My girlfriend and I recently attended a fancy pants Wine Country awards ceremony. Somehow we were stuck at a table of complete strangers twenty-five years our senior. Nice folks, but on this evening we chose not to engage in much small talk. Just a few pleasantries, nods, rubber smiles, you know. Anyways, after I had finished my plate of sautéed veggies my eyes drifted to my neighbor’s plate. This gentleman had polished off his filet mignon and left two small mounds of untouched garlic mashed potatoes. I love mashed potatoes, not the fingerlings like I had with my dinner, but real mashed potatoes. Real mashed potatoes with puddles of mushroom gravy that called me like cleavage. He put his fork down and wiped his face and turned to his wife, “Wow. Now that was some cut of meat.”
Hmmm, I thought. I waited until he was done commenting on the food and tapped him on the shoulder.
“So, uh, what’s up with your mashed potatoes?”
“Scott!” Naomi couldn’t believe it.
“What, I don’t think he’s going to eat them,” I explained.
“No, no, he’s right,” said the man. “I stay away from potatoes.”
Naomi’s scowl stood its ground.
Perfect. Now, how should we do this? Do you want to shovel them on my plate, no, no, we might knock over a wine glass, so here, why don’t you and I just swap plates, I suggest. Thanks. And oh my God they’re as good as they looked, thanks, thank you very much. As I inhaled the nice man’s mashed potatoes, Naomi whispered, “Have fun jerking off tonight.”
Apparently, if you ask people I eat with, this is not an isolated incident. Only a new low. Nobody ever wants to sit next to me at the dinner table. I’m a notorious food vulture. And it’s true. I’ll admit it. For some reason, the food on your plate is always more appealing than what’s on mine. Even if we are eating the same goddamned thing. Nobody finds this at all amusing or charming or cute or anything other than annoying, rude or unacceptable. And it makes liars out of all of them. If I ask what’s in their soup, or burrito or pasta sauce, they’ll say shrimp or beef or some meat I don’t eat.
My girlfriend suggests sending me to finishing school. And she thinks I should do it before her son picks up all of my bad habits. I guess there are other things I should shelter him from. Like biting my toenails, for instance. In a world replete with cheap tools for nail clipping, there really is no reason why I should ever, at the age of ten let alone twenty-nine, be twisted like a pretzel with my toes in my mouth.
Whenever I see him mimicking my lesser features, I sink three percent closer to hell. Luckily he is reasonable, but just when I talk him out of fleecing his nose in public, he starts twiddling his Twinkie. I can’t win. After just two years of observing me act like a chimp, the poor kid’s sponge holes are filling fast with my toxicity.
But it’s the farting that most worries me. You don’t need to look very far to find from whom he learned that ass gas was hilarious (which of course, it is). Now, whenever he farts he laughs and announces, “I farted.” I fear he may have picked up that from me.
While Naomi jokes about sending me to finishing school, my guess is that she secretly relishes in my immaturity. I’m five years younger and these idiosyncrasies are part of my boyish charm, I do hope. Not all of my bad habits, of course. Not the dirty dishes, nor the tornado that seems to follow my every step, and definitely not the turd that I left in her toilet right before we went to Hawaii for a week. But some of them are appreciated. Like how I always, without fail, pick off her plate, or order Justice some other meal that I want. ("What do you say Justice, that Penne Vodka looks pretty good, huh?") But Naomi would definitely prefer if I didn't snake off stranger's plates.
Earlier, at the Funky Monkey, a low-rent Chucky Cheese that we take Justice to from time to time, I spot four perfectly good slices of a cheese pizza on an empty table. I’m only a little hungry and FM only sells it by the pie and there’s really no reason to let all of that food go to waste. It’s not like it is drugged or poisoned because frankly, why bother wasting drugs or poison for the slim chance someone else will eat it. Who scavenges off dinner leftovers, while in the restaurant?
Naomi plays Skeeball with Justice and I move in for the kill. As I sneak my first bite a man walks up to me, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I’m about to faint from embarrassment, that’s what I’m doing. Instead, I say, “Oh God. I thought you were gone.”
“Didn’t you notice our jackets or the purse on the bench?”
No, I didn’t, I’m terribly sorry. “Look, I’ll by you a whole new pizza, really,” I beg. “I just thought it was going to waste.”
He doesn’t want a whole new pizza from me. He just wants me to go away and to not come back or steal any more of his food, thank you, now shoo. He waves me off with the back of his hand and I slink back to Skeeball.
“What were you and that guy talking about?” she asks.
“Oh, nothing in particular. You know me.”
“Yeah, I do know you,” she says, pointing to a string of cheese hanging from my flavor savor. Her head shakes in disapproval, “Off someone else’s table, even?”
I nod in shame.
She finally cracks a smile. A smile that says you’re dangerous and unpredictable and sexy. A smile that says since I can’t take you out in public, not even to the Funky Monkey, we should just stay in bed and ravage each other like animals, like Chimps, like beasts. I’m aroused by that smile and the mischievous acknowledgement of my hunch, that she does find my bad habits amusing and charming and cute. And then her puffy, puffy pillow lips part for the words, “Have fun jerking off tonight.”
posted by Scott Keneally @ 3:26 PM
1 Comments:
dear scott,you must learn to to stop doing things that would lead the Naominator to say those most dreaded words that every man hates to hear and that nightmares are made up of,"have fun jurking off tonight". When I start to think of doing something daring or out of the ordinary in regards to proper behavior(I'm a legend in this area), I always ask myself that one special question. Will this act keep me from getting laid by my lovely wife? If the answer is yes I review my options and do something else that will not result in me having to hear the "have fun jerking off tonight" comment!
Happy wife, happy life!
Now repeat after me. "Yes dear. You're right, I'm wrong,I'm sorry, I'll never do that again, and thank you for bringing that to my attention." Now it's extremely important to look down at your feet and look shameful while you're saying these hollowed words of wisdom, because you really have to see this line.
Good luck!
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