🍽️🤔☯️
“Cluck cluck,” say the chicken as they peck violently at the seeds strewn into their feeding pen.
I’ve started this story with a metaphor. In fact, the two characters I’m describing aren’t chickens at all, but bird-looking ladies seated next to me at a Michelin star restaurant – the place used to have two, but recently had one removed by mean critics who wished to assert their authority by taking away some of the hard earned respect of “undeserving” culinary institutions.
Alike the raptors by which these fellow diners have been inspired, the two women have no issue in running out of topics to cover.
Meanwhile, I’m sat at a table nearest to them, trying to enjoy myself. Alas, resistance is futile: the staccato of their high-pitched yammering rings metallically in my ears.
The phrases produced by each figure combine and flow like rivers in opposite directions past the shoulders of the one seated across.
“BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH,” chimes Lady 1.
“BUT ACTUALLY, I THINK THAT BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH,” interjects Lady 2.
Admittedly, I’m being a bit harsh. There’s definitely more to what they are saying than what I’m describing. I could maybe find out what “more” there is if I bothered to dig deeper and take a peek underneath the insipid surface.
“How can we humans produce so much noise without really saying anything at all. Has the world always been this riddled with irrelevant noise?” I think.
Soon my despair at this aspect of the human condition gives way to understanding. In both these ladies I spy a part of me. Not just a part of me, but me in the flesh.
“How many times have people in public places thought myself and my friends to be as annoying, or even more so, than these two chatterboxes?” I consider.
One of the women, the one who sits on the side of the table opposite from mine, is well dressed. She obviously has expensive taste. I wonder whether she married rich or made money for herself. Her haughty demeanour is uncrackable. I just can’t put her in a box – she could be either kind or both kinds all at once.
The female on my side is dressed much less intricately. In fact, she appears positively plain in comparison to the other elegance on whom we have already focused.
The apparent discrepancy between the ladies arises a curiosity within me. Perhaps it would be worth my time to zone into the utterances being exchanged:
“I dunno…If you’re having trouble making friends, just you know…just like be yourself. Then you’ll find people like yourself. I believe in fate. Things are mean to happen in a certain way. By that logic, you’re gonna meet whomever you’re meant to meet, whenever you’re meant to meet them,” says Lady 1.
“I try to, but I, I just get scared. About what other people think and stuff like that. I wish I could be more of an exciting person like you, but I just can’t put myself up for criticism like that,” replies Lady 2.
Hence, I discover the cause of the anticlimactic attire of Lady 2 and that, despite my initial scepticism, Lady 1 is no bimbo, but actually wise beyond her years.
It doesn’t take me long to pinpoint the crudity of my own assumptions.
“Is Lady 1 really wise beyond her years? Or does she support the opinion of holding onto one’s personality because she has always been well received by others? I might never know; it’s nearly impossible to disentangle one possible reason from another,” I infer.
As a result of my fleeting epiphany, my favor of Lady 1 shifts to the opposite end of the table. I feel for Lady 2 as she just sits there quietly, watching as her friend spews out her opinions. Opinions that are obviously the product of the mind of someone who has become so entrenched in her own world that she can’t see things from any other perspective than her own.
Then, the crux of the intricacy comes to me:
“I like to think of myself as someone similar to Lady 1, but am I really like her at all? Am I just Lady 2 hiding underneath the veil of a more confident being? Or do I not fit into either category at all?”
But these ideas are much too heavy and unanswerable. It’s all too daunting for me to even consider.
I give up on focusing on the topic of my life being definable in terms of such simplicities. Anxiety crawls up in my chest like an eight-legged spider.
At this point I’m only on my appetiser. It’s gonna be at least another hour before I get onto deserts. Probably longer than an hour till I get the bill.
“I must actively involve myself in the now,” I think, forcing myself to keep in mind the words of my favourite yoga guru from that bougie place on 59th street.
Here it should be easy. The hall in which I’m seated is grand and luxurious; the food in front of me has been arranged into creative shapes by the most exquisite culinary master.
Annoyingly, the women pay no attention to my silent resolution. Their clatter continues and reaches a fever pitch.
With my manicured hands, I twirl the ring on my right index finger clockwise.
“I’ve paid quite a bit for this damn restaurant. What if I get hit by a cab on my way home? This could be my last meal on Earth. I’m not gonna waste another second of it paying any attention to such sources of distress,” I think.
My next attempt at concentration is superior to the first. Success is facilitated by examining the elegantly spread hunk of mashed potatoes covered with freeze dried ponzu pickled leek plastered onto the corner of my plate. There are some decorations atop it. One is red and looks like chillies. The other is yellow and looks like corn. It’s probably not corn but something much fancier. Nevertheless, it looks like it’s been fried, or maybe just warmed to a crispy state on a pan.
I picture how my meal would look if the words of the women were sprinkled onto my food. In that case, letters would be arranged onto my mashed potatoes so that the pre-existing colourful bits still remain.
“Then I would be eating something of a much more disfigured color. A dark purple or something like that,” I think.
Upping the intellectual ante of my meal – considering my food in relation to the words spoken – manages to turn the mush on my plate into something disgusting. In my mind the nutritive substance morphs into something that resembles puke.
“Something wrong madame?” asks the waiter, fingering his moustache.
“No, I’m all right thank you. Or actually…I could use another glass of wine,” I respond.
WAST WRTNG 