This one time I was sitting in a little cafe\/restaurant thing that was about as wide and long as the main hallway in the house where I grew up — and it really wasn’t a big house. The tables alternated which of the two long walls they were up against, making the waiter sashay in a zig-zag to get through them when he was in a hurry. I remember wondering if they had a clause in their zoning or whatever that allowed them to specify femmes (male or female) that had the right sashay-rhythm and were stick-thin enough to fit between the tables.<\/p>\n
I remember I had a cup of cream of cucumber soup and a toasted bacon and avocado sandwich, but I don’t remember a thing about why. Not a damned thing.<\/p>\n
I don’t remember why I was there at all, but I remember rushing to keep from being late. I don’t remember who I was supposed to be meeting, and once I was sitting down, I never gave it a second thought. I don’t remember why I ate anything, because I had just finished off some Thai leftovers before cleaning up and putting on my makeup. I don’t remember why I brought the largest purse I own that barely matches my overcoat. And I don’t remember at all why I thought it would be a good idea to bring that huge pig-sticker my uncle gave me before I took off for the big city.<\/p>\n
Though now that I think about it, the big bag is the only one that the knife fits into with any amount of subtlety.<\/p>\n
I do<\/em> remember not giving a second thought about which dry white wine would go best with the soup and sandwich. And I remember thinking it all tasted lovely, and that I would miss the place when it dried up and blew away, like all the good restaurants did that had the poor foresight to rent that little coin-slot between the storefront evangelical church and the stairway up to the mysterious windowless nightclub that had never been open during the times I had been in this area of town.<\/p>\n I do<\/em> remember lingering over a plate with a small pyramid of thumbnail-sized chocolate-covered raspberry tortes, wondering if I had been there long enough yet.<\/p>\n It occurs to me now — just now — that whole point of the exercise might have been to be away<\/em> from someplace rather than to be specifically there<\/em>, but I don’t remember who or what I would have been avoiding either.<\/p>\n But I do<\/em> know that this is the thing I think about whenever I want to yell at people for not thinking about why they do the things they do. I mean, seriously. I’m bright. Whipsmart. And if I can have an Alzheimeresque episode like this and not find it at all strange until more than two weeks after it happens, then who the hell knows why any<\/em> of us do the things we do?<\/p>\n [*]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This one time I was sitting in a little cafe\/restaurant thing that was about as wide and long as the main hallway in the house where I grew up — and it really wasn’t a big house. The tables alternated which of the two long walls they were up against, making the waiter sashay in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1rL5j-5L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/xal.li\/eri\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}