french toast

recently i received an email from a girl from my past. though i haven't seen her or spoke to her in 3 years or so, she had somehow stumbled across this little cesspool of cyberspace and was able to deduce that i was its author. her email read...

Well, well, well. It's been a long time "Cajun Boy." You are as amusing/deep/vulgar as I remember you being. That's why I liked you. Too bad you were such an a-hole. Maybe we could have spent more time together.

Best,
(redacted)

PS-I killed about 3 hours of my life searching your archives for a story about me. I'm unsure if I'm more relieved or offended that there isn't one, but I thought you may have written something about me.

truth is, i've actually been meaning to write something about this girl and the brief moment in time that our lives intersected for some time. getting an email from her seems to have spurred me to action, which may have been her original intent. either way, let's see how relieved or offended she is after reading this.

the story begins back in 2004 or so. i was drinking in a bar, alone, near my apartment on the lower east side, which is where i was living at the time. i don't typically drink alone, but it was a sunday night or something and drinking buddies were scarce. or maybe i went alone because there was a cute bartender i wanted to hit on uninterruptedly. i don't remember. either way, i had an itch to scratch, so off into the new york city night i journeyed to scratch it.

at some point, probably around my third or fourth whiskey, i struck up a conversation with a couple, or they struck up one with me, whatever, also sitting at the bar. they told me that they were visiting from out of town and staying with a friend of theirs who lived nearby. it was their last night in town. they began asking a bunch of questions about me and my life, so much in fact that they seemed disturbingly fascinated with me (and really, who could blame them?). i was beginning to sense that maybe they were seeking something more. the thought crossed my mind that maybe they were swingers or something, horny out of towners on the prowl for an extra party sausage. not that there's anything wrong with that, it just wasn't anything that i was in the mood for on this particular night.

sufficiently freaked a bit and kind of annoyed by them i suppose (i can only stand so many inquisitions to my bayou childhood of alligator wrestling and fried roadkill dinners), i summoned the barkeep over to settle my tab and be on my way. it was then that the couple, the lady half of it anyway, made a move.

"i want you to go out with my friend. she's not from louisiana originally but went to veterinary school at louisiana state and is lots of fun. she lives a few blocks from here. i think you'd like each other."

since i've transplanted myself to the northeast, it's always interesting to me how people from other places are so eager to introduce me to other people that have some connection to louisiana, automatically assuming that we'd hit it off fabulously over mere geographical proxy. i imagine that it's kind of the same in places, mostly places not named new york or san francisco, whenever someone meets an openly gay person.

"oh you're gay? i should introduce you to my gay friend fabian! you guys would totally hit it off."

for us native cajuns or anyone who has spent any length of time in louisiana, it works the same way. and, in truth, it's kind of a cool thing because generally there is some sort of odd kinship shared by those of us hailing from or having lived in the motherland. i don't think it's the same for people from place like des moines, iowa or cleveland, ohio. we bond easily over the shared experience of louisiana's unique culture.

now frankly, i'm no fan of the blind date, i'm vehemently anti-blind date in fact, but for reasons that can be explained away only by the subconscious enthusiasm that immediately bubbled to the surface upon hearing that the girl they sought to set me up with went to LSU, i enthusiastically agreed.

"HELL YEAH!"

the oddity of my agreeing to this is exacerbated by the fact that i'm a hopelessly shallow fuck, i am shallow now but i was even more shallow then, and not once did i ask to see a picture of my future date or inquire about any vital statistics such as height, weight, age, drug of choice, favorite position, etc. the only thing i knew was that she was a female who had attended LSU and was probably working in the city as a vet. she could have looked like wilfred brimley for all i knew.

and so it was that i found myself a few nights later in an east village vegan restaurant sitting across from an adorable, animal loving little pixie. we were eating vegan food because she was a vegan. i am decidedly not a vegan. in fact, i sometimes believe that people can smell the red meat seeping from my pores as i walk down the street. i probably have blood stains on my clothes from the ridiculous quantities of meat i've consumed in my life. at various points i've tried to eliminate or at least curb my insatiable appetite for flesh, really i have, but i dare anyone to gaze into my mouth and and try to tell me that i don't possess an evolutionary inclination to eat meat; many of my teeth are accentuated with sharp edges, a trait i likely inherited from centuries of my ancestors ripping the flesh of animals from the bone.

but in the interest of going along to get along, i went along, and the food was surprisingly good. what else was surprisingly good was the date itself, we got along fabulously, and within a few hours i found myself back at her place doing, in the words of noted sexpert leonora epstein, "the grown-up."

some time after the completion of our first act of grown-up activities, we discussed my staying the night.

