A bowl of cheap-y-o's for breakfast

Working in the hospitality industry, I have learned to accept all responsibility for everything from overcooked hamburgers to the nazi invasion of Poland. If it happened and a guest is in some way upset about it it is my fault and the first order of business is to take responsibility and apologize for it. This does not come naturally to most people. Most people, who have been trained for real jobs and careers, are taught to defend their choices and absolve themselves of responsibility. People naturally have a tendency to "lay the blame" if something went wrong and it was completely out of their control. But in a restaurant, just about everything is someone else's fault. And yet, we never place the blame elsewhere.   It breaks down like this:

percentage of time a server is directly responsible for bad experience: 18%

percentage of time we take the blame: 100%

This is because we're the only one's getting tipped. It is in our best interest to simply take the problem and put our own spin on it, then resolve it and look like the hero for buying their soggy mashed potatoes or weak drink (but really, after 5, what drink isn't weak?).

Case in point: post wedding breakfast. 30 guests, half under the age of thirty the rest over. The first category is in a good mood, the latter has as stank attitude from the start. Stank attitude is the worst because it means the guest came in a bad mood and will leave in a bad mood and in the middle is looking for any reason to blame that mood on you. If you so much as neglect to drop a teaspoon at the table he'll demand a discount on his bill. Servers hate these tables. Examples of stank tables:

fighting couples

hung-over old people

groggy old people

old people

jet lagged business men

people from Connecticut

I, personally, look at these tables as a challenge and try to flip them. These people are expecting you to pick up on their bad attitude and mirror it right back to them, but if you go out of your way to be nicer to the stank guests they appreciate it more. It's like pouring ice water on a hot surface as opposed to a room temperature surface, the effect is that much more exaggerated. And with thirty guests the tip was going to be included anyway so even if I failed at least I'd be getting paid.

The table ran smoothly the young people mostly got pancakes and hot chocolate and the old people got eggs and heartburn. Then, after everyone ate, the plates were cleared away, the party was getting up to leave, and the check was dropped one of the men came up to me with a serious look.

"Our pancakes were inedible," he said.

Let me pause this scene to examine the nuances of this complaint. Here is a person complaining about an item that someone else ordered and ate using over exaggerated language only after looking at the bill. This is a heart-healthy bowl of cheap-y-o's. The old man, father of the groom probably, is now having buyers remorse after offering to pay for the breakfast. He sees a six hundred dollar check in front of him and his frugality alert is code red. He immediately goes into disaster mode and complains to the first person he sees in an apron.

"I'm so sorry about that," I respond. "However, nobody who ordered the pancakes complained and most of them were eaten.

"Well they were worse than McDonalds pancakes, I mean how can you run a restaurant if you can't even make pancakes."

"That's a good point. If the people who had ordered them would have said something I would have been happy to exchange them or bring them something else."

"Well I don't think I should have to pay for sub-par pancakes."

"I see."

"Because almost nobody could even eat them they just tasted awful."

"I'm sure."

"Just, really bad."

"Yeah."

Like dogs, you just have to let their spurts of energy run their course. Most people can only complain so long before they run out of steam. In the end I took five of the ten pancake orders off the bill,not because he was right but because it didn't matter to me. My tip, included in the bill, is calculated on the subtotal before discounts, so comping half the bill wouldn't change my outcome. I could care less that this was a clear cut case of I-don't-want-to-pay-my-bill-itis, and he wasn't so much complaining as much as prolonging to process as long as possible. Basically, most servers will give the guest anything in the restaurant just to make them shut up. If it makes them stop bothering us we'd give them all the cutlery and some of the plates.

You see a server is going to do anything in his power to get the most money he can out of you first and foremost, and once he has accomplished that task the second priority is to get you out of the restaurant as fast as possible. Every decision we make is to accomplish those two this get paid and get you to leave. And only if the server is good and uses the right amount of finesse will those two steps not only be completely unnoticeable, but it will actually seem like you were in control the whole time when really we played you like a 8-bit game console.

Attack of the bubbies (second course)

There is something you should all know. It is incredibly rude, presumptuous and incredibly none of your business to ask a person at thier job, "so what would you actually like to do for a living?" Subtext: your job is so menial and insignifficant that you can't possibly be here by choice and as I am clearly in a superior position to you so I am going to make you uncomfortable by drawing attention to the fact that your life is meaningless. Let us rephrase this question in a different setting. Would you go up to a smelly dirty nappy-haired homeless person and ask, "so what would you really like to look like? Do you ask the middle aged grocery bagger at Walmart, "So what did you want to do before you gave up on yourself?" And yet, in the food and beverage industry, it seems commonplace to ask the servers, "So what do you actually want to do?"

The segue into this topic is often, "What did you go to school for," or, "Where did you grow up?" As service professionals we are often judged as canines by our pedigree, appearance, and sometimes performance. I'm not exactly sure why people are so interested. You never read a Zagat review stating that the food was great but all the servers were from broken homes in second rate towns. No, this is something more pretentious and psychological. Just as handlers must assert their dominance over a prized pooch, the people who dine out in restaurants like to assert their dominance over you in subtler ways.

Servers joke that working in a restaurant should be mandatory the way that military service is mandatory in some countries. But, really, it's not a bad idea. I mean when you look at people like our republican candidate Mitt Romney, you just know he's never had to carry dirty plates or scoop fries into a cardboard container. This is someone who's never worked at the bottom tier a day in his life--and I guarantee you he's also the guy asking servers in restaurants where they grew up and what they went to school for.

