Life Lessons from a Denny’s Walk-in Freezer
Losing my virginity
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It was the only song being played on any radio, anywhere, anytime, all the time.
It was 1987.
“Do you know where you are, baby?”
Heavy breathing.
“Oh God, that feels good.”
His name was Ben. He was a line cook at Denny’s Restaurant, the most opulent dining establishment around. The restaurant was located in a small Oregon town named after a tractor or some other piece of heavy farm equipment.
The Denny’s of the ’80s was when employees still wore brown polyester skirts and short-sleeved shirts with the word Denny’s marching up and down rainbow fabric like a parade of ants.
It was my first real-paying job at $2.50 an hour. I had started as a dishwasher, and two short years later, due to my unrelenting ability to scrape hardened eggs off plates and bleach drains, I was elevated to the status of waitress. We were still waitresses in the eighties who had not yet become servers.
I don’t know if it was the tall paper hat perched on top of his head or the way his mustache laced across his upper lip like a lopsided caterpillar, but Ben was to be my first, the man who would shake the proverbial cherry loose from the tree and make me a woman.
I didn’t become a woman in the traditional way, whatever that might be: dark parking lot, the backseat of a Buick, full moon overhead, Barry White crooning in the background, or trying to bust a cherry in the afternoon before mom and dad came home from the supermarket.
I became a woman inside a walk-in freezer on the graveyard shift at a Denny’s Restaurant, the voice of Axl Rose filling my ears.
I was 18. Ben was 20-something.
Walking down the private alleyway of the cook’s area, past the line, French fries dropping into vats of sizzling lard, chicken fried steaks being tossed on the grill, grease-covered ghetto blaster piercing the air with the 80’s anthem, Welcome to the Jungle.
Like an anointed priestess, I followed to the Forbidden City, a place reserved only for The Tall Hat Clan, aka The Cooks ‘walk-in’ refrigerator.
The chill hit my skin, turning it to goose flesh instantly.
“Are you sure about this?”
The truth is, I hadn’t been sure about this myself until a few days previously. I had spent my teenage years in terror of sex, and in this case, I really can blame my mother. Some kids have parents who sit down and give them the fabled ‘birds and bees’ chat. I wasn’t one of those kids.
I was ten years old when I inadvertently discovered sex. It was in a horse trailer with my very worldly friend, Helen. Helen had come from California to the country, and so she knew about many things, including sex.
She described it and then suggested that my own mother had committed such an act, which explained why I was here in the first place. I did not receive the information well, so I popped her in the nose.
She wailed. My mother arrived and surveyed the chaos. Her calm green eyes landed squarely on my own. Her only comment was, “How can you not know about sex? Haven’t you seen the cows?”
That image kept me away from boys and sex for years to come.
But Ben was different. In the wake of my misguidance, he had committed himself to educating me. He had sent flowers, love notes, love songs, pages from Playboy, and anatomical drawings illustrating the difference between cow sex and human sex.
Even if I wasn’t entirely convinced, the drawings made it seem possible, the songs made it seem plausible, and the Playboy bunnies made it seem pleasurable. I was curious.
“Don’t worry baby….it’s alright….”
“But, what if we get caught? We’d get fired. My mother would kill me.”
“Don’t worry baby, Ralph’s watchin’ the front door.”
Ralph was Ben’s brother and the lead cook, although his hat wasn’t any taller.
“I’m leaving for college in three months and can’t afford to lose this job now.”
“Baby, shhh, don’t worry. No one’s here. You’re not gonna lose this job. And I gotta make love to you before you go…because you know I love you, baby, don’t you?”
Breath came in short gasps, fingers fumbling over my zipper.
My pink cotton briefs announced to the world that it was Sunday. Funny, I thought. I don’t usually work on Sundays, but the proof was there on my Days of the Week Underpants; it had to be Sunday, which meant that I needed to clean the salt and pepper shakers.
My mother bought me thematically decorated underwear for every occasion, including these most practical Days of the Week underpants.
There are two Underpants teams.
