Author and Artist
Going Bananas
A fictional travelogue; three minute read.
In San Francisco, at the corner of Van Ness and 18th streets, the Whiz Burgers sign is peeling paint like a bad sunburn. I’m in an archaeological site, the remnants of a once great fast-food temple.
The shabby, mustard-colored cook shack is plastered with faded, dated rock concert posters. Behind filthy windows, there’s one large grill, and metal shelves teetering with foodstuffs, paper goods, plastic cups. Picnic tables are bolted in place, layered with decades of built-up paint. Gooey food wrappers stick to wood benches.
Sizzling burgers billow an aroma that beckons from a block away. The place remains upright because, evidently, half a century of grease and grim reinforces structural integrity.
In its heyday, Whiz Burgers swaggered. Carhops in short skirts roller-skating to and from hungry patrons delivered juicy burgers, thick milkshakes, salty French fries. On balmy evenings, teenagers still park out back, pass around food and fumble with buttons and bras.
The swagger is long gone, but I go bananas for the house specialty, a bleached yellow, almost pearl white, banana milkshake.
When I let my high school Western Civilization students veer off topic, I can get rapturous about banana shakes, arguing that they are, uh, good for them. After all, bananas have nutrients and antioxidants, and lots of heart-healthy potassium. Without remorse, I ignore the sugary calories, and the school’s health ed teacher.
At the walk-up window, I place my order. From behind the counter a faceless voice doesn’t ask my name or give me a numbered receipt. After a short wait, the same anonymous voice announces with complete indifference, “burger, fries, shake.”
Unnamed, unnumbered, unnoticed, unbothered is how I like to eat my fast food.
Digging into a plain brown paper bag, I discover my burger underneath a pile of ketchup packets. Half the ketchup will make it onto my fries, the remainder onto my shirt.
Sucking the frosty sweetness across my tongue, I savor the froth slithering around in my mouth. Chunks of ripened bananas mash against my teeth. Marinated in slurpy, sensuous banana coldness, my brain freezes.
People-watching at the Whiz rivals the coffee houses of Europe. A three-man construction crew in neon-green safety vests, speaking Spanish, orders enough food for five times their number. Two teenagers dressed in unisex sweatshirts are laughing and holding hands. A charismatic, tattooed, middle-aged woman with skin the color of root beer tells her colleague—his skin is jet black—that she was schooled across the street by the nuns at St. Charles Church.
No one stands out which means we all fit in. Well, almost all of us.
On the sidewalk twenty feet away, a bearded, disheveled antiquity of a man is lost in his own head. His raggedy body contorts itself as he twists and turns in tight circles. His stained jacket is tattered. His pants caked with dirt as if he’s been excavating a Roman ruin.
His gaunt, hungry frame churns my stuffed belly. I’m witnessing a human collapse.
Everyone looks away, moves away. I eat faster.
The man shouts obscenities at the cars waiting for the intersection stoplight to turn green. “Fuck you, fuck you. I fucking own this street.”
No one argues with him.
