Sunday, May 19, 2013

no cheese please

I woke up quite early this morning, despite having only gone to bed a few hours earlier. I was hungry and couldn't sleep. A bacon and egg sandwich was all I wanted in this world. Maybe some orange juice to wash it down. I walked to the bodega a couple blocks from my house and ordered my sandwich from the guy working the grill, an overwhelmed guy taking breakfast sandwich orders from a line of hungover people and the couple of cops working their beat, talking plot details to Pain and Gain, which I tried to block out as I planned on watching it later that day. I waited and I waited. I watched him give breakfast sandwiches to numerous people who had ordered after I did.

I gave up on ever getting food there, that it wasn't meant to be. I crossed the street and went to the Mexican diner where there was no line and ordered my sandwich, and which I received fairly quickly. As I ate the sandwich, stoned and watching Pain and Gain, I wondered about bacon and its use in other cultures, how widespread it is, or whether it might be something unique here. I certainly wondered why it was whenever I have gotten a sandwich involving bacon from a Mexican deli, why the bacon was never crispy, always undercooked, and always piled high, about three times as much bacon as should be on a sandwich. This is probably why there was a long line for breakfast sandwiches at the one deli and no line at the diner across the street. It's always a safe bet to choose the spot the cops are ordering from, that they know where the good breakfast sandwiches are made.

But sometimes you have to cut your losses, quit waiting, walk away.

So there is this guy, this really beautiful guy that I have a big crush on. I had a very brief romance with him some years ago. He was in a relationship for the last several years that he just got out of a couple months ago. I have always thought he was really cute and when I ran into him a couple weeks ago, this always slight crush flared up into a larger one. I wanted to make out with him. I have been trying to hang out with him since running into him, have asked if he wanted to meet for drinks numerous times, and last night I was finally successful in getting him to hang out with me. We went and saw Showgirls: The Musical. I had gotten there first, on time. He was running late, so I sat there and awkwardly talked to the HR guy from my job, who coincidentally was also at the show. And then he arrived, this beautiful man, and suddenly no one else was there, certainly not the HR guy from my work asking me why I hadn't signed up for the AIDS Walk. This guy was it. He looked really fucking handsome. We chatted about some stuff and I didn't hear much of it because I was a little overwhelmed by thoughts of how cute he was.

After the show, we rode the subway back to Brooklyn together. We talked about jobs, Ronnie Spector, and David Mamet. A girl told me she loved my tattoo. I asked her if she was a big Walt Whitman fan. Yes, she said, but I suddenly got the impression that she wasn't, that she didn't know that's who my tattoo was of. She said it also looked like Ethan Hawke.

He got off at his stop to go walk his dog, but said he was going to head to Metropolitan after. I told him I would meet up with him there if I wasn't able to get ahold of Diego, who earlier I had told I would go to Spectrum with. Once he got off the train, this couple got on and sat across from me. The girl was holding a six-pack of beer, the beer this person shares a name with. I took it as some sign, of what I had no clue, but a good sign surely I thought. When I got off the train, indeed I was unable to get ahold of Diego. I was happy about this and walked toward Metropolitan to meet up with this guy. I got increasingly drunk as the hours passed and talked to him and some other boys. He eventually left to go home, seemingly with this other boy, this gum chewer. 

I left shortly after they did, feeling fairly disappointed and sad. I made myself walk to Spectrum instead of heading home to mope. I danced with Diego for a bit there before he drunkenly stumbled home. By this point though, I was worked up to a fever, unable to quit dancing, letting everything out into these pop songs that they were thankfully and surprisingly playing at this venue that normally plays the type of dance music I need to be on some sort of drug to really get into. Instead, I had Robyn, Rihanna, and Beyonce to comfort me, to sing along to, to lose my mind to and dance like a maniac to, by myself in the midst of this crowd on the dancefloor. I danced and danced until I couldn't any longer, until I had trouble breathing, until I felt like I was going to throw up. I walked out of the venue, let the night air cool me off, and flagged down a car to take me home.

I lay on my couch, stuffing whatever food I could find at the time into my face. I saw that this boy was on Scruff, which made me happy since that would mean that he presumably did not go home with gum chewer. I talked to him on there about the rest of my night and put the question out there. I asked him if I was ever going to be able to make out with him or if I should just be happy being friends. I told him I just wanted some clarity and was fine with either, but just wanted to know. 

Earlier in the night, he had told me that I just liked him because he was comfortable and familiar. I told him that that wasn't true, but it probably is.

As I was stuffing my face with slices of rotisserie chicken, I read little text bubbles on Scruff. These bubbles said that he didn't want to jump into bed with me right now, that he doesn't rule that out from ever happening, but that he just wants to be friends.

So if you follow the cops to where they order breakfast because that's where good breakfast is served, and then the sandwich guy, intentionally or not, forgets your order and you wait and wait, at what point does a more indiscriminate hunger win out over a discriminate one and send you elsewhere? It's all about figuring out when to stop waiting. It's all about realizing that just about any place can make a bacon and egg sandwich.

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