We Are All Animals at Night | Hazlitt
Working night shifts was exhausting, but it showed me a side of humanity and community I haven’t experienced since.
夜班工作很累人，但它让我看到了人性和社区的一面，这是我此后从未经历过的。
Lana Hall is a Toronto-based journalist with a particular interest in urban affairs.
拉娜·霍尔（Lana Hall）是一位驻多伦多记者，对城市事务特别感兴趣。
Her work has been published—or is forthcoming in—The Globe and...
她的作品已发表或即将在《环球报》上发表，并且......
I’ll tell you a secret about working in a massage parlour: it’s a lot of waiting around, usually late at night.
我告诉你一个在按摩院工作的秘密：需要长时间等待，通常是在深夜。
We’d wait, half a dozen of us, in the dressing room as the evening wore on.
随着夜幕降临，我们六个人在更衣室里等着。
On edge and exhausted in equal parts, we perched on the low-slung couch, adjusted the straps of our babydolls, listlessly fluffed our hair, ready to spring into action.
我们都感到紧张和疲惫，坐在低矮的沙发上，调整着娃娃装的带子，无精打采地蓬松头发，准备开始行动。
Then, we’d hear the front door open, the low murmur of a man’s voice, the chirp of the receptionist from the parlour’s reception desk.
然后，我们会听到前门打开的声音，一个男人的低声说话声，以及客厅接待处接待员的叽叽喳喳声。
Some of us would circle the dressing room door, ready in case he wanted to see the lineup, curious if he had booked someone specific.
我们中的一些人会绕着更衣室的门转，准备好以防万一他想看看阵容，好奇他是否预订了某个特定的人。
Then, the methodical thwack of the receptionist’s pumps would sound down the long hallway as the girls swivelled towards her from their respective stations—pulling towels from the dryer, applying lipstick at the vanity, melting into the couch in a cloud of cigarettes and Pink Sugar perfume.
然后，当女孩们从各自的位置转向她时，接待员泵的有条不紊的重击声会在长长的走廊里响起——从烘干机里拉出毛巾，在梳妆台上涂口红，在香烟和粉红糖香水的云中融入沙发。
The receptionist would thrust four twenty-dollar bills into someone’s hand; maybe mine, maybe not.
接待员会把四张二十美元的钞票塞到某人手里。也许是我的，也许不是。
“You’re up.
“你起来了。
Sixty minutes in room four.” For the rest of the girls, the night wore on, dark and still.
在四号房间六十分钟。”对于其他女孩来说，夜幕降临，漆黑而寂静。
Honestly, that’s most of working in a massage parlour: waiting around, wondering how much money you will—or won’t— make on any given shift.
老实说，这就是在按摩院工作的大部分内容：等待，想知道在任何特定轮班中你会（或不会）赚多少钱。
I know because I made my living that way for five years.
我知道，因为我已经这样谋生了五年。
I was a university dropout in my early twenties when I started that gig, struggling to find my place in Toronto, a city where squalor and decadence collided behind the glass and steel of the downtown skyline.
当我开始这份工作时，我二十岁出头，是一名大学辍学生，努力在多伦多找到自己的位置，在这座城市，肮脏和颓废在市中心天际线的玻璃和钢铁后面相互碰撞。
To get by, I took a job at a massage parlour in the northwest corner of the city, a place where factories stretched several blocks, separated by the odd strip mall full of nail salons, carpet dealers, banquet halls that morphed into after-hours clubs if you knew the right people.
为了勉强度日，我在城市西北角的一家按摩院找到了一份工作，那里的工厂绵延几个街区，中间有一个奇怪的地带购物中心，里面有美甲沙龙、地毯经销商和宴会厅，如果你认识合适的人，这些宴会厅就会演变成下班后的俱乐部。
The garish yellow “M” of McDonald’s arched high over everything, like a gateway to another world.
麦当劳那耀眼的黄色“M”高高地拱在一切之上，就像通往另一个世界的大门。
Because of the way Toronto zoning bylaws work, most body rub parlours are relegated to this part of the city, and after dark, “massage” signs wink and flash from almost every corner.