So it came as no surprise that my (old) ladies who lunch wanted to know EVERYTHING about me. It may be a class thing or it could have been an age thing. Old people tend to want to know everything about you tot. This I like to assume is merely early onset Alzheimer's and they have simply mistaken me for one of their grandchildren. But these bubbies seemed determined to learn everything that was to know about the man pouring their wine. And then the inevitable question came, the medicine ball lobbed at my head with curious gravity,

"So, what do you really want to do for a living?"

And as rude as it was, it did make me think. Not about what I really wanted to do, but about the question and its reflective power over people. Since it was apparently okay to ask this information of me then surely I could use this information against others. Sure enough, after a night of being bubbied alive I was armed with my secret weapon of the day. And, after a grueling argument with the dry cleaner in my building about (A) whether or not my shirt was clean (answer: no), and (B) whether or not it was their job to get the shirt clean (answer: um, what the hell else am I paying you for? to staple pieces of blue paper into my buttonholes), I stopped and went silent. The dry cleaner looked alarmed as he was clearly expecting this argument to escalate to fisticuffs. Then I looked right in his eyes and said,

"So, what do you really want to do for a living?" A look of confusion crossed his face and was immediately shaken off.

"Just gimmie the shirt I'll see what I can do," he said, grabbing the shirt from my hands. I was impressed. I would have to test this out on others. Think, if I had only been armed with this simple and elegant response to any argument in the past. How different might my life look now? I was surprised by how often I was presented with an opportunity to use the line.

I went to my usual cheap haircut emporium, which is basically a haircut factory. I walked in, asked for my usual girl Moniqua, and was disappointed to learn she was no longer working there. I instead got a 300-pound man named Maurice who had no idea who Nick Wooster is and even less of idea of why I'd want my hair to look like his. You should all know that he looks like this:

 I then gave a very precise account of how Moniqua used to cut my hair, buzzing the side with the size one clippers and then fading slightly to my far left part, square back, leave most of the length and keep the front longer than the back. Then, as he was shaving off the hair in the back his phone rang, and not only did he pick up but he kept cutting my hair with his head tilted talking on the phone propped against his shoulder.

It is at this point I pressed the emergency button located on the underside of every salon chair and a flashing red light and alarm went off, sprinklers came on, people went running every direction and Tabitha Coffey burst through the door calling for backup on a walkie talkie. Maurice was tackled to the ground by a group of four lesbian football players wearing all black and carried by forklift off to some bad barber prison in Utah where he will be forced to perform Flowbee bowl cuts for mormons for the rest of his days.

And what really happened is after hanging up the phone and finishing the back I swiveled around in my chair and said,

"Maurice I'm going to stop you right there. I'd like someone else to finish my haircut."

"Excuse me?" Then I swiveled back around very theatrically and said to him in the mirror,

"Tell me, what do you really want to do for a living?" The manager of the salon was cutting my hair in two minutes flat. You can't put a price on good service, but for bad service the price is $15; the haircut came out so-so, but the knowledge that with one sentence I could deliver a crushing blow to anybody doing any job anywhere was priceless.

Then, my school (The Art Institute of Chicago) called asking for me to renew my membership to the museum so that I wouldn't miss all of the great new exhibits coming up. I asked if the man on the other end of the line knew that I was an alum and had already invested $120,000 into The Art Institute. And in the middle of telling him I wasn't interested in paying one more dime for something that should be offered for free to graduates I stopped and went silent. I knew what had to be said.

"Sir? Are you still there? Sir?," he said.

"So tell me," I started.

Attack of the bubbies (part 1)

Someone once coined the term waking up on the wrong side of the bed to describe a day the starts off wrong and just gets worse. Morning mishaps aside, nothing compares to starting your day off with the breakfast of champions (or hotel employees): chicken balls. Yes, the chicken balls have returned. If you missed my prior exposé on the chicken cordon ew that my work likes to serve/torture us with from time to time let me offer a recap:

A piece of chicken is hammered into an unnatural egg shape, covered in some kind of gray meat, and deep fried into caloric oblivion and in the middle of this egg of despair is a bubble of hot melted butter that will explode upon impact. It's like a ticking time bomb of diabetes, something concocted by a demonic Paula Deen in the umpteenth circle of hell. And, for service professionals such as myself, the sight of said chicken balls is usually the catalyst for the realization that today is just not going to be your day.

From the hells stovetop, to a skillet with less torturous intent our chef was initiating the three courses for a wedding tasting. Being a hotel restaurant we often host tasting meals for the wedding dinners that will be held upstairs in the banquet room. These meals usually consist of two to four people, sometimes a wedding planner with a swatch book of tablecloths, and are widely regarded as easy money by the servers. It's next to no effort, the food and wine is all pre ordered and the gratuity is included. So, starting my day off with this table should have been a breeze. The banquet event order asked the table be set for five so we se the table in a quiet booth in the back of the restaurant. The hostess let the culinary team know as soon as the party arrived. I prepared water to be brought out to the table. This is the last moment before we completely lost control of the table.

Working in Chicago, I'm no stranger to the bubbies. They come downtown in shawled clusters on every bus line that stretches to the far reaches of the city. These Oak Brook ladies who lunch throw a scarf over their white helmets of hair and flock to the department stores, first Neiman Marcus to feel all of the clothes and then Nordstrom to buy them. They are notoriously odd (not necessarily bad) tippers. They use their ancient shades of lipstick as rouge. They've been wearing Chanel no.5 since it debuted. By now you should know exactly the ladies I'm talking about. And no matter how much money you make off of the table it's never, EVER, worth it.

