Shrinking teeth

We got lost coming back from the catering job. I took a left when I should’ve taken a right. They followed behind me, driving slowly. I was full of frustration and rage—the same feeling that had stuck with me all week.

My needs weren’t understood, and I didn’t know how to explain them—especially not to an angry, nihilistic, half-deaf British chef with no interest in understanding anyone, let alone me. I didn’t know how to say what I needed. I barely knew how to name it myself.

The server trailing behind me had been through some shit. Their fiancé had died of cancer the year before, and the grief was still lodged deep behind their eyes. They snuck tokes of pot throughout the day—trying to keep the pain quiet and fog their memory just enough to get through. Weed was the only drug they still allowed themself after years of using anything they could find.

We’d talked about their teeth—how they were shrinking. They said it was a side effect of some medication, but I couldn’t help thinking it was from years of meth. Still, I reminded myself: don’t presume. But I hated them. They didn’t deserve it, but I hated them anyway.

They were dumb. Not quirky, not naive—just dumb in the kind of way that made me want to tear out my hair. The kind of dumb where you drool while putting on socks because it’s just too much to remember how to breathe and get dressed at the same time. I know I’m being cruel. I know. But that’s where I was at.

We got lost because I don’t remember directions. I never have. And we were deep in the sticks near Joshua Tree, with no cell service. If this had happened a few months earlier, I would’ve spent the entire time spiraling, convinced I was a fucking idiot. But that was before I started figuring out who I am.

We were wrecked after a 14-hour day—cooking and serving for a few rich assholes who’d bought a massive plot of land to convert into Airbnbs for other rich assholes. I cursed them under my breath the entire time.

So yeah—I made a wrong turn. We ended up just a few blocks from where we were staying, but without GPS or sunlight, I couldn’t find our way back. I stepped out of the refrigerated van I’d been stuck driving all week and walked up to their car. They rolled down the window of their dusty sedan—they’d been off-roading in that thing all day—and looked at me with that same dumb, empty expression I’d come to expect.

“I think we’re lost,” I said. “I’m no good with directions.”

Then they said something that made my brain short-circuit.

“Are you a Gemini?”

I blinked. “Why are you asking me that?”

“Geminis are bad with directions,” they said, like it was gospel.

I stared at them. “No, I’m autistic. That’s why I’m bad with directions.”

They nodded, as if that somehow made more sense.

“Oh,” they said.