由于多伦多分区章程的运作方式，大多数身体按摩店都位于城市的这个地区，天黑后，“按摩”标志几乎在每个角落闪烁。
Finch Alley , some people call it.
芬奇巷，有些人称之为芬奇巷。
My regular shift at the parlour ran from 2 p.m.
我在客厅的轮班时间是从下午 2 点到下午 2 点。
to 2 a.m., and I worked anywhere between three and six shifts a week, depending on how the cash was flowing.
到凌晨 2 点，我每周工作三到六班，具体取决于现金流动情况。
It was a job that was unbearably tangible at times, an onslaught of surgical scars and sun-damaged chests I rubbed oil over, the soft pallor of flesh under my hands that rarely saw the light of day.
这是一份有时难以忍受的有形工作，我在手术疤痕和晒伤的胸部上涂抹了油，手下柔软苍白的肉很少见光。
Yet it was also predicated on a precariously suspended reality, one I had to maintain with absolute precision to do my job well, to pretend that a profound mutual desire could be found for the low, low price of $80 in a strip mall off a freeway.
然而，这也是建立在一个不稳定的悬置现实之上的，我必须保持绝对的精确才能做好我的工作，假装可以在高速公路旁的购物中心以 80 美元的极低价格找到一种深刻的共同愿望。
In real life I wouldn’t dare be so giving.
在现实生活中我不敢这么付出。
I can’t say I was particularly good at any of this by the time 2 a.m.
到凌晨 2 点时，我还不能说我在这方面特别擅长。
rolled around, makeup melting off my face, puffiness blooming under my eyes, a rapidly dwindling patience for the reassurance some men desperately sought: So, how was it for you?
滚来滚去，脸上的化妆品融化了，眼睛下面浮肿了，对一些男人拼命寻求的安慰的耐心迅速消失：那么，你感觉怎么样？
The rabbit warren of hallways and thinly-walled rooms felt insular at that hour, the click of stilettos on laminate less urgent than during the day.
走廊里的兔子窝和薄墙房间在那个时候感觉与世隔绝，高跟鞋踩在层压板上的咔哒声不像白天那么紧急。
A dampness I always associated with the night shift hung in the air, mingling with the smell of smoke and coconut air freshener.
空气中弥漫着一种我总是与夜班联系在一起的潮湿感，与烟味和椰子空气清新剂的味道混合在一起。
Night shift did not discriminate, and the men who wandered in after dark were as varied as they come: they were travelling on business or headed home from factory shifts, students taking a break from all-nighters, bros on their way back from the bar.
夜班一视同仁，天黑后进来的男人五花八门：他们是出差的，是工厂下班回家的，是通宵达旦休息的学生，是从酒吧回来的兄弟。
They were tall and short and young and old, of every race and cultural background imaginable.
他们有的高有的矮，有的年轻有的年老，来自各种可以想象到的种族和文化背景。
You could never predict who would come in, except to say with certainty that they would want a level of womanly validation I was simply too tired to give.
你永远无法预测谁会进来，除非可以肯定地说他们想要某种程度的女性认可，而我只是太累了而无法给予。
Half-dressed and exhausted, I often didn’t have the patience for their hands on me, the array of intimate requests they crept in seeking— touch me, kiss me , make me an entirely different world than the one outside these doors —when all I craved was the privacy of my own bed.
我衣衫褴褛，筋疲力尽，常常没有耐心接受他们对我的手，他们悄悄地寻求一系列亲密的要求——触摸我，亲吻我，让我进入一个与门外完全不同的世界——而我所渴望的只是我自己床上的隐私。
My world outside the parlour was small—just a ground floor apartment in midtown Toronto that overlooked an alley, while a radiator clanked and hissed at all hours of the night and day.
客厅外我的世界很小——只是多伦多市中心的一套底层公寓，俯瞰着一条小巷，而散热器则日夜不停地发出叮当声和嘶嘶声。
But it was a place where my thoughts, and my body, were my own.
但在那里，我的思想和身体都是我自己的。
Despite the demands of the job, there was a stillness to the nights I found alluring.
尽管工作要求很高，但我觉得夜晚的宁静很诱人。
There was a poise to the velvety darkness of parking lots, the soft buzz of neon lights shaped like palm trees, as if they were also waiting at attention for the inevitable flurry of activity that punctuated those long periods of quiet.
