Ikali machi

It’s day four of, am I supposed to call it a self-quarantine if I’m not sick or is social distancing the more appropriate term. Anyway I haven’t left my house other than a quick bodega run since I came home from work an anxious mess on Friday night after a busy shift of customers who, how do I say this lightly, didn’t seem to let the fact that their town was in the epicenter of a pandemic disrupt them from drinking beer on a 75 degree day in late winter that they suddenly have off from whatever they do for a living. It might as well have been the Fourth of July.

I really do love my job and my regulars but in that moment I wished so hard that they would all just go home instead of pretending they were on an unexpected vacation.

Anyway the inevitable is reality now. I get paid on Wednesday and will be fine for the next couple weeks. But beyond that it’s anyone’s guess. I live paycheck to paycheck. I don’t have savings. I don’t have an affluent family to fall back on. As is the case with most of us in this industry we have fallen backwards into it because as people on the lower rungs of the income ladder there wasn’t much else for us to do than serve those above us. We love it but that’s just the reality. Plenty of people have it much worse than I do but it’s hard not to worry about what the future holds. I applied for unemployment assistance, as many service industry folks have. I was on unemployment for almost six months in 2015. I guess the difference now is in theory I have a job to go back to whenever this subsides. But no one really knows when that will be. That’s the part that scares me, the uncertainty. The notion that this is going to get worse, much worse, before it gets better. This capitalist society, in which we at the bottom create the wealth for those at the top, isn’t prepared for something like this. Our for-profit healthcare system, which just to really spell it out for you makes money off of people getting sick and dying, that is how they make their living, from the suffering of others, isn’t prepared for this because the only thing they know how to do with regards to our wellness is monetize it to maximize profits. But, sure, let’s nominate Joe fuckin’ Biden to be President. We’re fucked. Conservatives, moderates, neoliberals, rich people, they’ve all fucked us. I hope you know that. They don’t care about you or me.

Because I work in the service industry I cannot work from home like so many of you can. I just want to be crystal clear about that because I feel like people forget. We. Don’t. Get. Paid. Unless. We. Are. Physically. Present. At. Our. Place. Of. Employment. Is that right? Of course not. There should be protections in place for our industry. We are vulnerable. Not just to lost wages, but to pandemics in general. We deal with the public. They are a foot away from us, touching the same surfaces we touch, handing us dirty money out of their dirty wallets, placing a germ-stained credit card on our counter, coughing towards us, leaving their greasy fingerprints on our glass doors, serving you and your office mates at happy hour after another long day doing…what is it, y’all do exactly, again?

I work in a relatively low-volume takeout establishment, but on a busy day I probably interact with hundreds of different people. They could all be carrying COVID-19 for all I know. Or one person carrying it infected everyone else who was enjoying themselves on Friday, and now they will also infect their families. It’s madness, how selfish people can seem when something bad isn’t clearly and directly effecting them. I’m still furious about it to be perfectly honest with you. Like everything else bad that’s ever happened, this will hit the most vulnerable people the hardest. Closing up shop is without a doubt the right thing to do to slow the spread of the virus. But this is gonna hurt bad for probably months if not years to come. I think about how every year after I come home from Fest in November that I’m basically broke and playing catch-up until February, maybe March, even when I’ve done my best to save money for it ahead of time. It’s gonna be like that but without the fun memory attached to soften the blow.

Anyway since I’m home for the foreseeable future with not much to do other than dilly-dally I will write some more. I initially just wanted to write about music I like to take my mind off all this shit but I had to get the above off my chest. So maybe I will start doing that in the next one. Take care of yourselves. Stay the fuck home. Here’s a painting by Joan Miró called The Tilled Field that I love. Maybe you’ve seen it before it’s a pretty famous one.