm, whittled down to only one usable limb probably by diabetes.

I don’t see any kids in wheelchairs, but the children take after their parents in body shape, their little features dotted on bloated canvases that stretch from their foreheads down to the crease that separates their heads from their chests. One of them walks past, a girl wearing stretched out pink shorts, a white tank top, and white running shoes with long pink socks that have fallen down and scrunched up around her ankles. I can’t tell how old she is – something about obesity skews peoples age, and she looks like she could be anywhere from ten to thirteen. It’s hard to tell whether or not she’s hit puberty yet – her flabby breasts are indistinguishable from those on the chests of equally overweight preteen boys. As she walks hurriedly toward the rides her legs, which are dimpled with fat, awkwardly clunk together.

The girl fades off into the crowd, and I spot an anomaly, although it doesn’t look entirely out of place. A young couple in their early twenties strolls through the crowd hand in hand. The man is wearing all black, and has a red hair that’s been molded into a strange mix of abstract and bowl cut (I saw a booth earlier in one of the exhibition halls offering haircuts for seven dollars from a group of bored hairdressers who looked like they had spent more time sculpting their own hair than other peoples’ - I wonder if he was the victim of an outpouring of their repressed creativity). His clothes look vaguely fashionable, but dated. Trailing slightly behind him is his girlfriend, a diminutive rail-thin Asian girl who peeks out at the crowd over his shoulder as he pulls her ahead.

Out of the corner of my eye I see the pink shorts come back into view, this time with an entourage. Three generations with no more than thirty five years between youngest and oldest, they are a living timeline of the life of a South Puget Sounder. There are the two parents, not surprisingly as overweight as their daughter, and wearing loose fitting, serviceable clothing. Although they heave and puff walking around the fair, sitting they look enviably comfortable. Settled in on a bench, the dad pulls out a pack of Marlboros and offers one to the mom, who quickly lights and inhales, then draws his own, which hangs off his lip as he lights it.There is another girl with them, an older sister, no more than eighteen years old. She’s wearing tight jeans and a loud black and pink Volcom sweatshirt, and unlike the rest of the family she’s surprisingly skinny. Her wrists are stacked from hand to sweatshirt sleeve with brightly colored plastic bracelets which match the contrasting green and pink hair ties that pull her hair into a ponytail and in front of her she absent mindedly pushes a stroller back and forth, containing what I assume is her baby, as if it were just another flashy accessory.

The parents talk and puff as the girl in pink shorts moves around restlessly. She squats in front of the stroller and makes faces at the baby, who is about six months old, wearing her hair up in two little pigtails that stick straight up from her head. The baby giggles and smiles as the girl sticks out her tongue and puffs up her cheeks at her. She tries to manipulate her little hands into playing a clapping game with her, taking the baby’s pudgy wrists in her hands and moving them around.

“Stop messing with the baby Kaitlyn,” says the dad. The words escape his mouth curtly in a plume of cigarette smoke.

“She likes it though. I’m teaching her how to play patty cakes .”

“Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn! Stop touching the damn baby,” says her dad again, this time grabbing the girl by the wrist and pulling her back.”

“Well when I was at Cindy’s house she was teaching it to her little sister and her mom didn’t care.”

“Well I ain’t Cindy’s mom and I don’t want the baby to start crying again. Just come over and sit on the bench and be quiet,” says the dad.

The girl goes over and sits on the bench next to her parents glumly, holding her chin between her palms and staring at the ground. She looks up at the rides and asks if she can go on the tilt-a-whirl again. The dad hands her a strip of orange paper tickets and she waddles off.

“Come back as soon as you’re done cause we gotta leave in half an hour,” yells the mom.

The other sister pulls out a cigarette and lights it. I’ve been pretending to mess around with my phone for the last five minutes, but I’m fairly sure now that none of them have any idea I’m even there, and I put it away and pretend to watch for someone coming from the crowd behind them.

“Kaitlyn needs to realize the baby ain’t a damn toy. She thinks it’s funny she should try taking care of her for a day.”

“You were even worse than she is when Kaitlyn was a baby. No wonder, that’s probably where she gets it from. Remember the time you made her ride around on the dog and she fell off and hit her head on the kitchen floor? And look at you now, all grown up with your own kid,” says her mom, laughing.

“You hear Stacy got fired over at Safeway?” says the older sister.

“I swear that girl can’t keep a job to save her life,” says the dad.

“This time she says it wasn’t her fault; the manager sounded like a real jerk. She got in trouble twice for coming into work late, even though it was only five minutes and it was only because the bus was late.”

“She don’t have her car anymore?”

“Yeah, but it’s broken and Dave said he was gonna fix it, but you know his lazy ass so now it’s just sitting in the driveway.”

The older sister puts out her cigarette and grinds it into the cement with her foot. She pulls a bag out from the pocket under the stroller and gets a bottle, then takes out the baby and starts feeding her.

“So anyway she came in late again yesterday and her boss fired her right there on the spot. And you know she don’t have nothing in the bank and now she comes asking me for money.”

