Ways to Think About Bonnie

Gerard
After dinner the waitress left a comment card for me as she picked up my used dishes and left me the bill. I imagine most people don’t fill these things in, the enticement of some small hope of a free meal for two nothing but too much of a distant possibility that the effort to fill the card in, logically or illogically thinking, just isn’t worth it. But Bonnie, my waitress, who had introduced herself to me already, was worth it.

I was dining in one of those nice homey places that liked to do that whole amicable easy going thing, the kind you experience in restaurants found between the last city you've left and the next you're yet to find, on the quieter back routes, the B road journeys; it's here where you still find introductions at your table, and are given a glass of red on the house when you look cold or are just plain worn thin. Bonnie was nice, and maybe I’d just like to give her a good write up and forget all about the restaurant and its food; because Bonnie was someone who it’d be nice to never have to forget at all. She was the star of my evening. She made the curls of her hair sing hymns of praise to the womanly shape that the gene pool had almost drowned itself in for making her look so good, especially in her waitress uniform of black and white. And her smiles were given in my direction at each placing down of: knife, fork, spoon, plate, napkin - making my eyes water for the next piquant glance of those great loved eyes of hers.

Bonnie was given circled ‘outstanding’ grades on food temperature and portion size, and listless others that I also scored her ‘outstanding’ on. I wondered what I was hoping for, that by reporting nice things about her on the comment card I’d come to gain something? But no, it wasn’t that, I realised I just wanted to, and it was a giving gesture from me that had become all too rare. I wanted to make some glorious approval of her, that in my half hour stint of knowing her she had made a real dent on me, altered the mood I was in, and made me pine again for the short term company of strangers that rejuvenated the way in which I saw my life, and the methods I chose in continuing to live it.

As Bonnie had served me dinner, we talked briefly about the way the smell of talcum powder reminded us of two seminal events: bath-time as a small child, and Halloween - so why it smelt of talcum powder in the restaurant tonight, we did not know, and we laughed about it; wondered if the old man sat at the back of the dining area was maybe actually wearing a skeleton outfit, wasn't really that gaunt, was powdered in talc, and was two months too early for Halloween?!

I have to say, the dinner itself was great: macaroni and cheese - yum! I was sure to clean it up, that dish a staunch favourite of mine - but I knew that tonight I assuredly and definitely would be extra vigilant to scoop up every last bite, because in some strangely manoeuvred and abstract way, I was aiming this as a direct compliment of Bonnie. I did other things, too. I cleaned the table up with my napkin before she came along to do the same, and I wrote my thoughts on the comment card in my most neatest and interesting handwriting; wanting our fleeting exchange to be remembered pristinely, cleanly located at the surface of a lovely past of encounters that bobs away like a trove of water buoys.

I left Bonnie a kind tip with the rest of the settled bill, and I left that restaurant a better man for being so well fed and kindly treated; aware that people like Bonnie would come along every now and again, bringing with them extracts of happiness that would add only more joy to the wealth of my own.

Javier
I watched him leave, the man with the obvious hard on for Bonnie. I wondered if he could have been more desperate. I mean sure, people stared at her all the time, she was a beautiful woman and we all had every right to look, and if I'm being honest, Bonnie was half the reason I felt compelled to stick it out with such a place, what with their recent unfounded hike in prices there wasn't much else holding me loyal to such a restaurant, and what was it with that guy's performance tonight? His cute jokes and his lost little boy act? – Please! It choked me up on my mouthfuls of meatballs for all the wrong reasons. Don't get me wrong, I mean Bonnie can be something else, but even she couldn't sink me to actions so goofy. I think I'll just have to deem such a man to be categorically lame.

Yet such a man preyed on some sensitivity of mine and got my pride feeling itchy. I found myself every now and then nudging my wife Carla, getting her attentions to watch the deprived man as he made a castle out of sugar cubes, and then I made it my duty to inform her that wasn’t she glad she was with me, a man who pats his stomach at the end of each course he eats, and a man who unashamedly throws out to the world the words that his eyes are making - (Sometimes I think about how lucky Carla is and it makes me feel sick). But yeah, I guess I could relate to what it was that guy was going through, he did, after all, look like a man caught up in a new place, where new shapes invade the mind like a streaming store-house of possibilities, especially, and I mean especially, when faced with a hot girl like Bonnie who in all his daydreams he can mount upon the table tops, by the cash register, against the wine rack: a woman set amongst his reach with whom he could destroy the whole place with in one night.

A part of me wanted to tell him: You’re not alone in this, that we’re all there, wanting out from the bed where we lie awake like bricks at night; but then the girl you’re with goes and does something sexy and sweet, licks the ice-cream from her spoon like she’s seventeen again, and it all becomes too much to lose.

