Gary ~ May 22

 

My Lunch Date With Elizabeth, or: She Thought I Might Be Gay Part II

 

I thought the Shrimp Louie Salad was great but Elizabeth was clearly unhappy with her Eggs Benedict.

 

"That isn't salmon," she said to Bethany, our server, whom she called over to our table with an imperious, "get the hell over here now" flip of her hand. She was pointing to, what looked to me to be Japanese pickled radishes, salmon in color perhaps, but lacking any salmon substance.

 

"Those are onions," Bethany said, trying to be helpful. "We don't have any salmon."

 

Elizabeth looked pained.  She said, "Well, I can only eat one of these. Pack up the other one and I'll take it with me."

 

Our lunch date had clearly peaked when Elizabeth showed great appreciation, even fondness, for my dark aging spots.  Things began to drift downward with the revelation that the pink stuff on top of the Eggs Benedict was not salmon, but onions.

 

The one bright spot from this point on was the fact that I was taller than Elizabeth.  She had me get up from my chair and stand next to her to see who was taller and I was, I guess, about 1/4 taller than she was, which seemed to make her happy for some reason.

 

I was happy that she was happy, but that didn't last very long.

 

She started to tell me that she was selling her house in Boulder for $2,000,000 and was buying a house in Hurley NY for about $600,000 and wouldn't it be great that we were going to be neighbors.

 

"Well, not exactly," I told her. "You see, we are selling our house too, and moving to Roxbury NY, which is about 40 minutes away from where we are living now in Willow."

 

WE? WE?  What's this WE shit, anyway?  That seemed to be the look on her face, when she said, "What? You're married?"

 

"Yeah, I'm married," I told her.

 

Her face dropped. She pulled up in her chair, looked me straight in the eye and said, in the most serious of tones, "Your Facebook profile says you're SINGLE." She emphasized the word SINGLE.

 

"No, I'm not single," I told her, "I've been married for about 10 years now, maybe even 12 or 13."

I have no idea why my Facebook profile says I'm single.  I'll have to change that setting for sure."

 

I could see no more compliments would be coming my way after I revealed the fact that I was married.  I would have to settle for being humorous, having nice eyes, and wearing sexy aging spots on my wrinkled hands.

 

I tried making her feel better.  "Look," I told her, "even if I wasn't married, I don't think anything romantic would be happening between us, because I'm not really interested in women anymore, at least not in that way anyway."

 

She perked up a little bit.  "You know, in the first five minutes of our conversation I was going to ask you if you were gay."

 

"Really?" I said, "How come you thought that I might be gay?"

 

"It was the way you were throwing yourself around," she told me, much to my surprise.

 

Throwing myself around?  What was that all about?  What did that mean anyway?

 

What she was referring to, she explained, was the way I was fooling around and doing my schtick with Maria, who was our server at breakfast when I came to join Julie, Onnie, and Al  for eggs, definitely NOT Benedict, which I  never have eaten b/c of all the orange gloppy looking shit that seems to drool all over them.

 

Anyway, when Maria recognized me at lunch she came over to say Hi and we started in again, trading snappy one-liners and I tried dragging Bethany into the routine as well and Bethany proved to be up for the game and held her comedic ground very nicely I must say.

 

So this was "throwing myself around" meant.  Well, that was a new one for me, but I kinda liked it.

 

"Yeah," I said to Elizabeth, "I guess I do throw myself around a bit."

 

Not that there's anything wrong with it.