“You better not give her any, doesn’t she already owe you a hundred dollars?”

The baby lets out a cry and she shoves the bottle back in its mouth.

“That’s what I told her. She ain’t getting anything else from me cause I ain’t about to be more broke than she is.”

The girl in pink shorts comes trudging back over from the rides and crashes into her mom’s lap.

“Can I have another ticket? I want to go on the roller coaster again.”

“Nah, we gotta get going. The baby needs a nap and you’re going over to auntie Barbara’s house tonight,” says her dad.

The girl in pink shorts whines and tries to bargain with her dad as her sister packs up the baby’s things and puts them back beneath the stroller. The whole family lurches up out of their seats and slowly they make their way off into the crowd.

"Hey Daddy!"

I hear a woman - or a girl? - yell. I can't tell if it's a daughter yelling to her dad, or something more nefarious.

I walk further down the block and see that it's the latter, who's now talking to a man in a beat up old pickup truck. There's another woman next to her, standing back a little, but also peering into the passenger side window. As I walk down the block the truck pulls away, and the women walk toward the corner.

They're definitely not girls. They look older, but I don't think they're that old - hardship and abuse have stripped the years away, not time. Both have short hair, although it's not styled in any particular way - just easy to manage (or forget) probably. The woman who was talking to the man in the truck is wearing white capri sweatpants and a red t-shirt with a gap of round belly poking out from between the two. She stands with her legs spread slightly further apart than normal, like a runner on third base ready to steal home, but content to stay if the it's not the right pitch.

The woman next to her is facing her, and they're talking. She's wearing a cheap looking black sweatsuit that lets the same portion of her stomach stick out. As I get closer I can see their faces - both have dark black skin and in the sunlight, and through my sunglasses it has an almost reddish tint. The woman in black is facing toward the street - Martin Luther King Way, watching the cars speed past. The other woman is facing toward me. The closer I get the worse she looks. She doesn't look homeless - not quite yet, but almost. Clearly there are other things on her mind. Her facial expression seems like it's on autopilot - she looks at me as I approach with an emotionless hard stare. But despite her pursed lips and harsh features, I can see fear in her eyes. Not a specific or immediate fear, but a helpless, desperate fear. Her face is contradictory, at the same time saying "what the fuck are you staring at?" and "help."

I round the corner and catch a snippet of their conversation.

"My pussy ain't even beat up good."

I keep walking. Halfway down the block, I look back. The pickup truck has returned. Maybe she spoke too soon.

Golden Gardens attracts a class of aimless asshole unlike any other beach in Seattle. The Lake Washington beaches can draw that crowd, but they're a little too nice. The ratio of families to douchebags has a sort of self-correcting unwritten limit and aside from late at night they know they can't really get away with much there. Alki is fine but it's too long. Golden Gardens is the perfect size for them; it's big enough that they can move from one end to the other if need be, and remain anonymous at the north end should they have become suspect in the south. But it's small enough that they can make their presence felt, like annoying children tapping on the glass of an aquarium tank, the fish inside only able to hide partially with fins poking out from behind the fake rocks.

I didn't notice when the trio got to the beach - they were probably already there when I got there. None of them were in beach attire, in fact their outfits looked uncomfortable for the relatively warm Seattle day; they were all wearing heavy looking t-shirts and jeans, kicking around in the sand and alternately hitting eachother, or the sand, or pointing out across the water with a two or three foot long stick, as if surveying some imagined kingdom.

Before them a guy was burying his girlfriend in the sand, working on digging a hole around her, which she stood in, looking somewhat impatient. The trio of assholes had apparently gotten bored with their stick; their pent up sexual frustration switched outlets from wrestling each other in the sand to staring at the girl in pit, who stood there like a statue wearing a bikini bottom and t-shirt. The three guys kept staring. It looked uncomfortable, but she seemed to be enjoying it - she slipped her shirt off to reveal a bikini top; I couldn't see her front but I imagined it being accompanied by a giggle - and undoubtedly a look of resentment from her boyfriend still clawing away at the sand around her feet, now almost invisible inside the pit, save a few limbs and hands throwing sand out of the hole.

The three kept looking, not just glancing, not even trying to be discreet, but staring. We were staring at them now, from about 100 feet away, but their gaze was so transfixed on the girl in the pit that they didn't notice us. The boyfriend came back up and they started talking. Slowly they moved out of the unfinished pit, and the girlfriend, still in her bikini, went into the water. The three guys keep staring as she splashes around in the water, her boyfriend having momentarily left. One leans on the stick like a cane, out toward the water, as if it were a stake holding him to the ground, and stopping him from chasing the girl into the tide.

The boyfriend was back over by their pile of things now, near the pit. He signals to her to come out, and reluctantly she does. They talk for a moment - they look like they're arguing, or at least starting to argue. I couldn't tell if it was the trio of guys, or maybe that would just be the catalyst that would bring out all sorts of other underlying problems in their relationship. The three were still watching. They kept watching as they packed their things up, their expressions still rapt and only slightly dejected - soon enough another girl would come along.