Hot Latina Waitress

The life of a teenager, it seems to me, is most dramatically shaped and defined by memories made at night. This is true whether you spend your nights playing dota at a brofest sleepover, grabbing a midnight snack with your friends at Carl’s Jr or smoking the shit out of your consciousness at a house party. Sometimes it’s merely the glamour of secrecy, that guilty pleasure that comes with knowing your parents have no fucking idea what you are up to. Your friends are your accomplices in a shared crime. Sometimes it’s the range of activities that are well, only available or legit at night. Like having a session at an empty parking lot. But sometimes it’s just the vibe. There’s an electrifying mystery in the night air that leaves tingles of unfounded fascination and ecstasy.

The night of my visit to Hollywood with three friends, as described in the previous post, was already fantastic for the above three impulses. And then I got an icing on the cake.

After an exciting day of watching the screening of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader and gazing at the L.A. nightscape from Griffith Observatory, the four of us headed over to Katsuya restaurant. My friend had reserved seats for the four of us at 10 p.m. I am usually wary of eating dinner past 9, but the restaurant was supposed to be a hot spot for meeting celebrities and I was willing to allow the inconvenience in exchange for meeting Kobe Bryant.

A burly man in tuxedo opened the door for us as we came in. We walked straight into the middle of what seemed like a museum exhibit; rectangular glass prisms mounted on slender marble platforms studded the waiting area in front of the bar like a checkerboard. Each prism contained a crystal figure or design, though I can’t recall any specific one.

The restaurant was composed of three large areas, all of them seamlessly joined by a walkway. There was the bar and artistic flurry described above; a rather spacious sushi kitchen with dining tables around it; and then more tables on the opposite side of the restaurant in a more secluded setting. I was confused why there was such little separation between the bar and sushi tables. But most people didn’t seem to mind. They ordered a drink at the bar to raise their spirits, chatted with some friends, exchanged some hugs, and usually spilled out to the tables with new munchies.

The music was incredibly loud in all areas of the restaurant. I can’t recall the genre or quality of the music played. I just remember wondering out loud how people could hear themselves above this cacophony. People don’t come to Katsuya to have a decent audible conversation or enjoy a quiet meal.

What perhaps surprised me most that night was the age group of the customers – almost all of them were in their late 20’s and mid 30’s. I guess it does take a reasonable amount of time to amass enough money to afford eating at such high-end restaurants. But somehow the idea of a “hip” bar / sushi joint for wilting flowers that are human beings at the age of 30 seemed foreign and gaudy. When I think of that stage of human life, I envision settling down, going fishing, or playing at Bingo Club – not wild drinking nights, double dates, and one night stands. And this is coming from a guy who will soon turn 20. I will be a miserable bastard very soon.

Anyway I am describing all these things before even mentioning the dining experience because I did a lot of watching and waiting before eating. Our reservation at 10, well, didn’t quite mean anything. Apparently a restaurant frequented by Jay-Z cares little about honoring promises to us common folks. We were given a table by the sushi kitchen at about 10:20 after watching special guests take their seats at empty tables. I’m pretty sure our reservation had an asterisk next to it.

It was about 10 minutes after we got seated that a waiter showed up with empty glasses. He would’ve done us a favor if he had just filled them with cold water when he first brought them. I guess I looked like I needed a drink that night.
Our waiter was a gregarious Asian guy in his mid 20’s, who, according to my friend who is male, was rather handsome. He gave us a quick overview of the menu and made some recommendations that he said could “really change our lives.” We ordered two rolls, a sashimi dish, crunchy rice with tuna, and spicy albacore with onions. Each of the dishes ranged somewhere from $8 to $15, which seemed pretty reasonable at the time.

It wasn’t until we saw the portions that the cruel joke became apparent to us. The rice in “crunchy rice with tuna” was composed of four spoonfuls of rice fried into little squares like graham crackers. A piece of tuna the size of a mini-oreo sat atop each of these culinary monstrosities. I said out loud, “What the fuck do I do with this?” It sounds amusing but after shelling out $14 for nanoseconds of salivary stimulation (the food was good), I was rather genuinely pissed off.

So the dining proceeded in a similar fashion for the rest of the night – the four of us eagerly anticipating the next dish, only to be disappointed by the meager servings.

But my night did conclude with fireworks. Before explaining what happened, though, I have to provide a context for my actions.

It’s funny how the things we read, see, and hear can have unexpected and far-reaching consequences in our lives. At the moment of absorption, the external stimuli seem to possess no significance at all. They are shoved into some compartment in our brain without our knowing, dormant but surely there. Then later we encounter another seemingly ordinary stimulus, and it triggers the release of one of these captured memories. Together they shape our response.

