NTKOG #38: The kind of girl who ignores perfectly good available tables in order to meet a new dining acquaintance while dining out on the town.
I am: fiercely possessive of my personal space while eating. One of the great pleasures in life is settling in to a tasty meal with a fantastic novel in front of you.
I am not: all too keen on watching anyone eat, anyway. It’s disgusting, all of that chewing and swallowing and digesting.
The Scene: The Italian hole-in-the-wall across the street from my apartment, which, though questionable in terms of culinary pleasure, has a quite enticing $5 lunch special. Perhaps because most of the city doesn’t have Columbus day off (empty laundromats! hooray!), the place is deserted except for a mid-30s guy in a shocking-yellow windbreaker waiting for his slices to come out of the oven.
I order my own slice and soda and stand by the counter, looking over the short story manuscript I am editing before the bastards in workshop can tear it apart, until my order is called. Then I pick up my plate, gesture to the seat in front of the man, and ask if I can join him. To my surprise, he does not even glance at the half-dozen empty tables around us before agreeing.
I go through the manuscript with my red pen for a while, then look up and he catches my attention:
Windbreaker: What are you working on?
TKOG: It’s a short story I wrote. I’m making some edits before I get started on a serious second draft.
W: Oh, cool. What’s it about?
TKOG: Uh, it’s kind of about — a girl who — has gone through something kind of terrible and, well, sort of burns down a house.
W: Is she a druggie?
TKOG: No. She’s just going through some stuff.
W: Was she drinking? I’ll bet she was drinking?
TKOG: Vodka was involved, yeah. Ha, isn’t it always?
W: I can tell you about vodka. I know about vodka.
The writing on the chest of the windbreaker advertises a roofing company, and there are thick splotches of what I can only guess to be tar on the man’s dust-beiged jeans. There is a gaping, symmetrical vertex pushing out the top and bottom rows of his teeth, like maybe he sucked his thumb a few too many years as a child, or a few keystone teeth are missing from the arch of his jaw. I cannot tell which and am not inclined to attempt some surreptitious tooth-counting, as his mouth is full of chunks of unchewed sausage.
W: This one night I got into a car crash by where I live and I had ten vodka White Russians inside me. Fractured ribs, broken nose. I get in this accident by where I’ve lived all my life and the cop knows me, the ambulence guy knows me. The ambulence guy kept trying to make me go with them but I said I was fine, then the cop told me, ‘Look, you either go with them or you’re coming with me.’
TKOG: So you went with them, I’m guessing?
W: I had to.
The while time he is talking, he is chewing the same over-large mouthful. He works the pizza dough and chunks of meat into a thick paste that pushes out the crevices of his teeth when he moves his tongue. I push my half-eaten slice in front of me.
Pro Tip: Do not try to pick up literary/intellectual girls with your tales of drunk-driving bravado. Just do not.
In an attempt to be polite, I stay with him, staring fixedly down at my papers but making cheerful responses, until he has massacred his last bite. Then I pick up my plate and smile up at him, telling him I have to get going.
W: Hey, maybe you can add a roofer to the story.
TKOG: Maybe the next one.
W: A drunken roofer!
The Verdict: People are terrible.
What’s up, men of Boston? Why are you — in this bastion of intellectual vitality — seriously grossing me the frig out this week? Aren’t there any long-fingered, quivering-anxious Hamlets running around, waiting to meet a girl with more IQ points than teeth? And also, just for fun, maybe you could have the correct number of teeth?!
I think that, properly executed, this technique could be useful, so I’m not ruling it out. Obviously I just need to be a bit pickier when choosing my future victims. Ugh.
{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Hearing people eat drives me absolutely insane. I know this isn’t normal, but ugh…
I love “more IQ points than teeth”. Hahahaha
Oh, definitely! I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve made a quick, discreet mid-meal exit because someone at an adjacent table couldn’t master the concept of chewing with their mouths closed! It physically nauseates me.
Ew. Happy Thanksgiving. Today I’m thankful for that story that reengaged my gag reflex. Dudes like that make me sick.
What is it with roofers? The last one I encountered socially was during my bachelor party. He was so grateful to my best man for finding his pain pills, he bought us a round. And yes, he was drinking – heavily – in addition to taking someone else’s pain pills. Unless his name was Rosita Hernandez. Always possible.