停车场柔软的黑暗中有一种平静，棕榈树形状的霓虹灯发出柔和的嗡嗡声，仿佛它们也在等待着不可避免的一系列活动，这些活动会打断漫长的安静时期。
People’s needs at 2 a.m.
凌晨2点人们的需求
are equal parts fervent and fundamental, somehow stripped of all pretense by the cover of darkness.
既热情又基本，不知何故被黑暗的掩护剥夺了所有的伪装。
What do you need if you’re out seeking services at night?
如果您晚上外出寻求服务，您需要什么？
Food, sex, shelter.
食物、性、住所。
The staunch of a wound.
伤口的坚固。
Being part of that felt like a reprieve from the day’s complexities, a world which launched a steady barrage of information and demanded endless analyses, caring little for our overstimulated brains.
作为其中的一部分，感觉就像从一天的复杂性中得到了缓解，这个世界不断地发出大量信息，需要无休止的分析，很少关心我们过度刺激的大脑。
The days were full of subway delays and deferred student loan payments, of agonizing small talk and headlines about inflation.
这些日子充满了地铁延误和学生贷款延期支付、令人痛苦的闲聊和有关通货膨胀的头条新闻。
At night we’re just animals, I was reminded.
有人提醒我，晚上我们只是动物。
The clients, yes, seeking release they couldn’t admit during daylight hours, but also the workers who manned the various portions of the strip mall after dark.
是的，白天寻求解脱的顾客们无法承认，天黑后在购物中心各个部分执勤的工作人员也同样如此。
The way we cared for each other, sometimes more in silent gestures than anything else, felt connected to our deepest instincts as pack animals.
我们互相关心的方式，有时更多地是以无声的姿态，而不是其他任何方式，感觉与我们作为群居动物最深层的本能联系在一起。
No matter how much I wanted to go home, there was some comfort in the simplicity of that connection.
不管我多么想回家，这种简单的联系给我带来了一些安慰。
Memory has a way of smoothing jagged edges, leaving us with a haze of nostalgia that overlooks the most painful parts of our past lives, so I can’t be sure how much I really miss the nights themselves and how much my brain is playing tricks on me.
记忆有一种方法可以抚平锯齿状的边缘，让我们笼罩在怀旧的迷雾中，忽略了我们过去生活中最痛苦的部分，所以我无法确定我到底有多怀念那些夜晚本身，以及我的大脑在多大程度上欺骗了我。
It defies logic that any part of me longs for the precarious earnings and long hours of massage parlour work, the exhaustive level of physical and emotional intimacy required, the shame that grew exponentially the farther away I slipped from what was once a promising journalism career.
我内心的任何一部分都渴望不稳定的收入和长时间的按摩院工作，渴望身体和情感上的亲密接触，随着我远离曾经有前途的新闻职业，羞耻感也呈指数级增长，这违背了逻辑。
I do, however, know I miss the community it gave me membership to, the pack we inadvertently travelled in.
然而，我确实知道我想念它为我提供会员资格的社区，以及我们无意中旅行的群体。
I miss the silent language we developed, the way nothing was asked of me by other night shift workers, the sense that I was enough just by showing up.
我怀念我们开发的无声语言，怀念其他夜班工人对我没有任何要求的方式，怀念我只要出现就足够了的感觉。
Cab drivers—who are also paid in cash and depend on volume for their livelihood—would pick me up at the end of shift and commiserate, rosary beads swinging from their rearview mirrors as we pulled onto dark freeways.
出租车司机——他们的工资也是现金，靠车流量维持生计——会在轮班结束时来接我，并表示同情，当我们驶上黑暗的高速公路时，念珠从后视镜中摇曳而出。
How was work?
工作怎么样？
Busy?
忙碌的？
They would ask.
他们会问。
No, not really , I would say.
不，我想说不是。
You ?
你 ？
As the cab whizzed down an eerily empty Gardiner Expressway, we’d laugh, try to unpack what made a slow shift or a busy one, what made people need us—or not.