I let my hand rest on one of Carla's exposed knees, where her knee highs elasticised and stopped in a rim that served the skin pink, and my hand wanted so much to move up, to keep travelling up so smoothly on her softening flesh; but I waited, dished out too much change to settle the bill, then whisked Carla up by the arm, out of the restaurant, and out in the direction of our parked car, where I decided that I would show her how much I could love her, and how much I already did. It was more romantic that it sounds. It was savage and fierce, full of want for nobody else, not a girl called Bonnie, no, I wanted nobody but my mainstay, my steady girl, my wife, my gorgeous Carla, because she suits me just fine.

Shelley
A couple left for the car park around ten minutes ago, they made it to their car but have since stayed there. I can’t see much, it’s dark outside, and looking through the long windows of the restaurant I think maybe I can make out the silhouette of them both with their arms and legs tight around each other like somersaulting bugs - and the thought of this makes me miss my boyfriend, who works away, down south, on a job that means I only get to see him at the weekends.

I’m out tonight. Dinner with a girlfriend. We’re filling each other in on all the things that have happened since we last met, but we’ve covered it all quite quickly, and as we wait for our main courses to arrive, we really struggle to keep the conversation pulsing on a natural flow. I comment on how pretty all the waitresses are here, and I think that’s probably why they were hired, and there is one particularly who seems to be catching the eye of the other diners. I’ve overheard the way the regulars say her name ‘Bonnie’ with real affection, the kind of affection that flows heavy and floods when you're face to face with someone at the time of their death. Bonnie gives everyone her time, reams of it, and I find it remarkable that even at her young age she has already realised how beautiful a gift time can be for people as she wraps them up in ribbons of her attention. If I look at her closely enough for long enough I realise that she isn’t exactly perfect looking, that her nose has a bump right in its centre, and that her skin blotches pink sometimes as she rushes, but these only count in making her look more sincere and vulnerable to the same troubles we all come to face in life.

My friend talks to me about her boss whom her work colleagues say has a crush on her, and I really don’t see why anyone would bother to waste their romantic dreams on someone like her, someone who is so clinical and morbid that their musings on cancer are cited aloud whilst drinking a glass of milk that she worries could make her desperately ill because of a trite article she once read in The Daily Mail. I excuse myself and make my way to the bathroom, strangely catching the smell of talcum powder as I do. I then pass by Bonnie who asks me how my meal was, and it was lovely I say, and from somewhere I end up telling her that she is a wonderful person, and she rests her hand as a pale thank you on my upper arm.

She’s so young I think; she could be no more than twenty. I almost want to ask her to come away with me, to spend the night with me maybe. I want to tell her that I want to borrow some of that good natured spirit of hers that she seems to bask in so unknowingly. I want to kiss her and share in her dreams. She seems so full of good.

Bonnie tells me that the bathroom is out of soap, that she was just about to bring some in; so she fetches a bar for me so I can take it in with me, and tells me it’s lavender scented and isn’t that such a divine smell?! I agree, and she leaves me to go and serve a dessert dish of waffles and ice-cream to an elderly gentleman sat near to the back of the dining area. For a little while I stay where I am and watch as she pours hot chocolate sauce over the old man's dessert. The old man doesn't watch his dish but watches the way Bonnie's arse grips tighter to her black skirt as she bends down low to his table. Then lovingly, because they must be friends, Bonnie kisses the man on each cheek and apologises that she has to get back to work. Back over at my table, my friend is trying to grab my attentions as she taps the face of her watch and mouths HURRY UP at me. I nod my head and enter the bathroom, moving the soap kept in its paper wrapping up to my nose as I consume the scent like a flavoured sweet. For some reason I don't throw the wrapping away, but keep it, some sort of Bonnie memento.

When I make it back home, after leaving the restaurant, I realise how free it feels to be alone again, not having to prove anything to anybody about what has been going on in my life recently. The wrapping of the soap has infused my coat pocket in a depth of lavender scent, and as I take the wrapping out from my pocket its scent wafts onwards and is only made stronger as it battles out the other smells found within my home. In the fusion of all of the above I suddenly become overcome by happy thoughts and an excitement of living, the result of some sort of lavender scent therapy I think, perhaps - and then, right at that moment, my boyfriend texts me and tells me how he wishes he was with me now. I kick off my shoes, lie across my bed, and think to myself: 'Hell yeah, that would be good!' Yet secretly I am wishing that my boyfriend's words could tonight (and I mean just for tonight) be Bonnie's words instead.

