Love and other bad ideas, pt two

[Part One is Here]

“Waiter!”, I called, “a shot of gin with a rabbit embryo floating in it and give the lady whatever she wants”

Hands on hips, she admonished me, “We aren’t at a table and rabbit embryos don’t float”. So, she was well-educated and familiar with the specific weights of rabbit embryos. What luck! The kind of luck where you tip a stripper a dollar and no one else tipped her at all so she sits at your table to teach the rest of them a lesson… and then it turns out she’s prone to screaming in the bathroom and her boyfriend is a pro-basketball player. Yeah… just like that! We found my table; and, my waitress, who it turned out was NOT related to Hitler or a zombie, handed us menus.

“If you need help in ordering”, I told the blonde, “I am a gourmet”

She responded, coyly, “Really? Prove it”

“Okay. Did you know that if you soak a chicken in buttermilk for an hour, it helps it relax and go to sleep?”

“Everyone knows that”

“Okay, how ’bout: There are five flavors: Sweet, like sugar; bitter, like coffee; sour, like lemon or lime; salty, like salt; and umami, like lightly salted water at the bottom of a dumpster…”

She leaned forward, “So you ARE a gourmet”

“They say you can substitute a quarter cup of applesauce for an egg when cooking; but, I’ve found it makes a pretty uninspiring omelet. “

“Enough! You’ve made your point”

I held out my hand, “I’m Charlie, by the way”

“You don’t look it”, the blonde replied. Her handshake reminded me that I needed to pick up some fish the next day.

“I’ll bet you”, I said, lying through my teeth, “have a beautiful name”

She blushed slightly… just red enough to bring about an epileptic fit in one of the patrons at the bar. “I was named after my mother”

“Really? So what’s your name?”

“‘Mom’”

“Mom?”

“Do you think that’s the reason most of the men I end up with have an Oedipus Complex?”

I shrugged, “Oedipus could’ve done a lot worse, I suppose. She was a rich widow who had political connections. Way better than my mother who wouldn’t even pay for dinner when I took her out”

“You’re funny”, Mom answered, “I like a man who can make me laugh. Most women do”

“Then, why do you women always end up with some buff sociopath with the eloquence of a child in a coma?”

“Obviously, it’s because we are worried that, if we dated you, some other woman would steal you away”

“Wow! You’re good”

Our waitress came back, sullen for some reason. “Hello, my name is Edna Goehrig, I’ll be your waitress. The special today is mussels in a white wine sauce. The extra special, today, is mussels in a better white wine sauce. The secret extra special today is mussels in a white wine sauce”

“Why is that the secret special?”, I asked.

“Because those mussels were stolen and the wine bottle was used in a murder”, the waitress answered, “Tell no one”

I ordered the Monte Cristo, but it was not available due to the fact that it was tunneling out of the basement and plotting revenge against the sandwiches that had framed it. I ended up ordering the veal with foie gras and some hydrochloric acid on the side so I could blind any pigeons that wandered too near. She ordered the heart-healthy salad and the heart-neutral chicken breast as well as the heart-destroying chocolate-dipped pork rinds.

“Can I call you something besides ‘Mom’?”, I asked.

She glanced up at me and I noticed her eyes were… green. She smiled warmly at me for the first time and said, “Well, there’s my biblical name”

“Sounds good. What is it?”

“Exodus. You can call me ‘Ex’ for short”

“No good”, I complained, “I was married once and I already use that name for the woman I divorced”

“Then, call me ‘Simone’”, she replied, and picked up her menu again. “Want to split a baked Alaska?”

“I think meringue is great if you want something that tastes like nothing and looks like cow slobber”

“It baffles me why you’re alone”

I nodded smugly. She may not have liked me, but at least I baffled her. And, once baffled, is sex very far off? Sometimes, when seducing a woman, disorientation is a man’s friend. Someone once spun me in a circle a dozen or so times and I became so disoriented, I voted for David Duke thinking he was that girl in the cut-offs from Dukes of Hazzard...

Something told me that I’d found the woman of my dreams… and not that dream where I was naked for my physics test and my teacher spanked me and he was my aunt for some reason. The other dream… the one where I found the woman of my dreams who would play games with me like “Naked Physics” and “Canasta”…