TOG invited me to join him and DYS at Outback Steakhouse today.
The deal was that he’d bring down the HEPA filter and I’d bring the ultrasonic
cleaner. Our waitress was nobody’s fool. She suggested that TOG and the husband
and wife team in electric wheelchairs at the adjacent table have a race after
lunch. Nobody laughed but me, but I was picturing those scenes where teenagers
drag race their cars to/off the edge of a cliff.
After a brief discussion of DYS’ latest divorce woes, we
drifted on to some issues at the deeper end of the conversational pool: how Castle WTD (Castle Waiting to Die, aka,
La Vida Loco where TOG lives) has three kinds of coffee creamer in those tiny
white cups: non-dairy, real half and half that inexplicably doesn’t need to be
refrigerated, and we could go on about that practically forever. And then,
there’s the vanilla non-dairy, and boy, is that sweet.
WISIMH: I’ve fallen
into a time warp. I feel like we’ve been discussing dairy creamer for several
weeks. Or I’ve slipped through a crack in the space-time continuum. I think the
song playing over the restaurant muzak channel is “All
the Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (wlll realize the minute they die that
they were suckers)”? Dramatic foreshadowing?
TOG: I had a cherry
tart for dinner last night. Tiny but delicious. It had a little crust, and
under that cherries, but what they didn’t talk about was what was under that
was this... was … creamy - but not
whipped cream… this…. like custard?
Me: Yeah, probably.
TOG: Pink custard. I’d
ordered it with a la mode on top (yeah, he said that) but in all the confusion
it came without.
Me: You don’t say?
Without ice cream on top, on top?
TOG: Yeah, no ice
cream. And it’s just as well because of the creamy stuff under the crust, then under
the cherries. It was like… like…
Me: Custard?
TOG: Yes!
Waitress: Would you
like more wine?
WISIMH: I’ll have two
Harold Pinter plays and a 3-pack of Slim Jim Smoked Pepperoni sticks, please. To
go, please.
TOG: (Tipping empty
glass) Yeah, it all spilled out of this hole in the top of the glass.
Waitress: Well, that’s
taking “dry” wine a little to far.
WISIMH: And here we
thought she hadn’t heard them all. She must fucking love her job.
Waitress: So, have you looked at the menu and decided if you
want something sweet?
WISIMH: Wait. For.
It.
TOG: The menu? Oh, I
thought something sweet meant you.
Waitress: They took
me off the desert menu several years ago. Too much fat.
WISMH: I bow down before your genius, little lady. Can we be
best friends forever?
So, then we talk some more about dialectical materialism and
whether we should climb out of the entrenched narrative and re-think what
post-colonial capitalism has done deter germination of the seeds of democracy
in Middle-Eastern theocracies based on outdated Books. And then global warming.
And then how Michelle Bachman actually said America should be a Christian
nation because otherwise it would be a theocracy and that’s bad. It’s like
she’s having lunch with us.
Me: (Regaining
consciousness to realize we’ve all stopped talking) So, that Off-Broadway show
I went to the other night was dreadful. There were these two male 50-something
guys in 30-year old tuxedo jackets singing songs from the 80s while their
overdressed wives collected tickets and served diet cola respectively.
TOG: Funny though.
Some wives like to share their husbands’ interests. Like collecting currency.
WISMH: You really just SAID that? Can I just say one thing
at the speed of light?
The relentless intensity of your tired humor is lamer than
Chester on Gunsmoke after somebody threw him from a moving train, albeit more
painful. Your humor is more tired than a convict on a forced labor gang after
an 18 hour workday and a long rush hour commute; and more insulting than the
Supreme Court is to women in general.
You have been an inspiration to me the way Hobby Lobby has
been a champion of women’s reproductive rights. You have been a support to me
the way Dick Cheney has been a support to democracy in Iraq. You are as
articulate as Bush II, albeit possibly a better painter. Your tireless efforts
to help me through the trials and tribulations of daily life have been as
effective as the Republican House of Representatives has been in creating jobs.
Your best intentions are as gratifying as a deathbed
confession of serial murder who can’t remember where the bodies are buried,
albeit, slightly less comforting. The sincerity and incommunicable poignancy of
your heartfelt professions of love, and your overdue apologies are more
believable than the exuberant passion of hooker on her last weekend shift,
albeit resulting in a slightly lower level of customer satisfaction.
Your constant and hilarious constructive criticism of every
breath I take has made me a better person in the same sense that sodium
chloride has made the Great Salt Lake into the best trout-fishing hole in the
world. The degree of respect I have for you would freeze water on Mercury. I
love you the way Marie Antoinette loved cake, the way a synonym loves an
antonym, the way zombies love brains, the way hair loves wet soap, the way
Hamlet loved Ophelia, the way Othello loved Desdemona.
Then my blacked-out vision returned and I found that I could
speak again:
Me: Well, there you
go. Couldn’t make it through a one-hour conversation without a passive
aggressive wisecrack. Congratulations.
TOG: So, now, you’re
going to tell me how not to be like that any more.
WISIMH: Evidently,
you’re going to not be like that any less.
Me: And we have another home run!
WISIMH: And we all wonder why I’m angry all the time.
Me: So, finally, I
was….
TOG: This cake is
even sweeter than the vanilla non-dairy creamer. Have some more of this cake,
you could be a little sweeter.
Me: Another hit high
into the centerfield stands, ladies and gentlemen. We have the passive
aggressive hat-trick: three in three minutes. (And no, I did not say that in my
head.)
Postscriptum: I brought the ultrasonic cleaner. TOG didn’t
bring the HEPA filter. Nobody was surprised.
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