Wednesday, November 8, 2006

True heartbreak, the kind that incites a painful wash of sadness, regret, and a little anger, can only come from carefully collecting your dinner, then having it smeared all over the floorboard of your car. That’s right. Collect. This is how food is obtained according to the laws of bachelorhood, where your surroundings become a convenient platter and all the world is a sumptuous spread. Leftover pizza? Main course. Gum on the sidewalk? Dessert.

Out of meeting leftovers I cobbled together a delicious meal of sandwiches and potato salad, even added a pickle for aesthetic value, and in my mind dinner was set. I carefully placed the plate on the passenger seat and then, five minutes later, the plate carefully left the seat on its own accord. You see, a traffic light had turned yellow, I pretended to be a responsible driver, and I braked a little too quickly, launching my dinner into the abyss.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I shouted, mostly because I needed some kind of return from this debacle, and vulgarity was the juiciest item left on the menu.

A couple globs of Woolite later, my car was as good as new, sans new car smell. But you know what? It still stung, and dejected I returned to the kitchen. To cook. I wrote off the loss as a kind of indirect workout.

Here’s the destination for this weekend. I’ve been told it’s trendy. We never discussed my trip to uptown, did we? Short answer is the experience was just off the corner of Slightly and Lame.