当出租车在空无一人的加德纳高速公路上呼啸而过时，我们会大笑，试图解开是什么让轮班变得缓慢或繁忙，是什么让人们需要我们——或者不需要我们。
A dearth of sports games.
缺乏体育比赛。
The end of the month.
月底。
Tax refund season.
退税季。
Inertia .
惯性。
Once, a cab broke down in a snowstorm on the highway while taking me home and the driver immediately phoned his friend, another driver, and gently walked me over to his cab, parked farther down the highway when it arrived.
有一次，一辆出租车在送我回家的途中在高速公路上遭遇暴风雪抛锚了，司机立即给他的朋友（另一位司机）打电话，轻轻地把我带到他的出租车旁，当出租车到达时，车停在了高速公路上更远的地方。
Snow hurled sideways at us, my driver’s tie flapping in the squall, his bare forearms braced against the cold.
雪从侧面向我们袭来，司机的领带在狂风中飘扬，他裸露的前臂抵御寒冷。
Get home safe , he told me, please .
他告诉我，请安全回家。
Women filled my Styrofoam cup at the twenty-four-seven coffee shop across the street from the parlour, glancing wordlessly at the strip of bare skin between my coat and the tops of my stockings, but still making sure my cup was full to the top, passing me extra packets of sugar, sometimes a muffin from the day-old basket.
客厅对面街对面的二十四七号咖啡店里，女人们给我的聚苯乙烯泡沫塑料杯装满水，她们无言地扫视着我外套和丝袜顶部之间裸露的皮肤，但仍然确保我的杯子装满了，并递给我额外的糖包，有时是从一天前的篮子里拿出来的松饼。
Kids in their early twenties manned the counter at all-night fast-food joints, where I’d go between clients on slow shifts, needing something to wake up my neurons: salt, heat, grease.
通宵快餐店的柜台上都是二十岁出头的孩子，我会缓慢地轮班在顾客之间，需要一些东西来唤醒我的神经元：盐、热、油脂。
The shock of cold air on my legs at midnight.
午夜时分，冷空气吹在我的腿上。
We knew so little about each other’s lives—how could we?—but forced into this strange cohort of ragged work hours, I felt we sometimes shared a look of recognition: of people whittling time away as we tended to the incessant hungers of others.
我们对彼此的生活知之甚少——我们怎么可能知道？——但被迫进入这群奇怪的、衣衫褴褛的工作时间，我觉得我们有时会露出一种认可的表情：当我们照顾别人不断的饥饿时，人们在消磨时间。
When I finally did leave the sex trade after finishing my bachelor’s degree as a mature student, I spent seven years working in “good” jobs in the corporate sector.
当我作为一名成熟的学生完成学士学位后最终离开性行业时，我在企业部门从事了“好”工作七年。
This meant, as I understood it, that I didn’t work nights, that I was a salaried employee, and that I had dental benefits.
据我了解，这意味着我不上夜班，我是一名受薪员工，而且我有牙科福利。
I had a shiny access card that opened doors—to a gleaming, marble elevator bank, to planters full of plastic ferns, to blocks of cubicles illuminated by fluorescent lighting, a land of perpetual daytime.
我有一张闪亮的门禁卡，可以打开门——通往闪闪发光的大理石电梯库，通往长满塑料蕨类植物的花盆，通往荧光灯照明的小隔间，这是一片永远白天的土地。
Unlike sex work, my “good” jobs didn’t threaten to overthrow traditional power structures.
与性工作不同，我的“好”工作不会威胁到推翻传统的权力结构。
Many sex workers, including myself, have long hypothesized that the reason so many people in power work to keep the commercial sex trade marginalized is because they’re threatened by it—by the idea that it’s the only field where women outearn men, that it’s an industry where women get to call the shots, and that women profit off something that men have been told they’re entitled to for free: sex and attention in equal parts.
许多性工作者，包括我自己，长期以来一直假设，如此多的掌权者之所以努力将商业性交易边缘化，是因为她们受到了它的威胁——认为这是女性收入超过男性的唯一领域，这是一个女性可以发号施令的行业，女性从男性被告知她们有权免费获得的东西中获利：性和关注的平等。
In my experience of the corporate landscape, there was none of this radical power structure, only an upholding of the traditional: men talking and women listening, men in powerful positions getting both credit and profit for the labour of women beneath them.