At the time of my visit to Katsuya, I happened to be reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and watching Two and a Half Men on a nightly basis. These two informants of my psychological and moral condition made the outcome of that night inevitable. Steinbeck’s profound veneration for that thing called free will empowered me to act and decide my own destiny. Charlie Harper in Two and a Half Men reminded me of the arena of life in which this free will could be exercised.

It was between nibbles of the crunchy rice with tuna that I glanced up and happened to notice her. The beautiful Latina waitress was in her mid-20’s – I would say 24 or 25. She was wearing the same chaste and demure black uniform like all other waiters, but my God, that did not stop her from flaunting that figure. Not that she was the type of girl to flaunt her figure. When your booty has that extra oomph, well, your booty has that extra oomph and no earthly power can do anything about it. Hips are one of the few creatures that always speaks the truth.

But the feature that initially caught my eyes and that convinced me she was a very special beauty indeed was her face. Never mind the flawless bronze complexion and the majestic sharp features unusual for a Latina. Her eyes were round and clear and literally sparkling, the kind of eyes that bewitch princes and kings in fables. But they also projected a gentleness and shyness that made me feel all snug and warm as if huddled under a blanket.

I pointed her out to Alex, the same guy who had called our waiter handsome.

“Dude she is hot.”
“Who?”
“The Latina waitress over there.”
“Oh, yeah she is hot.”

In a few minutes, I saw her heading toward our table illuminating the ground beneath her with her purity.

I stared. Her eyes met mine just as she reached our table, and I knew she knew. She gave me a shy smile that killed me.

She passed by our table about three more times and each time, my eyes never wavered from her face from the moment she appeared in my view to the moment she left. Each time, her eyes met mine and that subtle knowing smile haunted me. Each time, she became hotter and younger.

I put my head on the table and started thinking. “What kind of a person was she? Was she really as nice and innocent as she looked? Was she sympathetic and sensible?” The nagging thought of her being a bad girl tormented me.

While I was silently writhing in my seat, our waiter had arrived to check on us. By this time, we had struck up several conversations with our waiter (who happened to be from our area) and were on friendly terms with him. At the behest of the other two friends, Alex began talking.

“So we are aware that there is a pretty hot Latina waitress that works here.”
“Hot Latina waitress?”
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
Alex correctly identified her, even with her back turned.
“Oh, her. Who thinks she is hot?”

My three friends pointed at me. I raised my hand.

“I think her name is Charlene,” the waiter said.

Damn right she was a Charlene. She looked like a Charlene.

“Does she have a boyfriend?” I asked.
“Yeah… and her boyfriend is me.”

In the dramatic two seconds or so that followed, my mind violently recoiled. The waiter then changed face.

“I’m just kidding. She’s dating that white guy over there.”

I craned my neck to see but had trouble finding him and frankly didn’t care. Suddenly I became irate at the prospect of a white male stealing yet another beautiful exotic woman.

“You should try to date her,” I said to the waiter. “She’s a beauty.”
“But she has a boyfriend.”
“Fuck that. You can take him. People come and go.”
“Are you going to have dreams about her?”
“Nah I’m too old for that.”

I paused and thought. Then I said what had been at the back of my mind all along, the strange truth that had eluded articulation.

“I just want to make sure that she’s a good girl. I guess it’s like a paternal instinct. I just want to know if she’s a good girl.”

The waiter laughed for a while and jokingly said something about her being the exact opposite of what I envisioned. He was joking though.

A few minutes later, Charlene made her way toward our table again but this time, stopped, looked at me, and then extended her hand.

“Hi my name is Charlene.”
“Hi my name is Min.”

Her hands were soft like the cold side of the pillow. I don’t recall anything else that was said then, and I don’t have the imagination to guess either. All I remember is that I noticed her nose piercing for the first time, and it gave her a sort of new sinful appearance, which excited me.

Our waiter returned to the table with a smile.

“How was that? Did I embarrass you?”
“Nah, that was fucking great. The only thing, though, is that I didn’t get a picture with her.”

I don’t think I would’ve said that in any other situation because I hate to make others feel uncomfortable. I mean this wasn’t Hooters or anything. I didn’t want to act unprofessionally. But I figured you only meet so many special women in your lifetime. Might as well take a picture to remember the special occasion.

So Charlene was gracious enough to come over once again. We were wondering where to take the picture, and then our waiter made a brilliant suggestion. He led us to the ginormous canvas of a woman’s sultry, bright red lips that hung against the wall. Taking a picture there would be like metaphorically making out with her.

By the time we found the desired location and got ready to pose, I saw a small crowd watching the spectacle from behind the table where we had dined. Two Mexican waiters were clapping and laughing. I beamed. I hope her boyfriend was watching.



The picture doesn’t do her justice but I plan to go there again during winter break. Whenever I think of that night though, the song that runs through my head is “Today was a good day.”