"you should sleep here...i'll make breakfast in the morning...i make the best french toast you'll ever have!"

now normally i might have considered going home and in doing so saved myself from experiencing the crushing guilt that comes with my occasional unwillingness to engage in post-coital spooning, especially since i lived a five minute walk from her apartment on east 4th street at the time, but the enticement of a great plate of french toast had me at hello. i LOVE french toast. besides, i kind of sort of thought i maybe liked this girl. she also had a live albino python/boa/big ass snake in her apartment, and the insane thrill of it potentially crawling into bed and squeezing my last breath out of me was a peculiar rush. so i stayed.

when the next morning rolled around and we awoke, i was immediately confronted, as i almost always am when i first wake, with a pressing issue in my backside. being that hers was a dwelling of humble size, as are most new york city apartments, i didn't feel very confident that it afforded me the geographical spacing to ward off a potential assault to her olfactory senses, so i performed a quick dip out to spare myself any such embarrassment. i'd done this many times previously when i've spent the night with girls, as i have many times since and likely will again in the future, usually under the guise that i'm going out to perform some act of chivalry, like getting us both coffee at starbucks, where there's, not coincidentally, always a potty waiting for me to defile.

on my way back to the pixie's place i stopped at a korean deli for some strawberries and blueberries, thinking that these would make excellent accompaniments to the french toast, and they were. i also purchased some flowers for the table setting, something i NEVER do, for i am as vehemently anti-flower as i am vehemently anti-blind date, if not moreso.

the french toast itself was simply splendid, absolutely shattering all expectations for french toasted perfection that i had previously formed inside of my mind. there's always an inherent danger in declaring that you're the best at anything; it sets the expectations of the recipient of whatever "best" service is being provided to irrationally high levels. but this was good french toast.

possibly the best i'd ever had.

probably the best i'd ever had.

hands down the best i'd ever had.

and therein lay the pratfall.

the two of us polished off piece after piece of delicious french toast. taking into consideration that she had drained my balls with the deft artistry of a pro all night long and into the morning, i could almost hear myself falling in love with her, but then we came to the last piece remaining on the serving platter that she laid them out on. the following dialogue ensued...

"do you want the last piece?"

"no. and you can't have it either. i always leave a bit of food on the plate no matter how hungry i am or how bad i want it in commemoration of all the homeless and starving people in the world."

i stared at her quizzically. surely she couldn't be serious, right?

"are you serious?"

"totally. it's one of my rituals."

i paused for a second to digest all of this. i was convinced that she was fucking with me. who had ever heard of such misguided foolishness? so i reached over with my fork and grabbed the last piece. i then placed butter upon it and doused it with mrs. butterworth's.

"you are not going to really eat that are you?"

"yes."

and with that i cut off a piece and took a bite. in that moment i watched what i thought was my pixie's poker face morph into a face filled with rage and utter disgust.

"you asshole! can you be more fucking disrespectful?!"

"i thought you were joking!"

"well i wasn't!"

"but this is one of the most retarded acts of meaningless symbolism i've ever heard!"

"fuck you!"

"why not at least walk over to bowery and actually give it to a homeless person if you want to really do something for the hungry?!"

"get out! get the fuck out of my apartment! NOW!!!"

and with that i took one last bite of french toast to throw more salt into her gaping wound, and i walked home, never, at least up to this point, to see her again.

i wonder if she's still reading my blog? if so, i wonder if writing about this qualifies me as an even bigger asshole than she thought me to be previously?


"747" by kent

writing this whole thing made me think of one of my favorite bands ever that nobody seems to know of in the US, the swedish band kent. specifically, i thought of this song, my favorite in kent's library of music, because i remember playing it for her on the night we went out. enjoy...




couple more things here...

http://cajunboy.tumblr.com/