根据我对企业环境的经验，不存在这种激进的权力结构，只有对传统的坚持：男人说话，女人倾听，身居高位的男人从其下属女人的劳动中获得荣誉和利润。
Is this what I worked so hard for?
这就是我努力的目的吗？
I wondered daily.
我每天都想知道。
As I moved through this new world, merging into the throng of daytime professionals that swelled throughout the downtown core, absorbed by their smartphone screens, and proffering the barest morsels of small talk, I felt little of the camaraderie I once did while working night shifts.
当我穿过这个新世界，融入市中心的日间专业人士队伍中，全神贯注于他们的智能手机屏幕，并进行一些闲聊时，我几乎感觉不到以前夜班时的友情了。
I’m unsure why I felt this dissonance, and it occurs to me now that it could have been more self-imposed than anything.
我不确定为什么我会感到这种不和谐，现在我意识到，这可能更多是我自己强加的。
Perhaps my experience in the parlours of Finch Alley felt so removed from what I perceived as the experience of my corporate colleagues and their “good life choices” that I created that distance myself, imposter syndrome as thick as the steam that rose from the downtown subway grates during the winter.
也许我在芬奇巷客厅的经历与我所认为的公司同事的经历和他们的“美好生活选择”相去甚远，以至于我自己创造了这种距离，冒名顶替综合症就像冬天从市中心地铁格栅升起的蒸汽一样浓重。
When I was assigned a crisis communications task, which was often part of my job, I would try to cheer myself up by silently joking that after everything, my livelihood somehow still depended on men employing bad judgement.
当我被分配一项危机沟通任务时（这通常是我工作的一部分），我会默默地开玩笑，试图让自己高兴起来，毕竟，我的生计在某种程度上仍然依赖于那些做出错误判断的人。
But there was nobody around who would understand, so the joke fell flat, even in my head.
但周围没有人能理解，所以这个笑话即使在我的脑海里也毫无意义。
Sometimes when I headed home from the office, stuffed onto a packed streetcar, I remembered nights when our strip mall felt like a kingdom, where we scurried from block to block like savvy woodland creatures, coats zipped over our lingerie, faces alight under the weak yellow streetlamps, dispatching coffee orders or supplies from clerks at the late-night convenience stores.
有时，当我从办公室回家，挤上拥挤的有轨电车时，我会想起那些夜晚，我们的购物中心感觉就像一个王国，我们像精明的林地生物一样从一个街区匆匆跑到另一个街区，外套拉链盖在我们的内衣上，脸在微弱的黄色路灯下发光，从深夜便利店的店员那里发出咖啡订单或用品。
Condoms.
避孕套。
Baby oil.
婴儿油。
Hot Cheetos.
热奇多。
“We know where she works,” their faces said, but it felt less like a judgement and more like an acknowledgement.
“我们知道她在哪里工作，”他们的脸上写着，但这感觉不像是一种判断，而更像是一种认可。
We were in it together; an ecosystem of tending to each other’s needs, brazen and intimate at the same time.
我们在一起；一个照顾彼此需求的生态系统，既厚颜无耻又亲密。
Once I sat on the leather couch in the dressing room, which was just an extension built onto the massage parlour that housed an industrial-sized washer and dryer, a makeup table, and a precarious utility shelf crammed with supplies: towels, mineral oil, rubbing alcohol, Kleenex.
有一次我坐在更衣室的皮沙发上，更衣室只是按摩院的延伸，里面有一台工业尺寸的洗衣机和烘干机、一张化妆台和一个不稳定的杂物架，里面塞满了用品：毛巾、矿物油、外用酒精、面巾纸。
Nursing a black tea, I steeled myself before my last appointment of the night.
我一边喝着红茶，一边在晚上的最后一次约会前让自己坚强起来。
It was booked as an hour-long shower session, which I hated.
它被预订为一个小时的淋浴时间，这是我讨厌的。
Sixty minutes with a regular who would never say a word to me, who just wanted to touch my breasts as we slowly turned to prunes under the tepid water, while I tried to make each stifled yawn look like it was, in fact, a shiver of ecstasy.
