#jeffrey's

Jeffrey 1 aka 

Tonight a generous ex-boyfriend took me to Jeffrey's. Restaurants in general make me giddy. I grew up very poor and during a time when eating out as a matter of course (pardon the pun) wasn't what it is today. I didn't eat a restaurant meal until I started working in restaurants as a teen.

Now I'm past the halfway point of my life. I have had the amazing fortune of eating all over the world, in all kinds of places. I've had sushi in Tokyo, empanadas in Buenos Aires, falafel in Israel (and Paris!), curry in London, the most amazing pasta ever at a little joint in Hawaii, and elotes on a cobblestone street corner in a tiny Mexican village. High end, low end, I don't give a shit if I'm eating a P. Terry's veggie burger or some frou-frou hipster concoction: it's NEVER not exciting to me. And I will not ever forget what it was like being poor, both as a kid and later as a young adult, when just having food at all was a big deal.

All that said, I get a certain kind of extra giddiness at places where the bill for two totals enough to cover the cost of inoculating an entire Republican state against assholitis (would that such a vaccine existed). I look around at all the people who appear to the manner born, and I feel like I'm getting away with something. And I also feel like if I lick my plate with my finger that's cool, too, because all along I knew and they knew that I was to the (much) plainer born.

So tonight, before we ordered, I announced to my date that I needed to visit the ladies. I then set my napkin on the table. But before I could get up to hit the loo, the waiter (one of apparently six assigned to our table) came by and said something. I couldn't hear him (or more likely simply couldn't comprehend him). I asked him to repeat himself, which I think he did two or three times before I understood him. Well, I understood his WORDS but not THEIR MEANING.

He said, "Do you want a black napkin?"

Startled and puzzled, I said, "No, thank you."

Did I want a black napkin? DID I WANT A BLACK NAPKIN? I glanced around at all the incredibly white, incredibly blinged, incredibly cosmetically surgically enhanced people around me. Did THEY have black napkins? Was this some sort of punking or racial profiling?

A BLACK NAPKIN? Was there a correct answer? Did I blow it?

I needed help finding the restroom. A waiter walked me there. "Um, why would I want a black napkin?" I asked him.

He explained to me that since I'd put my white napkin on the table, he assumed I wasn't pleased with it, and that perhaps I would prefer a black napkin since I was wearing black. I WISH I'd told him I was wearing black because it wouldn't as readily show off the ketchup stains I was hoping to acquire. Instead I just told him, "You know, mostly I just use paper napkins."

He said he did, too.

Post loo I inquired as to other available napkin colors. Alas they only have black or white. Tomorrow I resume my real life, where I will sit outside at cafes and wipe my hands on little dogs at the next table over.