A far cry from the ragtag crew of the Mountaineer, the Cheesecake Factory was staffed by young people in pressed oxford shirts, their ties tucked into their aprons. After our dinner shifts, we went to Backstreet, a nearby twenty-four-hour dance club, and stayed out—spending every last dollar we had made—until our brunch shift the next day. When old friends from Smith invited me to holidays with their families, I declined, opting instead to pick up extra shifts at the restaurant or go to the movies alone. I didn’t want to think about families, to see them gathered together in backyards and living rooms. I don’t know if my parents ever emailed me back, and they had no number to reach me. Once, maybe twice—those memories seem locked away from even me now—I called home, usually after a night of drinking (some people drunk-dial exes, I drunk-dialed my family), but as soon as whoever answered heard my voice, they hung up.
An immigrant friend remembered how hard it had been for her family their first few years in America, marveling that I was doing it on my own. Another friend complained that she couldn’t afford going to a concert, couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do for work. To hear about their feelings or share my own. I gave her my number, and she began calling me once a month, sometimes more, explicit that she should call me and not the other way around so that she would be the one charged with the international fee. parts of my life, my job in the law office, my leafy neighborhood, leaving out the parts about waiting tables and the parties. There was no need to talk about other things: me being gay or getting asylum, the silence with my parents. Sometimes I thought about calling Abla or Omar, but I didn’t think I could bear it if they hung up on me, too. Every day on my way to work the dinner shift, I would pass Cedars, an all-you-can-eat Lebanese buffet.
Paintings of Beirut hung on the walls, and authentic Middle Eastern music wafted softly through the dining room—the real stuff, the singers Taytay used to listen to: Umm Kulthum and Fairouz. From then on, I became a bit of a regular at Cedars, even making special off-menu orders for atayef, the traditional Ramadan treats I could keep in my freezer until the month long fast, when I ate one, or sometimes two, a night. One day, I asked the waiter if the chef could make me kibbeh labanieh, the dumplings my grandmother and I used to make together, the ones I could never get right. After our dinner shifts, we went to Backstreet, a nearby twenty-four-hour dance club, and stayed out—spending every last dollar we had made—until our brunch shift the next day. When old friends from Smith invited me to holidays with their families, I declined, opting instead to pick up extra shifts at the restaurant or go to the movies alone. I didn’t want to think about families, to see them gathered together in backyards and living rooms. I don’t know if my parents ever emailed me back, and they had no number to reach me. Once, maybe twice—those memories seem locked away from even me now—I called home, usually after a night of drinking (some people drunk-dial exes, I drunk-dialed my family), but as soon as whoever answered heard my voice, they hung up.
An immigrant friend remembered how hard it had been for her family their first few years in America, marveling that I was doing it on my own. Another friend complained that she couldn’t afford going to a concert, couldn’t figure out what she wanted to do for work. To hear about their feelings or share my own. my number, and she began calling me once a month, sometimes more, explicit that she should call me and not the other “Save your money for food or something else.” She worried about me so much that she had created a world where I couldn’t afford a ten-dollar phone card, where every last dime went to eating. I would tell her about the good parts of my life, my job in the law office, my leafy neighborhood, leaving out the parts about waiting tables and the parties. There was no need to talk about other things: me being gay or getting asylum, the silence with my parents.
Sometimes I thought about calling Abla or Omar, but I didn’t think I could bear it if they hung up on me, too. Every day on my way to work the dinner shift, I would pass Cedars, an all-you-can-eat Lebanese buffet. Paintings of Beirut hung on the walls, and authentic Middle Eastern music wafted softly through the dining room—the real stuff, the singers Taytay used to listen to: Umm Kulthum and Fairouz. One day, I asked the waiter if the chef could make me kibbeh labanieh, the dumplings my grandmother and I used to make together, the ones I could never get right.