与一个永远不会对我说一句话的常客一起度过了六十分钟，当我们在温水下慢慢转向李子时，他只是想触摸我的乳房，而我试图让每个压抑的哈欠看起来实际上是狂喜的颤抖。
“I don’t know if I can make it,” I said, half joking but half imploring the five other girls who sat wedged on the couch with me, or sprawled on threadbare Ikea chairs.
“我不知道我是否能成功，”我半开玩笑半恳求其他五个女孩说，她们和我一起坐在沙发上，或者四肢摊开在破旧的宜家椅子上。
“Baby, come sit by me,” said Cheryl, an attendant from Newfoundland in her early fifties with sun-crinkled skin the colour of almonds and a voice like gravel.
“宝贝，坐到我身边来吧，”来自纽芬兰的服务员谢丽尔说，她五十岁出头，皮肤晒得皱巴巴的，颜色像杏仁，声音沙哑。
I plodded over to where she sat at the makeup table and pulled up a stool.
我拖着沉重的步伐走到她坐在化妆台前的位置，拉起一张凳子。
Cheryl brushed my hair extensions out with her fingers, acrylic nails flashing, pink as Malibu.
谢丽尔用手指梳理我的接发，亚克力指甲闪闪发光，粉红色如马里布。
Then she took out a wide-barrel curling iron and meticulously worked my unruly hair into waves, smiling and humming periodically at her handiwork.
然后她拿出一把宽筒卷发棒，小心翼翼地将我不规则的头发烫成波浪状，时不时地微笑着，一边哼着她的杰作。
“There,” she said when she was finished.
“好了，”她说完后说道。
“So pretty.”
“真漂亮。”
I felt so much care in that moment I could barely breathe, and it occurred to me that I’d never had a woman, before or since, handle my hair so tenderly.
那一刻我感到如此的关心，我几乎无法呼吸，我突然意识到，无论是之前还是之后，我从未有过一个女人如此温柔地抚摸我的头发。
Once, the fire alarm went off in the office tower where I worked downtown.
有一次，我在市中心工作的办公楼响起了火警警报。
We crammed into the stairwell, lurching down dozens of flights.
我们挤进楼梯间，摇摇晃晃地下了几十层楼。
It was the most unscripted moment I had encountered since starting that office job and for a moment I marvelled at the chaos of it all: the unvarnished panic and confusion on people’s faces, the small gesture of kindness when I dropped my elevator card and someone picked it up for me.
这是我自从开始办公室工作以来遇到的最没有剧本的时刻，有那么一刻，我对这一切的混乱感到惊讶：人们脸上毫不掩饰的恐慌和困惑，当我掉了电梯卡，有人帮我捡起来时，他们做出了小小的善意的举动。
Maybe this is it , I thought.
也许就是这样，我想。
Maybe this is when the adrenaline and uncertainty give way to something more human, where we seek relief in collective company .
也许这是当肾上腺素和不确定性让位给更人性化的东西时，我们在集体陪伴中寻求缓解。
Maybe we’ll all go out for a drink and watch the fire trucks tend to the real emergency.
也许我们都会出去喝一杯，观看消防车处理真正的紧急情况。
But when the final door banged open on ground level, spitting us out into the alley behind a steakhouse, everyone dispersed in separate directions, scattering as far as the eye could see.
但当最后一扇门在地面上砰地打开，把我们扔到一家牛排馆后面的小巷里时，每个人都分散到不同的方向，分散到视线所能及的地方。
Last year, New York mayor Eric Adams was quoted referring to cooks, fast-food workers, dishwashers and messengers as “low-skill workers,” proclaiming they simply don’t have the skills to “sit in a corner office.” Like Toronto, New York relies on a variety of minimum wage and night shift workers to keep its culture “vibrant”—a term often used in city-building and real estate circles—or at least convenient.
去年，纽约市长埃里克·亚当斯 (Eric Adams) 将厨师、快餐工人、洗碗工和送信员称为“低技能工人”，声称他们根本不具备“坐在角落办公室”的技能。与多伦多一样，纽约依靠各种最低工资和夜班工人来保持其文化“活力”（城市建设和房地产界经常使用的术语）或至少方便。
In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics , more than fifteen million Americans work night shifts.