Leo
Every Thursday night I take a bath and then pay a visit to the restaurant where I proposed to my wife, more than fifty years ago. To keep you in the loop I should tell you that my wife died four years ago, so when I wonder if it's a nice thing that I religiously go to back to that same restaurant every Thursday night, I have to say, I just plain don't know if it is a good thing at all anymore - but, I'll have you know, that the people there are nice to me, and maybe that's reason enough - why sure it is if we're talking about customer satisfaction, because well, I get that each week in spades, but there are other big gaping differences to how these Thursday nights have been these past four years, for one thing is the real effort made by myself to make such a weekly routine digestible, because since Rosie left I have had to try so hard to carry on with what a normal life might be when its enduring focal points have all gone somewhere I cannot go, or will not go, just yet.

Tonight at the restaurant I was sat near to two ladies who've now just left. I must admit that I wondered if maybe they were lesbians; they looked opposing enough to be, y'know quite opposites, plus one of them kept looking at Bonnie like she lusted after her. I thought that maybe if they were lesbians they might kiss and give me something to dream about, but if they were lesbians they were of the prudish kind and did nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that set them apart from the bland women I see at the supermarket debating over whether to buy prunes or not, and I hate prunes. And tonight I might just hate lesbians, or at least their lack of activity held in my vicinity!

That waitress, the really pretty one, Bonnie; she’s real good to me. Even outside of work she finds the time to sometimes stop by my place with meals for me; and then other times I get her to read the headlines for me, from the newspaper. It’s always so nice to hear a woman’s voice in the house again, because sometimes I think the house suffers from a certain type of loneliness that is the loss of a womanly presence close to it. I think my house suffers as much as I do with that type of loss, as though we are both illuminating our vacancy signs now that Rosie has gone.

Bonnie likes my house. The young people do, don’t they? They like the old décor, it provokes them, coolness recycled era upon era - and maybe I might just be a walking talking dreamboat when decked out in my tails coat. Bonnie loves the patterned wallpapers that she says look so much like William Morris ones. And others like the strange things that have been accumulated over the years: like the huge Morrison air raid shelter that's too big to leave the house. I mean the size of that thing - Christ! But I won't dare hack it down. I hear these things are valuable now: war memorabilia and the like, worth a mint at those auctions held up town where the young and the curious buy into investments and conversation pieces of another's very real history.

Bonnie is a quiet little sweetheart. She was nice enough to come to Rosie's funeral, not to the service itself, but I spotted her, stood back at the burial, by the clusters of trees where the old full cemetery ends and the new one begins. I remember her stood there with her hands clapped in prayer, a little unsure of the run of things, but all the while remaining steady in her sentiments as it began to lash down with rain; and even in those broken-rained-blurs of her departing teenage years, Bonnie looked classic, one of those forever type of beauties; and her presence, albeit a secret to her, helped to ground the misery of death into the earth, akin with all things natural and expected. Such timing as this was perfect for my composure and acceptance, I could acknowledge that my life with Rosie had been grand, and miss her, of course I would, but give in, I would not, there was and is purpose yet to live, so as the coffin itself was lowered down to what would become Rosie's final resting place, I smiled for her life in the brunt of all my tears.

It is unexpected moments of grace like Bonnie's arrival at Rosie's funeral that have helped to make my days since that day, feel lighter than I could ever have expected them to. Bonnie has helped to serve as a reminder of how it is good to be caught out by life sometimes, to realise that the dates between our birth and our death are really the most significant dates of them all - that these dates are the ones that count in defining the type of person we choose to be, and that it is important not to skirt over the dashes, but to really try to get to grips with what etcs and dot dot dots can actually really mean.

Tonight, at the restaurant, Bonnie really spoilt me. She brought me my favourite dessert and drenched it in hot chocolate sauce, and my God was it good! I really am aware of how lucky I am to have somebody like Bonnie be so good to me when really they have no duty to at all. Bonnie isn’t family or anything close like that. I think maybe she goes beyond that. That she has become more cherished for developing this meaning between us, forming a new type of love that the childless especially are so honoured to experience. Sometimes I've tried to ask Bonnie about herself and what it is she wants to accomplish in her life, but as giving as she is, as kind hearted and as sweet natured as she is, she doesn't divulge much about herself to others, and I have learnt to respect this quirk of hers. All I know I can do, personally, to help to benefit her, is to tip her generously and hope that she will learn to understand that she is too good to be stuck here with the likes of me and this restaurant. That a girl like Bonnie really does have a world of opportunities thrown by her feet, like operatic roses bestowed to a true prima donna; she has become the sequel to Rosie, the constant first lady of my heart.

