Today's Special: Gender Rolls

Somebody said there might be work here so Clay and I go in. We are looking for Jen, the proprietor, as we walk into Molly’s, a restaurant and bar on top of a mountain in the middle of Utah. The bar is dark. I am blinded briefly after stepping in from the white glare of snow outside.

As my eyes adjust I inspect my competition, the wait staff, which appears to be a fleet of buxom blonde girls. They hurry from table to table replacing empty pitchers with full ones, executing hand offs like a friendly machine. It’s snowing out and the bar is busy.

Clay and I sit, checking out the selection on tap and a girl standing behind the bar with her back to us, making drinks. Her long blonde pony tail swings as she reaches deftly for ice, rum, coke, lime.

“Excuse me, is Jen here?”

“I’m Jen,” she says, turning to face us.

“We heard you might be hiring.”

Jen looks at me, and then Clay.

“Can you cook?” She asks Clay.

“Have you waitressed?” She asks me.

We have been asked the same questions at every restaurant we’ve been to. Nobody seems to care if I can cook, or if Clay has waited tables before.

Gender roles have become strange incomprehensible creatures, like those frogs with all the extra legs that everyone has heard about but nobody really knows the origin of. It’s a bacteria in the water. People always thinks they’re mutants, but they’re not. Some manmade factor was added to the natural environment, causing a spike in this particular bacteria, and all of a sudden, mutant frogs were hopping around everywhere, into ponds, backyards, even school playgrounds.

Nothing new here, no glowing green ooze or cosmic force to blame. Just a slight change to the natural levels of bacteria, and suddenly people are gasping in horror at an abundance of grotesque, freakshow frogs that are decending upon our open spaces like locusts. Think its unsightly? Imagine how the frogs feel.

Along with pitchers the girls serve pizza and sandwiches, always laid down with a smile and a kind word. In restaurants, it is almost always women serving up dinner, adhering to the traditional image of food provider. But behind the kitchen doors is not a brigade of caring wives lovingly seasoning the meatloaf.

Behind those doors is a guy named Hal smoking a cigarette and wiping his nose with the spatula. Next to him is your friend Ryan, who’s high, mechanically working the grill and thinking about hitting the river gap after work. We know this, all the diners know this, but we all also know Hal and Ryan must not bring the food past the doors. Woman must give food.

It is strange, a liberation for women, a release from the traditional role of cook, based upon maintenance of the appearance of this very role. In restaurants, it’s as though women have broken free of the shackle to the stove by becoming a picture of the chain.

I smile at Jen compliantly and begin to talk, content to watch the bar organism breath around me as I sell myself to her. The light is coming in heavy through the big windows now. Clouds break and the bar begins to clear out, headed back to the slopes for the highly amusing, slightly lethal pastime of drunk riding.

Right now looks like an opportune time to enrich my experience as a waitress. Clay lies and says he can cook. Hey, why not. If the lie is convincing, no one knows the difference, and we all go home happy.