Waffle House Aesthetics
He calls it a tincture—a special blend of herbs that he’s worked in
his kitchen, soaked for weeks in pure grain alcohol, then plunged to the
bottom of a French press, all those grainy bits of anise — which tastes exactly
like it sounds — along with whatever else gets pushed to the bottom. It
makes what looked like a nice salad dressing in his storage bottle transform
itself alchemically into something else: a simple, eerie green liquid. It looks
like an evil djinn could rise out of this bottle when you remove the cap.
Wormwood.
Did I forget the Wormwood? It’s the name of a devil in Hell, to be sure, and
also the name of the major ingredient in absinthe — the favored, reputedly
hallucinogenic, brain-rot beverage of deranged romantic poets. Ryan is
proud of making his own, but he insists it isn’t properly absinthe.
No, not this home brew variety. His Portal of Madness friends like to remind
him that what he’s made isn’t true absinthe, but a Wormwood tincture. Ryan
likes that word, tincture.
If anyone would ask, "What is Wormwood?" we would take turns in a joyous
round of botany and folklore. The culture of absinthe is full of crazy myths.
The botany side is filled with bitter herbs. Then there’s ethnobotany: the
strange relationships people have with plants. Symbiosis.
Wormwood, fennel seed, and anise. It smells and tastes like the Devil’s
armpit. Imagine sucking some random but pungent kitchen herb through a
sweat-soaked flannel work shirt. Or imagine de-splintering some old wood
paneling from a basement wall, reducing a mold-ridden bit of it to simple
pulp in a bottle of alcohol, and then sucking on it for the mind-altering
toxicity.
I can’t get past one sugar cube soaked in this stuff myself. But Ryan pours
his into a glass with ice and water. He grimaces just a little, but he drinks it
down like it’s extra-tart lemonade. Halfway into his glass, he proclaims this
is what they serve in hell when you ask for water. He drinks it slumped over
his guitar looking for songwriting inspiration. And he drinks it slumped over
his computer, bragging over ICQ to his Portal of Madness friends. He makes
wild boasts about the photo contest they’re having, and how he intends to
win it, hands down.
Our Mission for Tonight
The theme for the photo contest is fast food, and our mission for
tonight is to find what typifies fast food and to photograph it. This we must
do at 3:30 in the morning. The contest does not specify time of day, but the
meeting point of our work schedules and lifestyles dictates our choices.
We cut through the rain-soaked midnight streets, on our way to Waffle
House, as Ryan schemes about how we’ll get two waitresses to do
pornographic things with each other and some maple syrup. I tell him -
maybe if we’re polite and sincere and convince them it’s their own idea.
"Exactly!" He laughs. "High-five!"
Then he tells me there’s a hot nineteen-year-old working at this Waffle
House. The last time he was there, she was practically busting out of
a Rolling Stones tee-shirt. Maybe she’d do anything. She’s a real salt-of-
the-earth type, a slightly horse-faced Kentucky girl, a little timid, but full of
possibilities.
When we get there, the place is almost empty and Ryan sees the girl at work.
"Perfect," he says.
I pull my own camera from the car, with a real intent to help him get a great
shot that typifies "fast food," and an equal hope that he stops short of some
lewd and insulting proposal.
Waffle House Aesthetics
Inside, it’s just the young woman working the counter and a young man with
front teeth missing who is a fry cook and also mops the floor. Both are quiet,
sullen, suspicious, but they attend to us. We place our orders and ask
permission to take some photos inside the Waffle House. This meets with no
complaint. I ask if we can also take pictures of them, as well.
"No, I’m sorry," the woman says.
The young man, he says, "I don’t even own any pictures of myself."
"Really?" I say. And he shakes his head. He goes on with his work without
much looking in our direction.
We get a couple of preliminary shots. Ryan shoots the jukebox, the
Christmas tree, the most illuminated stretch of counter top — pretty much
anything guaranteed to be horribly over-saturated with light.
