The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions

After a dinner date and a lunch date, I thought it was time to have Biggy over for dinner to show him appreciation for the feeding of moi.

"What would you like for dinner?" I asked him.

"Oh, whatever you'd like to cook is fine. I love all food."

"Okay. How about pasta?"

"Yeah! Pasta sounds good."

"Well, I'll make some pasta," I decided, "And we'll have a nice quiet dinner at my house."

"That sounds great," Biggy said with enthusiasm.

The afternoon of the dinner in question, I ran errands after work in preparation for my guest. Grocery store: prosciutto, pasta, onions, heavy cream, good pancetta. Liquor store: chianti. Home: cat puke/cat hair removal, clean bathroom, sweep, vacuum and dust. Myself: shower, dress, hair, makeup. Music on, candles lit.

Biggy comes up my steps and he enters The Hovel.

"Would you like some wine?" I offered.

"Wine?" he said doubtfully. "Uh, I'm not sure... I'm not a big wine drinker."

"Oh. Take a sniff of the bottle and let me know what you think."

Biggy puts his nose to the neck of the bottle and sniffs. "Well... I'll try it."

"Okay," I said, pouring an inch into his glass.

He tasted the wine, his nose wrinkling slightly. "I don't think this is for me."

I laughed. "That's fine. More for me. I knew I should have gotten some beer."

"Nahhhh... water's good. I'll just have some with ice."

We talk while I make dinner. I begin to slice an onion.

Biggy: "You're putting onions in the pasta?"

"Yeah, I'm sautee-ing them. What-- you don't like onions?"

"I'm just not an onion guy," he said apologetically.

"Biggy, this is why I asked you what you wanted for dinner. If you don't like onions, I wish you would have told me. That way, I wouldn't have onions in the pasta!"

"I like those little white ones," he explained. "I've never had the purple ones."

"Trust me. When these are sauteed, they're sweet. They're really good."

"Okay, T-Bone. It looks really good so far."

I got a bread basket out and started slicing the bread.

"There's olives in the bread?" asked Biggy.

Now I'm annoyed. "Yes. There's olives in the bread. There's onions in the pasta. I suppose you don't like olives either?"

"Not really. But it does look like a good loaf of bread."

"Well, now that you hate everything I've gotten for dinner tonight, how about I just scrap all of it and we order Domino's?"

"No, T-Bone, it all looks terrific."

So I light the candles in the dining room and bring all the food he hates out to the table. God, how insulting, I think to myself.

I start eating (it's pretty good, if I must say so myself) and Biggy picks onions out of his pasta and arranges them along the edge of his plate. The olives soon take up residence beside the onions. I pour myself another glass of wine.

He yawns throughout dinner. This is awful! I think to myself.

Biggy leaves at about 9:00 p.m. "Thanks for dinner," he says, leaning forward to kiss me.

We kiss. "Yeah, you're welcome. Sorry you hated it," I said a bit rudely.

"I didn't hate it! It was a very good dinner," Biggy fibbed.

After closing the door, I trudged back upstairs to The Hovel and stalked into the kitchen. Pots, pans, cooking utensils lay spread across the stove, countertop and in the sink.

I lit a cigarette and surveyed the scene. I mumbled aloud, "Yeah, well-- what the fuck ever. Guess I should have had Bud Lite and sloppy joes."

I went out to the patio, thinking about what had just happened.

The wine, the olives, the onions, the yawning-- what a colossal waste of time, money and effort.