I met Mike – at least I think her name was Mike – in the gym. I remember that she had pink skin of a piglet, she wore wire -med glasses, and asked me if I was married. As a 22-year-old, this was a question I had never asked, very little as a pick-up line, and in the gym of all places. I said no, I was not, and then, when he asked if I want to go out for some time, I said yes, I will do it.
Would I like to go out with Mike? Honestly, I was not convinced. But I had never gone on a date before, and, since going from suburban Philadelphia to Birmingham, Alabama a few months ago, still had to meet a person who could have been considered as heeds, dating materials. I knew that every man was gay, and most of my free time was spent in gay bar and clubs. Ever since I came, I was a single crush, on a beautiful and attractive architect, who was also my third cousin. And, as he revealed me one night in a night, one night, one night.
So it seemed like a good idea that going on a date with a straight man, one that I was not even related to blood.
Due to no personal experience to draw, I submerged most of my ideas about dating Pop culture well. Memories of my initial film are in that scene Lady and the Tramp In which titular canine shares a plate Spaghet and MeatballFrom there, like shows sex and the City And Ultimate happinessAnd as uneven as films good will Hunting, Tom JonesAnd Fanfare I was conditioned to believe that the restaurant is an essential part of any self-respecting courtship.
Before going to Birmingham for intern with a publishing company, I attended a women’s college, where someone was shy both as heterosexual and congenital, my erotic longing was reserved for sulky sulky British actors. Dating, as I saw most of the films seen, looked fun and demented: on one side, you can be taken to a good restaurant, or can be flattering with gifts, or even gifts, or even gifts Kissed in a tusker popy areaOn the other hand, you can be dumped, or cheat, or forced to use your date of body fluids Hair productCreating it in a real restaurant seemed like a type of prize, or a summit that was scaled: It meant that someone liked you that you liked you to participate in the ceremony of temptation in public Do, and probably spend money on you. Movies and TV always made it so sophisticated and glamorous, the real trace of graduation from adolescent growth cocoon to foreign, feather maturity.
A few days after the Mike gave his number, he called and we made a plan. It was in its entirety, some to eat, somewhere, in each other’s company. We will find out when we met.
Where would Mike like to go? Was he a steakhouse kind boy (whatever man I met in Birmingham was a steakhouse type man), or more of a greasy teaspoon? I had no idea because it was in the late 90s and our date was going to be in the land ahead of time, without social media or some productive stacking on the way of Google. There was no tinder profile to provide clues of Mike’s musical preferences or understanding of basic grammar. Even there was not a linkedIn, where I could verify that he was a architectural draftsman that he claimed to be. Mike remained a cipher, preventing any information beyond the routine of his physical appearance, clothing and workout. This will fall on our choice of restaurants to throw some light on our degree of compatibility.
On the evening of our due date, we pulled our cars to a specified meeting place next to each other, as we were demonstrating some kind of host-for-Hathiyar swap. I met her car and started driving. Where, we still did not know.
It seems like a good place to stop and say that people believe a lot of things about Birmingham which are not true. For example, there are no gay people or Jews in it, two perceptions that I have to correct more often than counting. Some people may also assume that Birmingham lacks good food options. Again, wrong: There were many restaurants that I was happy to go. sweet little Chase luluFor example, with your red-filled dining room and estimable quiche, or Chris Hastings Hot and Hot Fish ClubIts name is the announcer of a feverish Beyu Specsee, or Surin WestI ever ate sushi in the first place. Even PF Chang, the summit mall in all ways, would have been good. I loved PF Chang because everything about it was big: part, taste, table.
But we did not go to any of these restaurants. I don’t remember why. I remember that Mike’s passenger is sitting on the seat because we were targetless as a flowing weather balloons through the night. As I slowly realized that we did not have much, I came to know about the negative space between us where there should be splendor. I also came to know about the geography of Birmingham, the city in which I was born and visited the family in almost every summer: it never looked so huge before, yet it was so empty of the possibility.
Finally, the car was trimmed with a car dealership and strip mall on a parkway, Mike put on a brake and said, “What about here?”
We had a Kenny Rogers roster in front of us. In my memory, its windows shone with the crying light of the bathroom of an airport. NoI thought “Okay,” I said.
I will never set foot in a Kenny Rogers Rosters, which is no longer present in the United States, yet, with curiosity, has found in the success of modern day. Parts of AsiaAs I do not come from a country music family, I connected Kenny Rogers to most Dole pineapple advertisementBut here he was a chicken man. A chicken, stake, ribs, burgers and sausage men – Kenny Rogers menu was 98 percent of animal parts. I did not tell Mike that I did not eat meat, and he did not ask. So I defaulted for a strategy working at barbecue restaurant and went to the sides: Mac and Paneer, Choleselav and Little Ramekins of Stemed Vegetables. When I placed my order to the server, Mike saw me as I requested a basket of serious ears. Then he ordered a rack of ribs.
When the server left, we tried more on the way to the conversation, but here, as in the car, it proved to be a constipation case. It is difficult for me to remember what, in fact, we talked about – what I can say is that it strengthened our common base. It was not that he manifests himself as a fierce misconception or even unpleasant person; It was more that my strange did not align with its strange, and as a result, we had almost nothing to talk. By the time the food came, Kenny Rogers Roasters taught me what I need to know about the mike, that is, I never felt so lonely in another person’s company. I was confident that the date of a restaurant was a naturally romantic construction. In my imagination, there was a restaurant where the adult went under the table to play footca and order a small, melted chocolate cake with two forks before stumbling to drink red wine and sealing the deal. This was not the place where you went to eat flecid carrot coins and saw a person whose last name you did not know the chaat sauce with his thick fingers one by one.
As I was sitting there, my ideal image of the date of the romantic restaurant was evaporating around me, I was facing with the bay that we imagine that life would be, and what it really is. What to say, disappointment. What I have not yet understood is that with the right person, the date of the romantic restaurant was what I wanted, and that with acting as a remedy for compatibility, the option of restaurant is the option of the connection connection Can enable and find expression. It was wrong to do miracles from a restaurant, or to expect a miracle in itself; It came down to two people sitting from each other. In addition, the dates of those film restaurants benefited from a significant benefit that we did not do: a script.
In retrospect, I think I was very strict on Mike: while Kenny Rogers Roster was not the goods on which the second dates were made, it was also, in all fairness, in all fairness, a final resort, that is, the very last place that you finish Want on a date, perhaps different from a newspaper crime blotter. As long as we pull into that parking, I suspect that we both knew that it was not going anywhere, so it could go to Kenny Rogers Roster. We had already failed in compatibility test; The restaurant was our participation trophy.
And yet he did not stop Mike, once he took me to his car, asking if he could kiss me. I would like to tell you that I was Dimor with tact. But I was 22 years old and was tired of writing a stone smaller than a stone in a Kenny Rogers roster, which felt like a full calendar week. So I laughed at Mike’s face and said, “I don’t care.”
I still crang when I remember that they leave their mouths, and Mike interprets them as a instruction to kiss me anyway. Now I knew that someone loved to sit in a restaurant, who was eventually being kissed, and it was not at all what I thought or hope it would be. It will take a long time. And yet, Kenny Rogers Rosters did a valuable job: it gave me the information that I wanted, and a meal that I tried, I never forgot.