He shoots with his cell phone camera while learning the waitress’s name and
trying to convince her that we’ve both worked extensively as professional
photographers. He staggers, sways, and leans a little too much for a
professional shoot.
At least he doesn't ask to see her tits.
Besides the bad lighting, these shots will undoubtedly be blurred from
movement, the product of a self-styled aesthetician in a state of alert
drunkenness. I’m doing better with my for-real camera that isn’t part of a
phone, but our choices are limited. The best shot I take is of Ryan’s hand
holding a double heart attack breakfast sandwich. The best one he gets is
this florescent-on-chrome line-up of coffee makers standing polished in
front of wood paneling.
We stop halfway through the shoot to escort a gigantic wolf spider out of the
restaurant. Ryan scoops it from the floor onto his grease-laminated menu
and gets the spider at least as far as the foyer before it jumps. I feel much
better about the evening on the simple basis that he doesn't crush it.
Later, he bums a smoke from the young man who owns no pictures of
himself. I make the best conversation I can with the waitress - about our
photo contest, and how slow business is for the restaurant. Small talk. She
tells me how it’s better on Friday and Saturday nights after the gentleman’s
club across the street turns out. I ask her if it’s the girls who work there or
just the customers who come to Waffle House after hours. Both, she says. I
joke that we could sure get some good pictures on one of those nights.
We talk a little about photography and she says she could have an interest in
it, taking pictures, that is. She’s just never had the chance.
When Ryan comes back he says to her, "I know this is going to sound weird,
but what is the most Waffle House thing about Waffle House? What do you
love about this place? What do you find about it that’s ...
beautiful?"
She smiles the pretty, contemptuous smile of someone who doesn’t want to
tell you you’re a weirdo and full of shit besides. And I fill in that for her it
probably isn’t all that beautiful, except for the check.
She nods, but says the check isn’t all that beautiful, either - that it could sure
look a whole lot better. Ryan goes on rambling incomprehensible Wormwood
riffs. Lights, camera, metaphysics.
A half hour of tangents later, we assemble to pay the bill and he makes a
small apology for all the wild talk, the goings-on of his fevered mind. The
girl, plain-spoken as they come, she tells us she’s seen worse.
"I guess you see all kinds of drunks in here on the busier nights," I say,
retreading the obvious.
"Oh, we get all kinds," she says. "Just most of them..."
She catches herself.
"Just most of them aren’t quite as weird as we are."
I fill it in. She nods.
Horse People versus Aliens
On the way home, Ryan shoots more photos from his cell phone, captures the
wild iridescence of traffic lights, headlights, and neon signs burning through
the rain. Every point of brightness is amplified a hundred fold.
These photos will look like aliens have landed.
We’re still talking about the girl behind the counter. Pretty but ordinary,
limited aspirations, typical mistrust. We talk about the shots we could have
taken if she were willing to participate. Not the lewd suggestions of our first
conversation... just... anything.
"It will take a while," he says. "She’s been damaged."
You’d think he has some master plan for every person he meets. A Producer.
A Talent Scout. That’s Ryan.
"Yeah, she just wasn’t having it," I say. "But she warmed up a bit. She has
some interest in photography, too. We talked about it while you were out of
the room."
"Did you notice her equine features?" Ryan says. "Back in the mountains the
women have more rounded features. Even the skinny girls look sort of like
cows, sometimes. But the salt-of-the-earth girls here in the Bluegrass, they
look like horses."
In all honesty, I've seen horsier faces. And I can't put much stock in this need
to objectify, this terrible will to manufacture animal types for different classes
of the common folk. But I don't say so. I abide in the alien glow,
sharing each observation as an uncomfortable accomplice.
Somewhere, deep inside us, we've all been damaged.
The Hungry Cripple on June 30, 2008
Having yet to chase the Green Fairy myself, I must admit absorbing the Devil's Armpit sounds a tad hairy.