I’ll have to try this out. With the amount of travel I do for work (three weeks in the next month), I have plenty of time to inflict myself upon people I’ll likely never see again.
Thanks for being bold! …And for enduring the open-mouthed, pizza-laden story suggestions of a stranger.
I’m loving the fact he is proud to be a drunk roofer. I’m thinking that is a deadly combo.
The question is, where are all these outgoing women who’ll sit down at lunch for us shy boys with all of our teeth and no windbreakers in our closets? The slobs seem to get all the luck!
I know, right?
The answer might be that there’s only about one such girl out there, and as it happens right now she’s careening from one unfortunate stranger to another in the streets of Boston.
There are at least 2 of them; one we all know the approximate whereabouts of, but the other is in her 50s or 60s, and was last sighted in Bristol, Avon, England in about 1993.
Well, I have all my teeth (including Wisdom teeth [if only they actually worked and made me wise]), and still manage an IQ of at least 4 points per tooth! ;)
Too bad I’m a long way from Boston.
Very ballsy! I’ve sat with others when there were empty tables available (just in the mood for company), but not with a guy, I don’t think. I’d worry he’d think I was coming on to him!
Further thought on this; I’ve done this the other way round, in a bar, but not actually talked to the lady. Reason being that we were both in for a quiet pint, and just happened to both want to sit at the one table that has a view across the road junction the bar is at.
So yes it is possible to join a man at a table (or vice versa) without either of you taking it as meaning that you want to hit on or be hit on by the other.
Why, oh why, would he think that was a good story to tell someone he just met?
I have no idea, but I did once have a long conversation with an ex window cleaner (who had done high-rises) (ex because he had developed grand mal epilepsy) in a pub. Unless you’d been chatting for a while, why would you tell a near total stranger something like that?
Why wouldn’t he think its a good idea? Maybe TKOG is into dirty, drunk, toothless roofers who are proud of their drunk driving successes (failures). Did you ever think of that?
haha, actually, now that you mention it, maybe if I wanted to really dedicate myself to pushing my boundaries, I could try going out with a totally inappropriate guy?
Or … or maybe not. Maybe definitely not.
It’s very true – about the asshole drink thing. At my bar, it’s pretty much PBR or shots of whiskey. If you’re ordering something else, you’re probably not a regular. I worked the other night… “Can I have a red death?” “can I have a kamikaze?” “can I have a red headed slut?” “can I have a martini?” after making a martini and handing to the recipient “can I make that two?”
I’ll have to make a post on Stoner Metal for you sometime. I did, however, make a post titled “Nicolas Cage vs. Black Metal” that is listed on the sidebar of my blog that you might be interested in checking out. Very hilarious.
I LOVE red-headed sluts! Only thing is, when I drink them, I *become* one!
@Rebel Mel: I read and loved your Nic Cage post a while ago — was that at Great Scott? ’cause every time I walk by I’m like, hmmmm, is Mr. Cage there?! (I kind of have an old-dude crush on him.)
@Ms. Terri: You know what they say: the first sip always goes straight to the … uh … libido, let us say, in place of the real phrase.
Black metal never fails to amuse. The 15 second mark of this video has the requisite lambs head on a stick, followed by gyrating naked bodies covered in blood…inevitably followed by the burning, upside down cross. All hail Gorgoroth! Norwegian Black Metuhl!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFn26ntmSsg
In his defense, you brought up the vodka. And you sat down with him. In his world, *you* were coming on to *him*.
oh my gosh I hate when random gross guys come sit next to me and talk when I’m just trying to get stuff done. Happened allll the time when I used to commute on the train!
I’m sure that he thought once you asked to sit down across from him that all of his work was done. You made “the move;” you reached out; that all he had to do was be himself, which had, to him, just worked splendidly.
But this is so why we should always be on our toes. Because drunk-driving stories are always too familiar for the first ten minutes of almost any conversation.
“Maybe I should spend more time hanging out around Harvard and MIT”. Amazing. Let me know how that goes.
I could deal with the roofer part. I could maybe deal with the drunk part. I could maaaayyyybe deal with the lousy teeth part.
But there’s no way I could deal with chewing with mouth open part. Almost as much as I couldn’t deal with the he being a guy part.