Originally Posted Thursday, December 12, 2013
Finally, though, I was able to leave traffic to pull into the real but entirely empty parking lot of the shopping complex where the restaurant is located. Not a good sign at Christmas, I thought. There would be little to look at tonight. Approaching the restaurant, I saw no one I recognized. Three waiters who didn't recognize me looked back blankly, so I had to ask if it was O.K. to seat myself. It was and I did, but before I let myself settle in, I got up to leave.
"Is everything O.K." asked a waiter.
"Nope. I can't stand the music."
Some radio station was blaring out of the recessed ceiling speakers.
"Would you like to sit inside?" he queried. I wanted to tell him that if I wanted to sit inside, I wouldn't have taken a table outside as the place was empty and I could obviously sit wherever I chose, but I just shook my head and waved. It was a shame, I thought saying goodbye to the many nights I had enjoyed sitting outside drinking warm sake and eating tuna. Another thing gone.
I wondered what I would eat, but I knew I wanted gin and I was out, so I went to the liquor store across the street to buy some Hendrix. It is not the place I normally go. It is an outbuilding that is owned by the big chain grocery store that it sits next to. Hendrix sells for $29. I know this. That is what every liquor store in town sells it for, but it was $35 here. I turned to walk out, and the desk clerk asked me if I needed help finding anything.
"Sure," I said in bad humor, "a decently priced bottle of gin."
I had to re-enter the hideous traffic to go two blocks to the other liquor store on the highway. I took my life into my hands trying to cross four lanes of traffic on a Wednesday night.
By the time I had the gin, I had decided I would just eat at home. I didn't want to cook, so I got back into the car, re-entered the traffic, and drove to the grocery store. As quickly as I could, I grabbed a can of tuna and an organic frozen dinner to throw it into, picked up some beer and some frozen edamame and headed to the checkout. The lines were long, the cashiers slow. By the time I got back to my car, it was late. I had spent an hour and a half driving around and getting pissed off. I would have been finished with my workout if I'd gone to the gym.
Home finally, I put the things down on the countertop, walked over and turned on my computer, then began to make myself a drink which I took back to the computer. The drink was lousy somehow, and the fucking wi-fi wasn't working. I've been having trouble with my router or whatever it is called, that little black box into which all the wires go. It will work until I stream something, and then it just quits and I have to unplug it and replug it and then things work again for awhile. But lately the time it is working is shorter and shorter. I was wanting to download "The Apartment" to my iPad so I could read after dinner. I wanted someone who was responsible for any part of my unenjoyable night in front of me. But all I had were the results, the abstractions. Unplug, replug. . . unplug, replug. . . unplug, replug. Finally I had some slow form of internet connectivity that was as fast as dial-up.
Why is this drink so bad, I kept wondering?
The cat was under my feet and whining and was, I was certain, part of the conspiracy to drive me mad. Afraid of what impulse I might give into, I put her outside where she had no desire to be. I microwaved the edamame and sat down in front of the television. Nothing, of course, was on, but a movie I never desired to see that won an Oscar or two, "Beasts of the Southern Wild" was just starting, so I decided to see if I was wrong. After half an hour, I was certain I wasn't. It was one of "those" movies made for middling minds, I thought deciding to put on HBOGO to watch "Treme" instead. I threw the frozen meal into the microwave and dumped the can of chicken into the edamame bowl which still had some soy sauce in the bottom. The cat was screaming at the top of her lungs. I knew that if I let her in I would kill her, so I let her scream.
"That's how I feel you little motherfucker!" I yelled ridiculously raising my hands and doing a sarcastic victory dance around the kitchen. "That's exactly how I feel!"
In five minutes, dinner was ready. I poured a glass of wine and repaired to the dinner tray set up before the television. Yes, that's right, a scene from a nightmare. That's my romantic life, I thought. This is it.
"Treme" played for a little bit. Then the quality of the image began to fade. Then the sound got fuzzy. Then it stopped. I thought about stomping the little black router to death.
Dinner done, I opened the door and let the cat in. I had, of course, left some chicken for her, and I set it down on the floor so she could eat. In a little while, ablutions done, scotch in hand, I took my iPad to the bedroom. It was nine o'clock. Five pages into "The Apartment," I was beginning to fall asleep.
Look at the girl in the picture above. You'd never know that her life is much, much more difficult than mine.
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