So imagine my delight when eight of these chattering Northshore yentas throw their swatch books and gigantic Louis Vuitton hold-alls (and they do hold everything imaginable) all over my section and take up four of my tables. I swooped in like an overeager sheep dog and tried my hardest to herd them into the booth. But, they insisted on sitting at this table first to talk and then moving over to that table later to eat. Yes, that accounted for two of the tables utilized. I looked at the other.

"We're just going to use those to store our bags and such. You don't mind right, shut up Sharon he doesn't mind. Tell her you don't mind."

"I, uh, don't mind."

"See, he doesn't mind. Where's our sales girl, that nice girl I talked to on the phone she's meeting us here right?"

"Oh, yes she'll--"

"Be a doll and go get her, we don't have all day sweetheart. And see if you can find us some bread to pick at I'm famished."

I knew just how to deal with this situation. On the patio there was a fire department nozzle and I'm sure we kept a hose somewhere in the back for spraying away mass protesters or in case of a zombie apocalypse or whatnot. The hose might not reach all the way into the back of the restaurant but with it's power and range I'm sure it could clear the bar area and at least ruin a few of their pashminas sending them running for the nearest Macy's to see if they could exchange it for a non-ruined one, and any stragglers could be--

"Hello? Hello? Anyone in there? Also do you have any mints? My friend would appreciate a mint she's got breath like a mummy eating day old fondue. Where's he going? Oh he's probably going to get bread. Don't forget the butter!"

I saw their sales rep walking through the kitchen,

"Hurry! They're here."

"Who's here?"

"Your wedding tasting they're here, they've taken over my section there's coach bags and scarves everywhere help."

"Fuck my life. They're early. Just put them at a table I'll be right down," she said hustling away as fast as her pumps would take her.

"I'm a server, not a shepherd."

The chef hurried to get the first course prepared, thinking that food would be the best way to corral them into a table. I was about to pour the first bottle of wine, but when I got the the table they were all gone, except for their stuff which was everywhere. It looked like Bloomingdales accessories department has exploded in my section, spraying fabric, purses and tissues everywhere. I found our hostess and asked where they all went.

"They're in the ballroom looking at the space."

"But the food's all ready," I said, now frazzled and feeling anxious. The woman from sales came back and looked around at the fray.

"Do I smell hairspray?"

"I'll eat it the food," the hostess chimed in hopefully.

Back in the kitchen the h'orderves were ready but before a lamb lollipop even made it out the door I stopped them, informed them our tasters had gone MIA and regretfully informed them that there may be more than 5 people eating. The chef looked down woefully at the skewered coconut shrimp and herbed cheese phyllo spread. He tossed them on the line and the vultures descended upon them. Twenty minutes later the bubbies were back, seated (at yet another table), taking matchbooks out of their purses to fix the slight wobble on the table, asking if the food was kosher, asking if I was married, asking if I liked this shade of lavender, where'd I grow up, what's this orange sauce, is that tap water, where's your fish from?

"You okay?" the chef asked when I came back to get the salad course.

"It's like serving eight of my grandmother."

"Cheer up, you've got another party of lawyers coming in at 7." My pout stayed the same. "Maybe one of them will be single and gay and, well, into aprons." I grabbed a leftover lamp lollipop and put it down. At least I didn't have to eat chicken balls.

Chubby Hubby and another's hubby

The last week has been full of some really bizarre revelations about attraction. Here's yesterday:

I have the day off. I go visit my H&M boy, hit the chiropractor, get coffee, walk around Michigan Ave for a while, stop in Brooks Brothers to pick up a shirt, hit Neiman's, Bloomies, and Nordstrom. Elbow through queens at Topman and pick up a new tie. Get more coffee. Stop in to visit my shoe guy. Get more coffee. And I do all of this wearing a cute outfit, well groomed hair, yadda yadda. I mean there were more eligible gays at Topman alone than Sidetrack on a saturday night. I shoulda been getting checked out more than a library book. But no, not even a nibble on my line. So I go home, shower throw on a pair of sweat pants from Target and an XRT tee shirt I nabbed from a lost and found bin in the laundry room and complete the look with a baseball cap that says OCEAN CITY NJ. Then, after laundry and dishes I decide to run down to 7-11 to grab some ice cream, which I intended on making a night out of.

In the two seconds I walk out my door and across the street I meet a handsome older Ed Harris type who tells my I'm the most attractive man he's met in a long time and asks me out to dinner. I almost dropped my Chubby Hubby.

"Let me get this straight," I said, picking cat hair off of my tee shirt, "you want to take me out to dinner?"

"Yes."

"Right now, dressed like a real housewife of the trailer park."

"Yes."

"And you're going to buy me food, drinks, and tell me I'm good looking."

"Yes."

"And afterwards, I don't have to put out?"

"If that's what you want." After he says this I start looking around and crane my neck out. "What are you looking for?"

"A pizza place, that's the only place I can get into looking like this."

And so, we go out to dinner, have great conversation, he even lets me order pepperoni and jalepeno and then pretends to like it, watches me stuff my face and drink two beers, walks me home and gives me his card to call him.

Now, the fine print is he's recently separated from his wife because of obvious gay tendencies, traveling on business, and too old for me but still. I got a free hot meal and two hours of being doted on plus nice conversation and company and I got to do it all in sweatpants (which is basically the uniform of deep-dish pizza places).

Now don't get me wrong, as excited as I am to get all this attention for dressing like a schlub I'm not gonna hang up the Brooks Brothers just yet. Because I don't put on cute outfits and dress up to get attention from other people. I do it because it makes me feel good about myself and I like the way I look and feel in tailored clothing. But, I will say the experience did make me rethink all of those guys wearing baseball caps in their Match.com profile pictures. Maybe they're on to something.

