Tag Archives: dating

Pickles for Dinner

17 Nov

from January 10, 2008

I was out for dinner at the Vegas Diner. I try not to go there too much when I’m paying. Not because I’m cheap- it is a diner after all, not the automat. If I were cheap then I’d take my dates to Subway and get a pair of $5 footlongs. Used to be that you could only get a deal like that in Times Square back in the 1970’s. But I digress.

We were out. It was a long day, and by eight o’clock she had to eat. You know how women are. “I’m hungry I’m tired I’m on my period.” All the freakin’ time. Yeah well, I had a bag of Doritos for lunch and flatulence that would kill a mule but you don’t hear me complaining.

The Vegas Diner is a good diner with good food. The problem is that, a couple of times a month, my family goes out to eat together and we pretend to be a family in the sense that we’re related, not in the Manson Family sense. The bill is anywhere from $60 to $80 bucks and over time we’ve developed a favorite waiter (Mr. Abraham with the strange eye) whom we ask for all the time. He treats us like gold and bends over backwards (not so we could shtupp him the ass but) to serve us. Why? Because Mom gives him a $25 tip every week. That’s $25 dollars on a bill of $60. And if he isn’t there, we’ve got a backup waiter who gets the same thing. So we tend to get good service.

When I walk in, I get the same ass-kissing treatment I do with my family, so I have to tip stupidly well too. Thanks Mom. It has gotten to the point that there is a busboy during the day that we have to slip $2. A busboy. And what does he do? Brings us water and asks “how’s your Mom?”. Remember Jimmy the Gent in Goodfellas slipping the bartender $100 for keeping the ice cold? That’s me.

So I was there tonight and I was in the weird angle table just on the left as you walk in. I hate that table, but the hostesses don’t get tipped so they don’t care where I sit. I once saw Mr. Abraham throw a party of six out of their seats when we walked in. And that party? Borough President Marty Markowitz’s mother’s 101st birthday, so you know we tip well.

I am a people watcher. Which is not the same thing as a Peeping Tom but I’ll admit it- there is some overlap. Just across from us was a rather odd couple, for a few reasons. You know Adrian Grenier, from Entourage? Don’t feel bad, most people don’t either. Anyway, this guy looked like Adrian Grenier if he were missing a couple of key chromosomes and entered the Anthony Cumia look-alike contest. You really had to see him. I noticed him not because of his odd looks but because of the way he ate a pickle.

Some of you (one of you. OK, Marc) may know my family connection to the pickle industry. I won’t go into it here but decades ago I invented the still famous Hulk Hogan Pickle ad. Suffice it to say that I know a number three from a number five and can still tell you the age of a quart of brine at six paces. So I am sensitive to pickles.

The Adrian Grenier guy had a plate full of number five sour pickles and ate them with a fork and knife, George Costanza style. Seriously. He cut the pickle into slices, then ate them with a fork. Dainty.

I was appalled.

Pickles are finger food. Meaning, you eat them with your fingers. Trust me, there is nothing better than a woman fingering a pickle and slurping it into her mouth. What? That was sexual? Let me read that back.

I stand by that statement.

Anyway, just to show how it is done in these parts (meaning Not Bizarro World) I took a number three sour from my plate, lifted it up, and crunched into it with a snap that would do the Vlassic Stork proud. I showed him.

He kept up with the knife and fork routine.
But he knew.

That alone was enough to mark him with the Sign of the Beast, but as Billy Mays says “wait! There’s more!” He was washing down the pickles with a chocolate egg cream.

That’s just gross.

I couldn’t stand to see this anymore. I spent too many years in the biz to see pickles treated that way. Now I had to see his date. And here I had to look twice because it was just strange.

He was there with an Asian woman who, in general build and hairstyle, resembled my friend Kathy. Not so much in the face because she was smiling (don’t kill me) but for a second I flashed back to the picture Kathy had on her iphone, her myspace profile, her yearbook page, framed above the entrance to her house, of her and the real Adrian Grenier. It was so bizarre that I took out some paper and a pen and started taking notes. Right during dinner. (Believe it or not ladies I’m still free. Catch me while you can.)

Their food came and Adrian got a bacon cheeseburger deluxe and Kathy got a plate of chicken fingers. I guess HBO doesn’t pay too well. He then mixed some ketchup and what looked like flem in a plate and dipped his fries into it. It looked really gross but at least he stopped defiling the pickles.

I took notes as I ate my roast pork deluxe (which the trainee waitress gave me with the standard fries instead of the mashed potatoes I asked for. But she was new, spoke little English, and was cute so I let it slide) and calculated how too-big a tip I’d have to give my waiter AND his trainee.

Kathy and Adrian’s bill came and Adrian reached into his pocket and took out big roll of bills that turned out to be a single twenty surrounding a whole lot of ones. Where I come from there is an expression for this but I won’t indulge in needless slurs. Here, anyway.

About this time he pulled out his cell phone to show Kathy the wallpaper picture.
It was a squirrel.