The A-Team is brought into play for very special occasions. These are your sexy woman panties: black lace, see-through eyelets, and red hearts with rhinestones. Thongs and String Bikinis are the Quarterbacks and Wide Receivers of The A-Team; in other words, your Joe Montana/Jerry Rice combination that only happens during the last few seconds of a Super Bowl.
The B-Team is your everyday wear, tastefully feminine yet simpler and more practical.
Finally, the “Special Teams” only called into play once a month. They are your granny panties.
Days of The Week underpants play for Team B, and I was confused as I thought about Sunday. Had they gotten out of order? Was I missing a day? Was it really Sunday?
Feeling Ben against me, and Sunday was temporarily forgotten.
I glanced down.
OH MY GOD!! My eyes snapped shut, trying to erase the image. Quick, say something — anything.
“What if I get pregnant?”
“Baby, don’t worry….you can’t get pregnant in here…it’s too cold for the sperm. Trust me.”
Years later, that same logic would be repeated to me in a hot tub.
I closed my eyes and imagined that it was Axl’s breath beating on my neck, wiry, lean body covered in tattoos and long hair spilling down his shoulders. It was Axl, minus the Denny’s hat, minus the brown polyester pants, minus the caterpillar mustache and marching ant parade.
My eyes wandered over Ben’s shoulder, where towers of gray pallets neatly lined the wall, each filled with dozens of perfect, porcelain white eggs and boxes of Chicken Fried Steaks.
“Oh baby, you feel so good.”
Then it was over. Ben rested his head on my shoulder; he looked relaxed, even content. My arms wrapped around his neck. I thought about the Chicken Fried Steaks and what part of the chicken they would come from. I thought of customers who were wondering where that damn waitress was to refill their coffee; I thought of the bus tubs that would be overflowing with dirty dishes, and I thought of my Days of the Week underpants and hoped that Sunday was not ruined forever.
“I gotta get back,” smoothing out his checkerboard pants, readjusting his hat.
“That was fun. We’ll have to do it again before you leave.”
He opened the door, slid out, and the door closed silently behind him. I was left in a sea of darkness and chicken fried steaks.
It wasn’t as bad as the cows, but I was pretty sure I didn’t look like one of Heffner’s women.
Had he liked it?
Was it good?
Maybe I had done it wrong.
As I walked back to the front of the restaurant, I wondered if I looked different.
Was I changed?
Was I a woman now?
I still have a soft spot for long-haired rocker boys, especially Axl Rose. But at that precise moment, my life changed. I didn’t know what it was then as I began to clear plates of half-eaten pancakes off of Formica tables, wipe down plastic-coated menus, and refill ketchup bottles.
Now, as I near my sixth decade of life, I look back at that younger version of myself, and although I don’t recognize her — I remember parts of her, and I love her.
I have finally figured out a few things my ‘walk-in fridge deflowering’ taught me.
It taught me that:
Sex doesn’t have to mean ‘nothing’, but it doesn’t have to mean ‘everything,’
Joy must be in the journey. You will suffer if you are attached to a result and only do something because you want a thing (love, acceptance, popularity, boyfriend, money, insert adjective here). The result we seek comes when we show up unattached.
Keep your eyes on your vision, and don’t waver. Walk willingly into the unknown. Courage is not the absence of fear but feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Magic happens on the OTHER side of fear — not on this side.
Set yourself up for success. You wouldn’t ask yourself to walk into an exam without having studied the material…so why do life like that? Have a plan. The plan might go off track (probably it will), but start with one.
The next morning, I packed all my young, girlie things into my baby blue Pinto and put it into gear. He growled into life, and I began to drive down Route 140, leaving that small Oregon tractor town in my rearview.
I didn’t know where I would go, but I knew I wouldn’t be going back — not because I was embarrassed or ashamed, but because I was changed. I had grown up a little bit on that graveyard shift in that walk-in fridge at Denny’s Restaurant.
And — I have never eaten a Grand Slam since.
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That was really wonderful, thank you! 💕 It took me back to late nights at Denny’s, and when I lost my virginity too, although not at aDenny’s. It was on a waterbed, so I do have bragging rights.😁