Read Online Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff - Free Book Online Page B

times of the year, like Harley-Davidson Week, for example. Although she cannot be more than twenty, and is half dressed and pneumatically constructed in precisely the way that ogling crowds of hairy bikers go for in a big way, Jennifer talks about serving these Hell's Angels with no trace of fear or trepidation. She even proudly but casually mentions that, with the exception of Hooters, most businesses in Myrtle Beach close down during Black Bike Week (not black bikes, but African American bikers).
    “Why do you think that is?” I ask.
    “They're rude,” she replies, although I'm not sure if she means the bikers or the area merchants.
    Jennifer is from West Virginia and attends Carolina Coastal College. She is curious about my notebook, but cannot read my scrawl. She takes my pen to write: “I love Hooters [smiley face].” Not to be outdone, Heather writes, “Roses are red / Violets are blue / the shorter the shorts / the better the view.”
    I have swallowed all the signifiers of their presentation, so it comes as a bit of a shock—and a good dose of medicine—when I ask them what they do when not waiting tables. Heather has been accepted into a nursing program. To bide her time over the summer before it starts, she's taking microbiology again, just to keep up on it. She passed it once already. Jennifer is in marine sciences, studying sharks and planning on doing graduate work in Australia.
    “Wow, marine biology,” I say.
    “Uh-uh. Marine
sciences
,” she corrects me. “Biology's just part of it.”
    I briefly wonder if they're having me on, trafficking in that old take-down-the-hair-remove-the-horn-rims, “Miss Jones, you're beautiful” fantasy. But I don't suspect grad school plans are a turn-on for most guys. Besides, the hair is already down and the glasses are nowhere in sight.
    The three flight attendants are in the back of the plane, as they have been for most of the flight, kneeling on the seats and leaning over the back to talk and laugh with the other passengers. One guy stands in the aisle with a bottle of beer. It's all very
Coffee, Tea or Me,
a hearkening back to those cusp-of-the-sexual-revolution days when “stews” were good-time gals and flying was largely the province of men. The party in the rear stays that way until about seven minutes to the end, when one of the attendants finally comes up front. “Carole!” she calls to the back.
We're landing!
she mouths, as if to hide the fact from the rest of us, even though the plane has been pitched downward in a descending pattern for the last half hour. It pleases me to find out that it in no way affects the safety of a plane if it lands with a tray table down and seat not in the upright position. My can of seltzer and cup are still in front of me as we touch down in the stifling, Prell-thick air of a South Carolina evening.
    Later that night, walking along the highway from the Burger King back to my motel, I hug the shoulder of the road, clutching my Double Whopper with Cheese to my chest, careful not to let the bag be ripped from my arms by the powerful wakes kicked up by the eighteen-wheelers and semis roaring by. The grassy verge along the driveway to my lodgings is damp with humidity, my T-shirt is soaked through from my three-minute walk. Passing through the automatic doors, I am greeted with a blast of air-conditioning as salutary as a blood transfusion. The vending machines by the reception desk—the motel's version of a restaurant—blaze with a stained-glass opulence. I feed a dollar into the slot and in turn I am graced with a frosty bottle of Gatorade the color of the Caribbean Sea.
    IT ' S STILL CAUSE for wonder, this being in one place on the globe in the morning and somewhere else entirely by evening. Even if it is only here, sitting on my motel bed watching CNN, with the curtains illuminated by the glow of the splash pool outside. It's still lit up, though it's already close to midnight. I guess they keep it turned on just