Adrian peeled what might have been as many as three singles from his wad, left them on the table, and went to the counter to pay the bill. Kathy, after peeking behind her to see that Adrian couldn’t see, took a single from the tip and pocketed it.

I cannot make this up and I have the notes to prove it.

They left and we finished our diner.

Our Bill? $32.67.
The tip? $11.
Seeing Kathy and Adrian Grenier out together on a date? Priceless.

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My Humiliating Experience, or “You Look Just Like My Father.”

14 Nov

from February 20, 2008

No, my humiliating experience was not my date Sunday night. That went very well, thank you very much. It better have gone well considering how much I spent on dinner, but especially in light of the fact that I broke one of my dating rules.

I only have two rules about dating. Rule Number One- don’t date co-workers, or as I usually put it, I don’t shit where I eat. Now in the past I have been stupidly tempted to break that rule. I’ve skirted the line, I’ve approached the line, I’ve danced on the line, I’ve peeked across the line, and I’ve been accused of crossing the line, but I’ve never broken that rule, despite the fact that I am so often so stupidly smitten.

Rule Number Two is never date a teacher. This dovetails nicely with the first rule, as I work with teachers, and it also excludes all the teachers in all the other schools. This is the rule I broke. In fact, I also broke Rule Number Two A- especially never date a math teacher.

But this is about my humiliating experience. That happened today.

I was buying a birthday card in the Hallmark store on 86th street. It was pretty quiet and I was the only one paying.

I was pretty laid back. It was one of those days where I was just doing my thing, like the post office, birthday card, lunch, all without the benefit of iPod so it was just me and my thoughts, and my thoughts were just as laid back.

I went to the counter and there were two girls there, both around 21 to 23 years old. They were kind of cute. Both of them looked like the kind of wholesome girls you usually only find outside of the city. One was blonde with straight hair and one had dark curly hair. Something about the dark one nagged me, and I realized that she looked like Janan Eways, only attractive and without the crazy eyes. (That’s an LHS reference some of you won’t get.) But they were young and I wasn’t interested.

I’ve never been interested in younger women, no mater what my own age. If I was 16, a 15 year old meant nothing to me. When I was 23, I wouldn’t care for a 21 year old. I’ve always been attracted to women my age or older. There’ve been a few notable exceptions, but that has pretty much been my way. I never planned it, that’s the way it was and the way it is. I like older women, or at least women my same age.

But as I paid I noticed the dark one, the one who rang me up. She was dressed in a blue top with a black apron, a part of her uniform. The blonde one had an apron too. She was not in anyway dressed provocatively, and even if she was the apron would have hidden it, but somehow, between her apron and shirt, a little fringe of frilly pink bra peeked out.

While I may not have been particularly interested in this young girl, she was legal age, and I had a few idle thoughts going through my head. Nothing dirty or lewd, but I am a healthy man and when confronted with a cute girl showing a flash of frilly pink bra the healthy man’s mind tends to wander a bit.

So as I handed her my money I was in a particularly better, though still laid back, mood, when the blonde one said “you look like my father.”

When no one answered her I turned around to see who she was talking to. There was no one there. She was talking to me.

“Um, oh?” I said, and it was the most coherent thing I could think of.

“Yeah, you look just like him.”

“Oh, OK.”

The dark one said “she’s a very random person,” and was not helpful at all.

“He had a moustache,” the blonde said.

At this point I managed a small grasp on things. “I used to have a mustache.” Pretty much everything in my head had gone screeching away in a cloud of dust. Bye bye, mellow mood. So long, pink bra.

Hello old man.

Had I had one at the time, this would have been a real erection killer.

I got my change and the girl said, again, “wow, just like him.”

“I guess that’s a compliment,” I sort of blurted.

“Oh yeah, my father is a good looking man.”

“Um, OK.”

And I left.

So I guess that wasn’t so bad, but I am only 37, not nearly old enough to be her father. I was just recently told by a teacher at LHS, (in the men’s room, and didn’t that make me want to zip up and leave?) that I have a youthful face.

But by God, being told that you look like a 21 year-old’s father while you are idly speculating about her friend’s pink frilly bra is a jolting experience.

So I’m at an age where, despite never being attracted to younger women, it is now a fact that younger women will not be attracted to me, except in a fatherly way?

Needless to say I am a bit confused about the whole thing, and I am now remembering times when I was told that I was just like someone’s father because I bought batteries on sale, (and yes that sounds old to me too,) or when Bonnie read my bio in Raphael’s Journalism class (the one where I was sexually harassed by a gay, beret-wearing Canadian- why the hell haven’t I ever blogged about that?????) and Bon said that I reminded her of her father.

So I’ve usually felt as though I was 37 going on 18, but just today I’m starting to feel like I’m 37 going on 58, with a couple of kids and a minivan.

So unless you are 37 or older, don’t flash your frilly pink bra when I’m paying for a birthday card, and never tell me that I remind you of your father unless we’re playing a spanking game in bed and you’ve been a bad bad girl.

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