The expression on his face was that of the famous boy who stole the fox and heroically didn’t show his face while the fox was tearing at his chest under his shirt. (He didn’t show it, but there was a hint, wasn’t there? As they say, you can “practically” not feel the vinegar in the salad.) If not a fox clawing his chest, then at least a pebble in a (for some reason always sharp-nosed) boot. Or, as the unforgettable Joey Tribbiani put it, “I’ve got a fishhook in my eye and I like it!” In short – misery, more or less successfully contained. “Good afternoon, honourable people. Ready to order yet?” I’m talking about the male waiter.
More precisely, about an Oriental man. Even more accurately, a conventionally Middle Eastern one, starting roughly with the natives of Astrakhan. (It’s quite possible that Far Easterners also have a hook or even a whole foxhole, but it’s hard to read from samurai faces.) Another clarification: this is when he is forced to serve women without men. Especially when the women are not real serious ladies, whose status is something close to a normal, male status, but rather feints. And they are also capricious.
We’ll have a mojito, just without sugar, and ice separately. Also a tomato salad and kharcho, just without the tomato. And let it be very hot. You tell the kitchen.
Sure, I’ll tell the kitchen,” it reads clearly on his sort of impenetrable face ( almost without vinegar, that’s right) as he clarifies whether it’s the entire order and sorrowfully puts the menu away. – And they will tell me… Kind of like the joke about the dagger as something spicy. Well, they’ll probably say that. And then they’ll add it when the soup isn’t hot enough and needs to be reheated. And when a lover of unsweetened mojito, meticulously checking whether her request has been remembered, asks for a sugar bowl… The poor man cannot even raise his eyebrow ironically: a fishhook gets in the way.
I heard in a lecture on the peculiarities of Japanese culture that a Japanese man, if he suddenly wants to submit to a woman as a mistress, needs to do some hard inner work: for example, imagine himself as her child. I don’t know if this is true, but I am sure that an Oriental (since about Astrakhan) male waiter serving a couple of feints has his inner work cut out for him like a Stakhanovite gang in the pit. We fancy-schmancy men should be more lenient.