Singled out

In my building there is a sign on the pool area that says: "No one may enter or swim alone." Singles everywhere know the fear of this sign. Though there are few places where you will be barred for being a single there are many that will make you feel uncomfortable for not being a double. I mean, is there any restaurant that has a table set for one? And can you really go see a movie alone sans judgement? Even food has away of discriminating, most desserts are portioned to share. I used to wonder why so many business men choose to eat at the bar rather than just sit back in a low chair and have their own table. And now, as a single, I understand. There is an invisible barrier, like those electric fences for dogs, keeping singles away from certain places and events.

And so, as fall wedding season approaches I near the unavoidable circumstance of unceremoniously attending a plus one ceremony minus one. And usually I can pull out my usual get out of wedding free cards: fein poverty--plane tickets are so expensive, my tux is at the cleaners, my cat has mono. But not for this wedding, this time I'm actually involved. Not in a groomsmen kind of way but in a I'm-drawing-the-wedding-certificate kind of way. In the quaker tradition of hand drawn wedding certificates, my good friend Annie has asked that I design and draw the certificate that will be signed by all the attendees. Kitty with sniffles wont get me out of this one.

And I'm excited to be tasked with such a sentimental and important piece of the ceremony but I do feel as though my situation is somewhat making a mockery of me. I mean, half a year ago I was waving my big stupid relationship around in everyone's face. 'I'm so in love," and, 'I'm going to spend the rest of my life with him--or the rest of his life cause he'll probably die first but that's okay,' and getting my big drunk red face photographed in a gay rag sitting on his lap. I was so proud of my big fat gay relationship. And afterwards I felt like such an idiot, not for being in the relationship but for blasting it though my social megaphone the way I did. I wish I had just had a nice quiet affair minus all the tumultuous bullshit. This may sound weird for such a loudmouth blogger as myself but there is something I miss about privacy. The nice quiet behind closed doors kind of relationship, where nobody feels a need to gossip about you or speculate about your pending breakup.

And lately it seems like everyone has had nothing to talk about but relationships. Why won't he call me? Why can't I find a boyfriend? Why's my boyfriend such a jerk? Nobody ever wants to talk about a relationship when things are going well. No, we wait until the relationship is DEFCON-2 to bring it up and DEFCON-1 to ask advice. When it seems like half my friends are tying the knot in their relationships and the other half are tying the knot in their noose the best advice I can give anyone is to just stop trying so hard. No matter where the relationship is just stop trying. Don't exert yourself, don't put any effort into it, don't make any phone calls, don't argue, just don't. The reasoning being: if it doesn't work out at least you didn't exhaust yourself trying to make it work.

I used to think everything about men was so complicated, but I've since realized that there is nothing complicated about us. We are always just going to float down the easiest path of least resistance like a committal log in the river. Men don't have agendas or ulterior motives. We all just do easy things that please us. And also, I'm going to let you in on a secret: we don't lie. We just forget. We have selective (and short term) memory that allows us to forget things we don't want to remember at the moment.

For example: observe Gucci the cat.

Gucci is in the kitchen eating his nummy nummy soft food when a runaway cappuccino cup slips off my espresso maker and nearly maims him, shatters his food bowl and sends glass flying everywhere. Gucci jumps about six feet in the air runs into a corner and looks at me as if I just attempted murder on him. I clean up the glass, replace the food and water and vacuum. Ten minutes later Gucci has no recollection of the events and is back in my lap purring.

Think of men as cats, they don't have the capacity to remember things they don't like. If I drop an encyclopedia on his tail he'll hate me for about five minutes and then forget it happened. However, he will never, never ever, forget which cabinet the treats are hidden in and he will spend all night long trying to open it with his paw (when kitties spend excessive time digging in the litter box I am convinced they are working on an underground tunnel to the treat cabinet). Bad experience= forget. Pleasing experience= remember forever.

It was this very advice that I ignored in my last catastrophic relationship. Stop trying. Stop expecting it to look the way you wanted. Stop expecting him to do everything he says he's going to do. Men never keep their word 100% of the time, and the men that do don't have many words to keep. I tried to force everything about him and the two of us together into this perfect neat little package and eventually it just fell apart. My most successful relationships (I said most, not completely) were the ones that I honestly didn't put that much effort into. I just let it happen, let him come to me, and let things go right and wrong on their own. If you don't drive the car the accident's not your fault, unless nobody's driving and then it's everyone's fault. But a man, when given the option to be in control and steer the relationship however he sees fit, will never pass up the opportunity.

I mean, what other advice would you expect from someone who takes cabs everywhere? And now that  I think about it, cabs are the one place where it's less expensive to ride alone.

Centripetal e-motion

Supposedly, the trick to riding bicycle is to just keep moving. It's when you hesitate or slow down that you fall, but if you keep moving and keep moving fast enough the centripetal force will keep you balanced. Although I don't ride a bicycle, I do know a thing or two about not stopping. The key to holding everything together in my life is to just keep moving and when obstacles present themselves to just pedal harder. Because in life, when you stop moving that is usually the point when you realize something is wrong.

My approach to dating has been somewhat like hitchhiking; standing with my thumb out on the lonely boy highway known as match.com waiting for someone else to slow down and give me a lift to relationship town. I had fallen off of the bicycle in my life and instead of just getting back on and moving on I was waiting for someone else to give me a ride, cooling my heels at the corner of lazy and heartbroken. Instead of standing around waiting I should be moving, as fast as I can and let someone, some lucky bachelor number three, four or maybe bachelor number sixteen try to catch me.

