At work a man walks in who, maybe an hour or so before, had come in asking for a table at 8:30pm. I had told him there wasn’t any availability but he was welcome to check back around then to see if anything had changed. So he returns at 8pm, now with a girl, and says, hi, I’m back probably sooner than you expected.
I say, sorry, we still don’t have anything until around 9pm. I can take your phone number and call you if that changes?
He says, but you told me that if I came back at 8:30pm there would be a table.
I say, no… you said you wanted a table at 8:30pm and I said I didn’t have one but you could come back at 8:30 and see where we’re at. And also it’s 8pm right now. I can take your phone number?
He goes, oh, no, that’s okay. Thanks so much for your hospitality.
Now that I’m typing out thanks so much for your hospitality it does sound sarcastic but he said it in such a nice way, such an english way, that I couldn’t tell if it was sarcasm or a form of an apology for trying to really unsubtly gaslight me into thinking that I had promised him a table and that it was 8:30pm and not 8pm. Maybe I should have whispered to him, look if you’re going to gaslight your date too, the trick is to be really really subtle about it so she doesn’t notice. Like, if you want me to think it’s 8:30pm and not 8pm you probably shouldn’t have led with, ‘I’m back probably sooner than you expected’ it’s just kind of inconsistent.
Anyways, that whole interaction was nearly enough for me to run into the middle of the restaurant, scream WHY DOES NO ONE RESPECT ME, and then fling myself down the stairs.
Recently, I’ve been marching around thinking I deserve more RESPECT, and hyperfixating on who is and isn’t respecting me and it’s giving me writer’s block because all I can think about is writing a list of everyone I know and writing out the ways in which they’ve shown they don’t respect me nearly as much as I think they should. And maybe that essay would actually slap but I’m not ready to forsake all my friendships for a viral substack just yet.
I keep talking about respect and not wanting my time to be wasted in the same way that super successful influencers talk about business which is vaguely, arrogantly and often in sentences that are grammatically incorrect. You know, when you hear them say things like, when it comes to business I’m the most prepared and people don’t always expect that from me. I guess it’s because I had a recent realization that I wasted a lot of precious time in the couple of years after drama school being consumed by my own and other people’s mental health. Like, instead of starting a business or making seven short films instead of one I was replying to texts that read feeling kind of down today or crying in my room about how my agent only ever sent me auditions for films that really seemed like sex trafficking scams.
Since I’ve been spending more and more time in New York my feral Upper East Side drive to be nothing but incredibly impressive has rushed back into me in a way that’s made me feel like I’ve woken up from a coma. For better or worse, I now find myself explaining to my boyfriend ad nauseam about how it’s actually hard to pursue a career in the arts when you were raised in the Upper East Side prep school system because you have an innate need to be impressive at all costs and it’s rare that you get to be impressive in an obvious and commercial sense as an artist. And that’s why even if people want to be writers or actors they’ll take finance jobs anyways despite their family’s wealth stretching back generations meaning that if anyone can sit around all day and write and create it’s probably them. Because that wouldn’t be immediately impressive or competitive, you see? And that’s why I was tempted to drop everything and work full time at my restaurant job after one bad Edinburgh fringe performance because it’s a really popular and impressive restaurant and it would keep me super busy and people are always asking me for reservations and I know a lot about the best wine and the best and most sustainable meat and our service is to the highest standard. Because that’s at least more impressive by typical standards than performing to two elderly women and a reviewer in a leaky attic in Edinburgh.
But, because giving up also isn’t very impressive I stay in my purgatory of waiting to be impressive (to who? I don’t know) while stomping around my house screaming, I must be respected and my time must not be wasted!!!
(And if anyone cares I’ve still been compulsively online window shopping and my hyperfixation of the week are these little shorts from Aritizia (I have a pair that I sleep in a lot but it’s hard because do you wear sleep shorts more than once before washing…? yeah, no, me neither so I do need more) and, as always, something from Cou Cou Intimates. Once I buy these then I will be both respected and cosy and a little bit flirty and therefore, finally happy. )
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