事实上，根据美国劳工统计局的数据，超过 1500 万美国人上夜班。
In Canada , it’s closer to 1.8 million, or 12 percent of the working population.
在加拿大，这一数字接近 180 万，即工作人口的 12%。
Could not a single one of those people have the “skills” to work in a corner office?
难道这些人中没有一个人具备在角落办公室工作的“技能”吗？
When I read Adams’ quote, I was back, for the briefest of seconds, in that dark parking lot under a red-lit “massage” sign, watching the outline of a coffee shop server across the street as she wiped down the midnight counter, over and over.
当我读到亚当斯的引言时，我在最短暂的几秒钟里回到了那个亮着红灯的“按摩”标志下的黑暗停车场，看着街对面咖啡店服务员的轮廓，她一遍又一遍地擦拭午夜柜台。
I thought of her thankless work and the comfort she provided to so many people moving through that transient space, the way she may have wanted to do something—anything—else with her time, but perhaps was not afforded the opportunity to.
我想到了她吃力不讨好的工作，以及她为许多在这个短暂的空间中移动的人提供的安慰，她可能想用她的时间做一些事情——任何事情——其他的事情，但也许没有机会。
What a world in which her labour went unvalued, perhaps unnoticed altogether.
在这个世界里，她的劳动没有得到重视，甚至可能完全没有被注意到。
Adams’ comments ricocheted through social media for months, at one point resulting in a tweet about how most corner office professionals wouldn’t be able to handle even one overnight shift at Waffle House.
亚当斯的言论在社交媒体上流传了几个月，一度引发了一条推文，称大多数角落办公室的专业人士甚至无法在华夫饼屋上夜班。
But Adams isn’t alone in his simplistic view; many of the jobs that require overnight shifts are considered “low skill” roles by those in power, regardless of how essential they might be.
但亚当斯并不是唯一持这种简单化观点的人。许多需要通宵轮班的工作被当权者视为“低技能”角色，无论它们有多么重要。
How quickly the discourse moves from “frontline workers” to “low-skilled labourers” as soon as the concepts of unions or minimum wage increase make an appearance.
一旦工会或提高最低工资的概念出现，话题就从“一线工人”转移到“低技能工人”。
This idea of night shift jobs being less desirable, work people do because they “have to,” not because they want to, is true sometimes.
夜班工作不太理想，人们做工作是因为他们“必须”，而不是因为他们想要这样做，这种想法有时是正确的。
It was obvious to me that many in my night shift network were working gigs as a stopgap on the way to something else, but to me that never made any of us less deserving.
对我来说，很明显，我的夜班网络中的许多人都在做零工，作为转向其他工作的权宜之计，但对我来说，这并没有让我们任何人不值得。
In reality, I thought of us as some of the strongest, the most resourceful, the most skilled at defusing confrontations that often come with late-night interactions.
事实上，我认为我们是最强大、最足智多谋、最擅长化解深夜互动中经常出现的对抗的人。
“You’re better than this job,” clients sometimes said to me while I was working nights.
“你比这份工作更好，”当我晚上工作时，客户有时会对我说。
Often they’d say it in the awkward and delicate moments immediately after a session, as we towelled off together and I stripped the massage table—moments where men were often fraught with shame, resignation, and satiation in equal parts, and words tumbled clumsily from their mouths.
通常，他们会在疗程结束后尴尬而微妙的时刻说出这句话，当时我们一起用毛巾擦干，我把按摩床脱下来——在这些时刻，男人们常常同时充满羞耻、顺从和满足，言语笨拙地从他们嘴里吐出来。
They meant it as a compliment, but it was a sentiment I hated.
他们的意思是一种恭维，但我讨厌这种情绪。
You’re better than this .
你比这更好。
As though somewhere, there was a woman who wasn’t.
仿佛在某个地方，有一个女人不在。
I’ve seen security guards diffuse a knife fight.
我见过保安人员驱散持刀打斗事件。
I once watched a fast-food server placate a violent customer with nothing more than her voice and a stale honey cruller at her disposal.