The problem with staying in constant motion, however, is that you don't always have time to stop and make sure you're in the right direction. I was running around like a lunatic yesterday, chiropractic appointment early, get home, brush the cat, give him that stinky food he likes, play with him, vacuum the bathroom around his litter box, shower, well--maybe skip that step--then run to lakeview to meet with my therapist, eat something, anything, maybe just get coffee, free samples at starbucks that'll do, run home again to lock the cat in the bathroom, go to the bank to pick up that reciept that I need to photocopy and send to that guy that's asking me for that thing that i can't even remember because I have it written down somewhere. Is it in an e-mail maybe? Can I text him? Did I refresh the cat's water? I ended up arriving to the chiropractor late and the therapist early.

Yes, the trick is just to keep moving, let the clothes pile up on the designated clothes pile up chair. Dump all the dishes in a sink with soapy water. Let the cat complain, papa's gotta go to work to pay for your expensive food kitty. Every pet owner has, at some point, bribed their animal with food to make them shut up. When I come home from work and let Gucci out of the bathroom he likes to meow and complain for about twenty minutes, unless I give him soft food which gives me enough time to fall asleep and let my creature of the night make as much noise as he wants.

Then, wake up, do it again, grocery shopping, pick up more espresso from Bloomingdales, check e-mail, receive bizarre and stupidly timed e-mail from my ex-therapist. If my life is centered around constant motion, this e-mail is the equivalent of an unmarked speed bump that sends me flying.

I had just, finally, figured out how to deal with messages from ex boyfriends, and now I get messages from ex therapists. It might not seem weird except that the tone of the e-mail was so casual, like he was a friend just checking in to see how I was doing. It's also weird because the last e-mail I sent him said don't ever contact me again asking for money or you'l hear from my lawyer about your unethical medical billing practices. 

In cabaret Liza sang "money makes the world go around," and I've seen it change people for the worse. I guess for someone as materially minded as I am I shouldn't write disparagingly about money. After all, Prada doesn't grow on trees. So, when someone who I had a falling out with over money and billing e-mails me out of the blue one year later I have to assume there is a fiscal motivation.

Or maybe it was harmless. And maybe the one who can't get his mind out of the fiscal gutter is me. Maybe I'm too used to people reaching a hand out. And learning to say no was a hard lesson I've been learning. If someone asks something unreasonable of me instead of stressing myself out to make it work I just have to say no sometimes.

I think I used to be afraid that if I said no to anything I would miss an opportunity. I would miss my big shot. Most artists understand this feeling: not knowing how to achieve our dreams so doing everything imaginable hoping that eventually our big break will come. It used to feel like if I ever said no I was chipping away at my chances of getting a book published or happening upon a Bravo casting agent looking for a snarky big nosed gay 20-somethings for a reality show about 20-somethings with loose pocketbooks and morals.

Now, after years of disappointment and disillusionment I understand that rarely does anyone just stumble into their ambitions. Yes, if you were born into a wealthy family in new York with endless connections and unlimited funds it's easy to make your dreams come true. But the rest of us, those who can't afford to pay to play have to work our way up. We have jobs before careers. Our dreams don't arrive ready-made, they're the kind of dreams that are affordable and come flat packed in a million pieces that we spend a lifetime trying to assemble. If I'm going to get a book and get my own store and get my own syndicated column and tv show I'm going to have to put pieces in place for years and years. And even then it might not look the way it did in the catalogue and I'll probably have screws and oblong pieces left over.

One day I might look back and see my life is just a clump of multi colored Legos that look thrown together by a toddler.

The thrill of the hunt

Gucci taught me something this morning while we were playing with mousey. Though kitty is far removed from his feral roots, he still loves to stalk prey, crouch down, hide behind a pillow and pounce on mousey when least expected. This cat has never hunted a living animal. He's never pounced on a mouse or killed anything but my desire to own cashmere pillows. And yet somehow he knows how to stalk and kill. I think this is part cat instincts, but there's something else to it. Because it's fun. Gucci does these things when we're playing. I think all animals--not just cats--enjoy the thrill of the hunt.

It is for this reason, I'm sure, that people join dating sites.

In the last episode of Shoulda Coulda Prada, I was wooing an old flame from H&M. For those of you who are not one of the 25 regular readers this is what seducing the H&M boy looked like:

"Oh, hi! Louis, I mean Kyle. No! Jason! Jason. Hi Jason. Oh? Really? Steven?"

"This is my cat Gucci, uh--just don't sit on anything that looks wet."

"I missed you t-- Gucci stop that, we don't do that in front of guests."

"Would you like some dinner? I think I have some leftover cat food that I can spread on a Triscuit."

So, to recap, my cat is largely to blame for the fact that I'm a bumbling idiot when it comes to dating. I left a date the other day saying, "Well this was fun, but I have to go scoop my cat's litter box or he's gonna pee on my comforter. Call me!" Long story short, I just don't have any game lately.

So when, much to my surprise, H&M boy agreed to a second date with me I was determined to do it right this time. Put on a cute outfit, make a reservation, wine and dine before taking him back to my apartment. Then I worked a nine hour shift and was too lazy to do any of that.

Everyone has a different style of courtship. There have been countless books, articles and blogs written about the process so its about time I let you in on my top secret methods. Here's how, lately, I woo a guy:

Date 2 with the H&M boy. I invite him over to my place,

"Lets meet here, I can't really go out my cat's bladder is infected."

This way I don't have to waste money on a nice dinner out, and I can just wear sweat pants. That's right breaking out the sweats on date two. After making out for a while I offer to let him have whatever's left over after I make dinner for myself. He seems really excited. I'm am a bit surprised by his earnest enjoyment of my offer for cheap and easy to prepare food.

