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Christian Ives Solis

INTERFERENCE IV

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I am not tired. I am disgusted. That is not a complaint: it is a diagnosis.

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I am not tired. I am disgusted. That is not a complaint; it is a diagnosis. The kind of disgust that does not wash off with long showers or days off, that clings like the rancid grease on an extractor hood, that invisible layer that builds up when nobody cleans and everyone eventually accepts as part of the landscape.

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I came back from the hospital with my neck still tense from the abscess, but the hardest part was swallowing the evidence that nothing had changed: only the volume had been lowered. Yolanda and Luis do not lead; they edit the disaster so it never appears to be their responsibility. If that requires me to function as a human barrier between the chaos and the guest, so be it.

They spoke to me in that low-voiced politeness that repairs nothing. Yolanda admitted, without even disturbing composure, that the urgency of August had been a disguise. Translation: they demanded that I operate at the edge of my biological limit in order to sustain an unreal scene. They did not want efficiency; they wanted obedience.

Luis then dropped the definitive sentence: “No one cares about the kitchen.” And if the kitchen does not matter, then neither do I. That was the line that triggered total disconnection. If nothing matters, then why did they force me to work with a fever for ninety people? Why did they leave me alone in front of Mamadourr’s knife?

In front of the whiteboard, I did not want to argue; I only asked them to choose. Pork or potatoes. Cut, time, technique. The basics. I handed their own structure back to them so they would decide something for themselves and feel, even for a moment, what it is like to hold up something real without knowing how.

I did not shout. I simply stopped holding it up for them. My honesty felt aggressive to them because it no longer came wrapped in functional politeness.

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