Forfucksake Sam

Sam couldn't remember exactly when he was renamed Forfucksake Sam but it seemed now to be a constant prefix for everyone in the kitchen who spoke to him.

“Forfucksake Sam, get those dishes washed we going down on the Titanic here!”

Or when the manager shouted, “Forfucksake Sam, we need those bins emptied and cleaned pronto!”

Even when being kind, the chef would say

“Forfucksake Sam, there’s a burger for your lunch on the counter.”

Sam grew to ignore the implied insult and just treated it as a title of sorts.  It was bloody hard being a kitchen porter and physically it pushed him to limits that were way beyond name-calling.  Standing at a station washing dishes for eight hours made his backache until his arm muscles grew strong enough to cope.  Having his hands in soapy water so long had caused eczema and it wouldn’t clear.  His doctor warned him that it would be a chronic condition if he didn’t stop.  His fingers were like huge red inflated sausages with dry skin flaking off all over. 

When he examined them at night and covered them in cortisone cream they seemed not to belong to him at all.  They gave the impression of strange appendages that had been grafted on along with the title Forfucksake.  Some shifts he would find himself holding his mouth in a peculiar way, off to one side and twisted shut.  As if there were words he wanted to shout but had to hold him in at all costs by this pursed contortion.  He passed the floor manager screaming at a waitress on the stairway, and as the manager screamed abuse the waitress cried, head bowed weeping huge monstrous tears over a face young and raw like juicy meat.  Sam had wanted to intervene but passed saying nothing, this, like the deformed hands and his title Forfucksake, was another symptom of his new persona.  

At odd moments he found himself examining himself when shaving as if to try and find the person he was before this killing year in the hotel as a kitchen porter.  When he looked in his eyes he saw a broken figure looking back, weary and watchful for the next unexpected deformity to appear, mentally or physically.  He was watchful over himself and others.  You had to be in the kitchen, there was hot oil, burning gas hobs and perhaps more dangerous than all, the cleaning fluid.  To clean the deep fryers you had to use almost neat acid and it got everywhere.  Even his lungs seemed filled with the toxic stuff after a long shift-scrapping gunk from deep within the bowels of the machine.  Some nights he coughed long and hard and wondered if the lining of his lungs matched his grotesque fingers. 

But he liked his fellow workers.  They were an odd bunch but real.  The alcoholic cleaner from Albania, the Afghan chef, missing an ear, the Philippino waiter who minced into the kitchen swinging in time with the music.  The laughter was constant in between the shouting and Forfucksake Sam knew that what you saw was what you got.  In the relentless work load of the kitchen there was no energy for fabrication or pretence.  You worked until you dropped, you could not maintain anything under veils of restraint and tack.  It felt raw but genuine.  When the load was quiet, a rare event, they’d put the music on and each would do a small gig at their station in time to the music.  A moment of abandonment and celebration of life.  They would give each other advice and Sam grew used to “Forfucksake Sam, this is no life, you need to get the hell out of here!”  He saw evidence of kindness too, Forfucksake Sam give me the other handle of that, you’ll break your back!”  It seemed that words mattered not a jot.  Deeds counted and when your arms ached like pulled teeth all became clear.  People are not what they say, thought Sam, they are what they do.  Of every second of every day they show you what they are made of.  Forfucksake Sam realised that even his title had been earned on this odd battlefield of a kitchen.