It's at this point I assume I'm dreaming so I can do anything and it won't matter because I'll wake up soon enough. As an appetizer I offer him some wasabi peas that have been in my cabinet since before I lived there, likely left behind by a tenant in 1996.

For dinner I dump some spaghetti into boiling water and put lettuce in a bowl. The lettuce is dressed with my specialty: hot sauce and olive oil. On top of the spaghetti I pour a jar of Trader Joe's pesto and serve the lump of green pasta on a plate with cats on it:

To drink I pour him a mason jar of box wine. For desert I offer him a stick of gum from a pack in my sock drawer. Then, instead of a romantic walk after dinner I give him a cat teaser and tell him to play with Gucci while I do the dishes. Then I send him on his way covered in cat fur.

After I shut the door and Gucci strolls up, looking to escape again, no doubt.

"Well I think that went relatively well."

Gratuitous

If you stopped paying the bankers they wouldn't watch your money. If you stopped paying the flight attendants there'd be nobody to bring you warm nuts or flirt with you in airports. If you stopped paying the surgeons they wouldn't cut. But if one day you stopped paying the servers, well chances are they'd probably just stick their finger in your food, or add a 20% service charge.

Being a hotel restaurant we open the door to all kinds. We inherit the hotel's mantra of "Say yes to everything." Saying no is just not an option in the hospitality industry. Give us your tired, your (hopefully not too) poor, your huddled (hungry) masses yearning for a bacon burger. We shelter the weirdoes, the freaks, the hillbillies, the Euro-trash, the elderly. We keep the doors open to all types, and get so many of these bizarre hotel guests in the restaurant. We get the people that seemingly have never eaten in a restaurant before. They don't understand how to be seated. They don't understand how to order. Sometimes, they don't even understand how to eat. And if they don't understand any of that, it's a safe assumption that they don't know how to tip.

They walk in the front door of the restaurant and ask where the restaurant is. I look behind me at the bar, the tables, the servers walking by with trays of drinks, people eating pancakes. Where is the restaurant?

"Okay, you're going to walk out this door toward State street, make a left at the Renaissance Hotel, walk three blocks to Madison and take the 20 bus eight blocks west, walk twenty paces north from the bus stop, turn into the alley, knock three times at the blue door, the password is Magic Johnson. There you will find a hostess that can escort you to the next checkpoint."

"What?"

"You're here."

"This is the restaurant?"

It's at this point that I would like to ask exactly what they were expecting the restaurant to look like. But I put on my best hospitality face and ask,

"Would you like a table?"

"No, I'm just looking."

Or, you get the people that think that because they are staying in the hotel every employee of the hotel knows them by the first name. They tell you the Sharon would like a Mai Tai. Great, who the hell is Sharon? Sharon Osborne? Sharon Stone? Sharon Needles? 

Or, horror of horrors, they want to order a pina colada. I'd like to interrupt this programming to inform you that you should not be ordering a pina colada in a restaurant that doesn't have it on the menu, or any restaurant in Chicago, or just ever. The same goes for: skinny girl margaritas, frozen drinks, mint juleps, that frothy milky chocolaty drink with whipped cream and Oreos you ordered that one time, key lime martinis, bizarre flavors of vodka that nobody has like kumquat, wine spritzers, or white zinfandel. When you order anything like that, this is what your server hears: Hi, I'm some hick from the middle of nowhere that has no idea what I'm doing and instead of availing myself of the drink menu you've provided me I'm going to order some drink I got one time at club med called a frappe-mochachino martini and when you ask what is in that drink I'm going to sigh like you're and idiot for not knowing.

These types order a Tuna Nicoise and wonder why is doesn't look like the tuna salad their grandma used to make with canned tuna and miracle whip. Then five people want to split the check eight ways when the total bill is about thirty bucks. And they will complain about how expensive an iced tea is ($4.00) after they saw the price on the menu, ordered it and got six refills of it, and made you run back to the kitchen three times to get more Splenda for it.

Some, usually millennials, will send a plate of food back after they ate almost the entire thing and expect to be compensated for it. They can't believe that you can't order a burger at 8 in the morning, or they roll their eyes at you because you can't accommodate their vegan gluten-free diet.

The strangest creatures are the ones who usually go out to dinner late on sunday night or very very early in the morning. They start pressing at the doors at 6:15am.

Then, when it comes time to settle the tab we decide whether or not to add a gratuity to the bill. For those who don't know what this means: generally if you eat in a restaurant with a group of six or more people the server will add a service charge, or gratuity. In Chicago it's probably going to be 18-20%. However, in a restaurant where the management is often scarce and servers are usually left to our own devices and the clientele is often at least 50% foreign, the 20% comes out more than you'd think. Each server has their own justification for it, and we've all done it. Every server in the restaurant has added a 20% gratuity to a rude french person. Some add it to to-go orders (especially if they're ordering for their whole office, that's 'six or more' right?), some add it to stupid miniscule charges like a banana just to stick it to them, and some will add it to a really annoying party of five.

I think it's interesting the word gratuity from the route gratuitas, or gift, something freely given, or similarly, gratis, which means free or without charge--which is exactly how we feel sometimes. I don't come to work at a charity. It may be hospitality, but lets face it we give good service, we give great service, to get paid. And when we don't get the paper it can be hard sometimes continue on doing the job, which is why--in the spirit of raising spirits and helping you to forget your lowly status in society-- the hotel throws it's annual employee party. This party, intended to boost morale and at the very least provide enough free alcohol to fake it, comes at the tail end of summer, also known as our busiest season. 