我曾经看到一位快餐店服务员只用她的声音和一份不新鲜的蜂蜜油条来安抚一位暴力的顾客。
I’ve met few professionals since who I think could handle those wearying hours and even fewer who could still react with tact and effectiveness under pressure, especially considering the low, precarious wages these gigs often pay.
从那以后，我遇到的专业人士很少，我认为他们能够处理那些令人疲惫的时间，而能够在压力下仍然机智有效地做出反应的人就更少了，特别是考虑到这些零工通常支付的低且不稳定的工资。
Plus, there’s a danger to working jobs with these hours and demands on a long-term basis.
此外，长期如此的工作时间和要求对工作来说存在危险。
Statistics have long shown that people who work night shifts are more likely to battle stress, illness, even premature death .
统计数据早就表明，上夜班的人更有可能与压力、疾病甚至过早死亡作斗争。
Whether those late-night needs—for food, for sex—are real or perceived, as long as there’s a demand, profit-driven businesses will want to capitalize on it, perhaps at the very expense of the workers who take those shifts.
无论这些深夜的需求——食物、性——是真实的还是感知的，只要有需求，以利润为导向的企业就会想要利用它，也许是以牺牲轮班工人的利益为代价。
The price we pay to keep cities thrumming and hungers satiated at all hours of the night and day is steep.
为了让城市保持繁忙，让饥饿不分昼夜地得到满足，我们付出的代价是巨大的。
It’s been years since I held a job requiring those kinds of late-night shifts.
我已经好几年没有从事过需要这种深夜轮班的工作了。
I woke recently at exactly 2 a.m., as I often do, pulled from slumber by some unnameable cue.
最近，我像往常一样，在凌晨 2 点准时醒来，被某种难以名状的暗示从睡梦中惊醒。
I poured a glass of water and stood at my apartment window, suspended high above a ribbon of expressway.
我倒了一杯水，站在我公寓的窗户前，窗户高高地悬在一条高速公路的上方。
From behind the glass, everything was hushed at that hour.
那个时刻，玻璃后面一切都很安静。
Then I reminded myself that an entire ecosystem still hums and clanks and keeps the world stitched together quietly: the municipal salt truck scattering brine down the street.
然后我提醒自己，整个生态系统仍在嗡嗡作响，让世界安静地缝合在一起：市政运盐车在街上撒盐水。
The yellow sign of the twenty-four-seven grocery down the block advertising milk, bread, cigarettes.
街区那头二十四七号杂货店的黄色招牌上写着牛奶、面包和香烟的广告。
The wink of a red taillight as it trails across the expressway and flashes out of sight.
当它穿过高速公路并闪烁出视线时，红色尾灯闪烁。
I can’t, of course, know who it might be; perhaps another aimless man not ready to go home yet, rootless and restless and looking for validation in all the wrong places; perhaps another night shift worker on her way home, forming an unspoken understanding with her cab driver.
当然，我无法知道那人是谁。也许另一个漫无目的的人还没有准备好回家，无根无宁，在所有错误的地方寻找认可；也许是另一位夜班工人在回家的路上，与出租车司机达成了无声的默契。
Sometimes I think I have nothing to show for those years spent tending to people’s needs after hours, a period of my life as brief and transient as the red glow of that receding taillight.
有时我想，在下班后花在照顾人们的需求上的那些年里，我没有什么可展示的，我生命中的这段时期就像那渐渐远去的尾灯的红光一样短暂而短暂。
But I know the stories of the city after dark, and I keep those with me, always.
但我知道这座城市天黑后的故事，我一直把它们随身携带。
Lana Hall is a Toronto-based journalist with a particular interest in urban affairs.
拉娜·霍尔（Lana Hall）是一位驻多伦多记者，对城市事务特别感兴趣。
Her work has been published—or is forthcoming in—The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Maisonneuve, Spacing Magazine and elsewhere.
她的作品已在《环球邮报》、《海象》、《Maisonneuve》、《Spacing》杂志等刊物上发表或即将发表。
She has a degree in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University and an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of King's College.
她拥有多伦多城市大学新闻学学位和国王学院大学非小说类创意文学硕士学位。