let’s get awesome

Today A’yen and I went up to the DIA Beacon museum about an hour and a half outside of the city. When the museum closed we were super hungry. Lots of places were closed because it was Martin Luther King Day. But, of course, Subway was open. We walked in, and it was just like any Subway: flourescent lighting, old New York City subway maps on the walls, everything green and yellow and this dull brown. There was a skinny white kid behind the counter with a bluetooth headset on and an older skinny white guy behind him leaning up against wall wearing an identical bluetooth headset. We ordered from the kid while the older guy just stood there there, staring through these coke-bottle glasses, watching the kid do all the work.

The place was dead silent and A’yen and I were the only customers in there. It reminded me of why I generally don’t frequent fast food chains– beside the fact that the food is disgusting and unhealthy, they destroy communities, generally exploit workers and natural resources around the world and they’re totally dehumanizing and soul-sucking, both to the people who work there and the people who eat there. Nonetheless, we stood there in awkward silence while the kid made us subs.

When we went to pay, the older guy stepped up to the register and rung us up, while we made small talk about the town. He said, “Yeah, I moved up here about six years ago with my wife,” he looked straight at A’yen and said, “she’s CHINESE.” Uh yeah, we both cringed. We stood and talked for a little while, asking about his life, and how the community has changed in the last 4 years since the big fancy museum has attracted artists and tourists and city-people who are moving, in droves, to the area. Because even if he was some racist creep, he was still a person, and I wanted to have some kind of exchange, a conversation, to better understand where he was coming from.

At some point while we were talking he turned sideways and I saw over the counter that he had a gun holstered on his belt. A fucking revolver. On his shift at Subway. Now, maybe there was a good reason for this. If anyone knows one, please tell me. Because, on the one hand, I felt like some city kid who’s lefty sensibilities were predictably taken aback by the harsh realities of a small-town fast food restaurant and a guy with a gun–and I probably should have talked more with him, asked him why he needed a weapon to make sandwiches. On the other hand, fuck it, the guy was creepsville and armed.

Yeah, we’ll take that to go, please.