So, from gratuitous tipping on a gold card to gratuitous spending in the gold coast, outfits must be purchased for this event. But more important than an outfit (yes, there are things more important than clothes) was finding a date. I wasn't just shopping for a bow tie, I was shopping for a man. I was in the shirts department at Brooks Brothers scoping out the prospects. Seventy percent straight, and one hundred percent preppy. Here we have mister on-trend, navy blazer and neon pink pants with a yellow pocket square, too showy and 'of the moment' for me. I like a guy either a little ahead or a little behind but never right on the target. Then we have mister mister, the guy wearing a suit that looks like it was from the early 80s, who was a little too far off target. All of the bow ties we classic, easy to wear, and looked exactly like every other tie I had. The same could be said about the men. Moving on.

Six blocks and hundreds of eligible bachelors later I found these:

It was then I realized that there is something more important than having a date to a work party: looking goddamn fierce. 

Hot Plates

In the kitchen there is a tribal order. If you stop moving, close your eyes, listen to the rhythmic thumping, dull white noise, the voices calling out, it almost sounds like a chant set to the beating drums of the dishwasher and cutting boards. Percussion builds around you. Someone calls out, "Hot plate! And you get out of the way. In the kitchen if something dangerous is coming toward you, someone usually warns you. If you're about to run into a knife or step in glass someone will alert you. In life, there is no such warning.

From a busy clanking kitchen in the restaurant to a more modest kitchen one zipcode over, I was using a spoon to crush up kitty's pills and a fork to mash it and mix it into Gucci's fancy feast, which is about as fancy as fancy ketchup. I was thinking about whether I'd do laps in the pool or try to work on my book a bit more when the phone vibrated. Something about bad news just sounds different when the phone rings. It's as if the phone knows the conversation you're about to have and is trying to warn you. Baby Daddy left me a cryptic voicemail yesterday saying that he needed to talk to me. I merely assumed that it was some emotional come to Jesus conversation he wanted to have and told him we'd talk another time. Like all men, surely he would come to his senses eventually and by then it would be too late. And it was too late, I moved on.

This time, I saw his face pop up on the phone and thought about letting it go to voicemail but also thought it might be good to lay into him a little, might relieve some of my stress, so I picked up. And here I thought I was getting the call that he wanted to get back together. It was a different kind of call. He was calling to tell me that he has Hep C and he's pretty sure he got it after we were sleeping together ("...but who knows with how many other people I was fucking," is the subtext implied there). Then, as if to lessen the blow, he said, "That's why I didn't want to have sex with you the last couple times we hung out."

It's at this point in a conversation which, if we were in a car, I would have slammed on the brakes and in my imagination sent him flying into the dashboard because he was probably irresponsible enough to have not put on a seatbelt. I stopped him in his mopey repentant tracks and asked,

"So how is taking care of your happiness and your child working out for you? That's why you couldn't be in a relationship with me right? So where's this fit in to all that?"

He backtracked and made excuses and I could tell he was trying his hardest to be calm he tried to diffuse my anger. Unfortunately he didn't seem to realize why I was angry. I was less worried about myself and more worried about him. This is a man of forty-eight who is not only has a callous disregard for his own life, but for mine as well. And I said the thing you're not supposed to say to someone twice your age,

"Just grow up! Stop making excuses and grow up! You weren't careless, or stupid, or irresponsible, this is about immaturity. You're forty-eight. You can't screw up like this anymore."

This stopped him. Because I wasn't talking about an STD, I was talking about a life that he was living. A stupid, senseless, irrational life where he made a mistake, got a wake up call, and then went and made the same mistake again this time to worse consequences. I will never make someone feel bad about making mistakes. The first time. But when a person continues to make the same mistake they are more interested in the behavior that is problematic than the people around them.

And the best thing, the only good thing about this whole situation, is that for the first time in my life I dodged the bullet. I got out of the burning building just in time. I got off the boat before it sank. I had a gut feeling to end things with Baby Daddy if he wouldn't be exclusive with me and I was right. I, for once, got myself out of a dangerous and emotionally harmful situation. Instead of keeping him in my life and letting his behavior put me equally at risk I got out. And now when I look back at the breakup I don't see stress or tears or unfinished business. I just see relief, relief that I got out on time.

When things go wrong, the really bad things in life, there are the three people I call: my doctor, my shrink, and my mother. And this time, I'm not ashamed of anything that I have to tell any of them.

A week later I got my 'just in case' test back, I was fine. But, I still wondered about Baby Daddy.

Permanent Fixtures

Years (and two relationships) ago I was living with my ex. Being a natural born and bred snooper it was my inherent instinct to explore and examine every single thing that my ex owned. On this particular day I was going through his dresser. In the top drawer there were some socks a journal, which was about as compelling as a tube sock, and then a strange artifact, something I could only determine was some rogue remnant of the goody drawer. But this was unlike anything I'd seen before. It had a sort of cheap flimsy plastic handle, a bell and--inexplicably--feathers all around. After a moment or two of deciding that it was some sort of fanciful whipping device I pulled it out and took it to the other room.

"What is this?" I asked my ex, waving it around.

"No! Not that! Hurry up put it away, hide it, get it out of here! Go!" It was at this moment that I realized that what I was holding could only be the detonator to a bomb.

"Seriously what's the problem?" I waved it around. It was too late, the damage was done. In a far off land there is a command center, with an exterior similar to the pentagon, full of beeping computers, bar graphs, security officers, swivel chairs. There are radars and blips on them, and the moment I jungled the bell on this whipping device/detonator a blip appeared on a monitor. Behind the desk was not a man, but a feline who was, I'd imagine, wearing some sort of naval looking beret and a cute little kitty-sized pressed white shirt. This cat then, unable to type, used his telestenograph to send a message to felines everywhere. A signal, invisible and silent, was sent out to my ex's cat in the other room. The signal read:

"GO CRAZY NOW."