Mary
Most settings of first dates are intimidating, but this one was really quite bad. I sat opposite my date who I’d been chatting to on a dating website for weeks now, but I also felt like I sat opposite myself, a reflection of myself staring back from a wide mirror, cleverly saying things without the lips ever even moving, much like a Jedi mind-trick, it filled me with knocked-confidence suggestion: ‘Why was it that I thought it wise to wear such a glaringly red dress tonight when I had never worn such showy attire before?’ And for some reason these fake versions of me always turn out to be real smart asses that possess the power to make me have doubts about everything (which can be very unsettling and I imagine, quite unattractive).

When our waitress came over to take our order, I'll admit I even had doubts about that. Did I really want a salad? What sort of impression does that make? Is that going to make me seem submissive or make my date think I have some sort of weight issues? Gosh I mean, I never thought it would be so hard. The waitress said she’d give us another five minutes, and I sighed out into the open planned space of the restaurant, really quite loud, feeling like I needed help in making this easy decision. I wondered if this was normal or whether I felt an attack coming on, and I did, and it originated right from the gritty depths of my gut. I fretted and panicked. My date choosing to look away from me instead of trying to help me. I gritted my teeth and smiled horribly across the table in the hope that I might intimidate him into helping me - this didn’t work. I then wanted the bastard to look at me and feel scared that he was here dating a serial killer with whom he shared a love of French new wave cinema, and damn it he would think, shared interests aren't always beacons of compatibility, but a march into a mouth of death.

Without any request our waitress came along with a jug of water and poured some into a glass for me. She told me to take small sips and to try to remain calm. People were craning their necks, looking awkwardly around just to catch sight of me and how the water was spurting out from my nose, and how when I'd tried to say 'Thank you' to the waitress, I had sounded like a sick duck who'd been ostracised by the group for not being able to quack as well as they all could. My date buried his head deep into his menu and I could have screamed down his ears for being such an unconcerned dick to me. I felt like crying and the waitress could tell. She suggested that maybe it would be best if I took a walk outside, grabbed some fresh air, circulated my lungs - yada yada - and I knew that maybe that meant I needed a kick to the senses just like a man sometimes deserves a kick in the balls.

The waitress took me outside and said she was due for a break if I maybe just wanted to talk. I took her up on her offer, knowing that any alternative was better than predictably bursting into tears. Whilst stood there, by the warm air of the vents channelling steamy heat out from the kitchen, we heard some strange noises coming from the car-park: animals probably, a skulking fox routing through the bins perhaps - but it wasn't long after the noises had stopped that a car with a woman sat topless in the front passenger seat and a smirking male driver sporting tall fluffed hair (who winked on at the two of us like a man so sure of the bets that he places), sped on by in their demure blue Renault (something-or-other) in what was to prove to be the best oxymoron of the night. Both of us understood them to be the shabby aftermath of lust, and we couldn't help but smile at their antics - (on our part I would put it as being an endearing moment at the very least).

By this time I had noted the name of my waitress from her badge, she was called Bonnie, and she seemed to know that it was an internet date that had brought me here tonight. She said she saw a lot of that: the nerves, the ignorance, the complete lack of knowledge of how to function in actual human situations, not from me she said, but from him, he was a classic web nerd; an 'unsocialite'. She got me to laugh about it, and she wondered why I needed to online date anyway, when I was, as she put it: ‘a real cutie pie’ – I could have blushed; it was the first time a beautiful woman had ever stopped to be kind to me in such a way. I wasn’t sure if women like Bonnie ever actually did that sort of thing - selfless acts and all that, and I found it all quite reassuring for my faith in human kind as a whole, oh, but maybe not for my faith in my date!

After about five minutes of hiding outside, gaining all sorts of unknown confidence form Bonnie, I decided to venture back into the restaurant. Bonnie whispered at me to go and give him hell, and so I stormed over to my date in a red dress like a red light that I hoped would burn him, metaphorically at least; and I picked up my coat and my bag and left him right there, in the lurch - a feeling worse than a no show, knowing that I had left him in my career height as a choking schizophrenic, who had created a scene that at least made me look intriguing, or perhaps mental, but hopefully not pitiful to others. Bonnie arranged for my salad to be ordered to go, and she hauled in some more exciting treats for me stored in some plastic packaging, which she then piled on up in a brown paper bag - it was exciting, a goody bag of sorts, and it wasn't until later that night that I found that she'd slipped me a note with her number written on it in case I ever wanted to talk! What a score!

Okay! Okay! So my exit might not have been much to witness, not exactly a grand finale, or an act of girl power, right? But I did feel empowered by a new found self worth that night, and I have nobody but Bonnie to thank for that.