Dishwasher Dialogues Latrine Duty with Edgar Allan Poe
Quoth the Raven
By: Greg Light and Rafael Mahdavi - Feb 05, 2026
Rafael: In a way, every evening was a new scene, in a new act at the Chez Haynes theatre. When would the curtain come down? After the waitresses had set the tables, and I had washed the glasses and restocked the bar, we sat down for dinner, and it was always plentiful.
Greg: And we could eat anything on the menu. Nothing was held back from us. Whatever we wanted. Except for the ‘chitlins’ which as far I remember none of us was capable of eating.
Rafael: Again, looking back, the times were generous. We ate dinner for free, and that was important for me. It may be hard to imagine but the money saved was crucial, as I’m sure it was for the others there. It was another example of Leroy helping me survive and paint. I didn’t have to worry about scrounging up a meal in the evening.
Greg: It is worth saying again. When he told me to take a week off, it was the meals and dinner time I missed the most. We were young and burning calories in all the worst ways. We needed that food and the camaraderie. Those meals were tremendous moments of friendship and relaxation.
Rafael: The dinners were also moments of détente when we were relaxed and talked openly about our lives or what was troubling us. But once the clients started arriving at seven, we all, except the dishwasher, had to be ‘on’.
Greg: ‘Except the dishwasher’ ??? You might want to ask Tex or check your memory of being the dishwasher.
Rafael: It was showtime; no whining, no wearing your heart on your sleeve, you had to perform for the clients. And the client was always right, unlike French eateries where the client was never right. Put on a happy face and suck it in. The behaviour of some clients was insulting and vulgar. I promised myself then that I would never ball out a waitress or a waiter for an unwitting mistake. And I never have. I saw how the staff worked, hurrying back and forth to the kitchen for the dishes, and then to the bar for the drinks.
Greg: I had my audience back there. Don and Leroy. And they could be a tough audience, including throwing vegetables at the ‘performer’ when unhappy with the performance. Admittedly they were not a big audience, but they were highly opinionated and capable of firing the cast.
Rafael: You must have seen a different side of the clients because they had to pass you washing the dishes at the sink when they went to the toilet. What were they like, were they in a rush? Could you hear them peeing and pooping or vomiting, did you ever strike up a conversation with anybody, did some clients have an obvious problem? Did you notice if any went again and again to the toilet? Kidney stones? Diarrhea? When you’re heading for the bathroom, you can’t put on the snobby or haughty face. You’re on your way, most probably, to pulling down your pants and underwear.
Greg: Neither I nor the clients, were at our best as they dropped by to look for the toilet. I was in a sink-soaked apron, most likely with sweat on my face. They were in more chic attire but, as you say, about to drop or lift part of their outfit in the one ongoing, everyday activity that brings about that wonderful pleasure we never discuss. They rarely stopped to talk, and when they did, it was never to discuss the merits and shortcomings of urination, defecation, or vomiting. Those who knew where the toilet was, knew what they were in for. A tiny, squalid bowl, tank, and chain behind a thin door, just past a little sink and mirror in a curtained nook next to the kitchen. By the time they entered the back corridor, they had steeled themselves for the experience, and idle chat with the kitchen urchin who looked like the human equivalent of the toilet was not on the agenda. It was an awkward ‘pleasure’ they quickly wished to dispense with, without discussion. The discourse from those who did not know where the toilet was, was more extensive; usually a one-word inquiry on the way in: ‘toilet?’, often asked with a clumsy grin. On the way out, they were silent, a dark ‘quoth the raven’ look in their eyes. ‘Nevermore. Nevermore’. Many, I am sure, held their function until they left. Some of course could not. Some could not even hold it in until they sat on or stood next to the bowl. That is where I came in.
Rafael: You were on latrine duty, eh? I never had the pleasure, I must admit. Or my memory has blocked it out, probably in denial. Dirty toilet? Rafael! Get cracking? I probably nodded and did nothing. You seem to have been more conscientious.
Greg: Yup, during the night if something went terribly wrong. Fortunately, at the beginning and end of the night, the more regular cleaning was done by the waitresses. And, of course by Alecia, the early evening cleaner. The manageress ensured it was cleaned to a high standard. But some of the waitresses had their own standards. I remember Erin, a young waitress from Dublin, studying something esoteric somewhere in Paris. She was new to Cbez Haynes and either did not know what the usual cleaning product was or decided it was not sufficient. On this evening, she found a more powerful disinfectant to clean everything in sight. Later, a few hours into the night, the waitresses began telling us that a few members of the ‘audience’ (as you describe them) were complaining that their bottoms, butts, and bums (and French equivalents) were burning. Suddenly, I had a long line of people—mainly women (including a waitress or two)—in some considerable discomfort obstructing the salad-making corridor, impatiently waiting to wash themselves. Later, we identified the ‘désinfectant coupable’ layered thickly on the toilet seat. As far as I know, there were no major injuries or even complaints, nothing that got back to Leroy’s ears. But I am convinced that many of our clients left the restaurant that night with a much deeper appreciation for la toilette à la turque and a burning ‘quoth the raven’ look etched into their minds. And behinds.
Rafael: One evening I mentioned I had done opium for a while in the late sixties.
Greg: Another substance ‘coupable’ used in the toilet.
Rafael: Opium doesn’t give you a great high of any kind, and the first time I smoked it I felt sick, but I got used to it because the drug made everything acceptable. The world wasn’t going to collapse around you and crush you, the world was just neutral with an occasional twinkle and that made all your pain and worries painless and, therefore bearable. Quitting opium hadn’t been hard. The opium talk led to De Quincey and Edgar Allan Poe, both opium users, and to Poe’s love poem Annabel Lee and of course Quoth the Raven.
We also discussed how difficult the French language was and how rude the Parisians were. They never made the slightest effort, to try to understand what you were trying to say. Basically, the Parisian attitude was: if you can’t speak our wonderful Gallic tongue then ‘get the fuck out of here’.
Greg: Speaking French fluently as a native was a linguistic accomplishment. Which, to my unschooled ear, you achieved as well as any foreigner, that, and the other half dozen languages you learned with ease, and apparently with an opium chaser. On the other hand, I completely agree with Parisians about the sounds uttered by my artless attempts at their language. I mean, how often can you listen to ‘under the mountain’ from a customer ordering a baguette and not shout ‘get the fuck out of here’. Their rudeness was entirely ‘compréhensible’, and if it doubled as the bedrock of my liberty to do street theatre or engage in ‘American infantilism’, all the better. ‘Vive Paris!’
Rafael: You had the gift of turning most dinners into a laughing fest. Leroy and Don emerged from the kitchen and joined in telling us funny stories. Even the usually grim and taciturn Don would recount something funny. Once, about his friend Wilfred who had been in Paris for years and never mastered an iota of the French language.
Greg: If I remember right, he was English and looked and moved a lot like Kramer from the TV show Seinfeld.
Rafael: ‘I just don’t get it. When I make a phone call’, Wilfred would say, ‘all they say on the other end is ‘nikity paw, nikity paw’, which was really ne quittez pas, ne quittez pas. Or hold the line.
Greg: ‘Get the fuck out of here!’