The cat zoomed around the corner, her paws barely touching the floor into the room where she attacked the object.

"Well, now you did it." He said, "Now that you brought a feather into the room you can never, ever put it away." He shook his head and walked away. I assumed he was merely being overly dramatic about what was clearly a simple cats plaything. I swished it around, let kitty bat it a couple of times and put it back in the drawer. I turned around and there she was, eyes fully dilated, focusing on me intently, determined.

"All done," I said. "Resume previously scheduled programming."

"Myow." She said politely as I was walking away. I sat on the couch. "Myow," she said again, this time more insistent. It was at this point I could hear my ex close the door to the work room and blast music from inside. "Myow. Myow Myow." I shooed her away but she came back. "MYOW MYOW." There was now agitation in her voice. Then:

"MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW MYOW."

This went on for hours, stopped, and then resumed in the middle of the night. I learned an important lesson then about cats. Feather toys must never, ever be introduced, unless you are willing to make them a permanent fixture of the home decor.

Since owning a cat of my own I've learned about another permanent fixture: a bottle of pet oder Resolve. Some kitties scratch, some throw up everywhere, some kick litter. My little angel does none of these things, he even uses the bathmat to wipe his paws after using the littler box. He, unfortunately, likes to pee places where kitty ought not pee. Squirt bottle training has taught him that this is bad, but not convinced him to stop doing it. He now simply waits until I'm showering or watching an episode of The Real Housewives to do his naughty deed.

I have now learned to pre-empt the behavior. Cats are creatures of habit and when in a routine will usually do everything in their power to uphold the routine. After breakfast, brushing, and 10 minutes of playtime, kitty likes to eliminate, usually on something expensive--which I have Googled and read extensively about. This behavior is called improper elimination. And so, to get the one up on my pooh-bah, I've introduced a new part of my morning routine, as recommended by Gucci's vet: The you-get-locked-in-the-bathroom-until-you-pee hour. I have horrible guilt about it but for a 7-year old, very stubborn cat it takes a drastic approach to training.

I've tried to minimize the amount of time he has to stay in there, especially because I don't like it any more than him. I don't like having to leave the bar and my friends saying, "Sorry, I gotta let my cat out of the bathroom," or, "I've gotta go, I need give my cat a pill." It may have been a tough pill for him to swallow but it was getting to be a harder one for me. I was now taking better care of that cat than I was of myself. On airplanes we're told to secure our mask before helping others, but in life when do we stop helping someone else and start helping ourselves?

From no helping to second helpings, I had to rush from defcon kitty to the breakfast buffet. With Lollapalooza in town the city has been taken over with hippies and those who would associate with them in order to hear overpriced indie bands and drink bud light from a solo cup. Those who have never seen Chicago after the last band plays don't believe me when I describe what is basically a wall of people coming down the street en masse for about an hour after the last guitar strum. For anyone in the food and beverage industry downtown this is about as close to the apocalypse and one gets. They come in dirty, smelly and sloppy drunk, order every thing fried on the menu and fall asleep in the booths, smoke Djarum cigarettes in the entryway, insist you turn off the top 40 radio station playing, ask if you can pour a half a pint of beer when a pint only costs $4.50. And they leave swiftly to go sleep for the next thirteen hours.

Now imagine them in a buffet setting with some random old people mixed in who happen to be staying in the hotel and think lollapalooza is where young people go to collectively laugh out loud. Then imagine my delight when there's no bartender on Sunday morning to make bloody marys, a hostess that has to leave early to go to church, and the entire restaurant is out of spoons. That's right, a buffet with oatmeal, cereal, yogurt but nothing but little tea spoons. I actually had to tell a guest that we were out of spoons when she asked for one yesterday.

Let me just reiterate so that the ridiculousness of this situation can settle in: we were a restaurant with no spoons, or I should say that we were a restaurant with about 5 spoons. And we had to share with room service. Working in a restaurant is peppered with these moments of absurdity. Something that seems stupid and easy to fix is actually a small catastrophe. I mean, think about what it would be like to operate a restaurant without napkins, or lemons, or a hostess, or even servers. We have been open for business under such conditions. Sometimes our managers actually have to run to Jewel to buy us more mint or limes in the middle of a shift. We've borrowed coffee from the hotel restaurant next door.

And what's more absurd: we're actually not that bad when it comes to ordering and inventory management. On average, I think our restaurant probably suffers fewer shortages, blips, 86'd items and inadequate supplies that other restaurants. I mean there's no way of really controlling what people order, what's going to take too long to deliver, or who's going to call off work because they're sick or have to go worship.

Normally a day like yesterday would not put me in the mood to go shopping, but unfortunately my uniform was a mess, I didn't have the energy to do laundry and needed another black shirt to wear when I came back to get trampled again the next day. So I went where the clothes were cheap, machine washable and easy to get stains out of: H&M. Their candyland of assorted colors and synthetic fibers is the go-to for a young mover and shaker who it likely to get caught in the line of fire of splattered sauces, dripping grease, spilled beer and all other manner of food fray. And in H&M I happened to run into someone I had a one night thing with one night a hundred years ago and forgot he worked at that particular location.

I, of course, looked like shit and had mayonnaise on my sleeve and couldn't remember his name. I asked him where I could find the exact same shirt I was wearing minus the food particles. As he grabbed a medium off the rack for me we just kind of stood around unsure of how to part ways, so I took the liberty of saying something stupid,

"So what are you doing after work?"

On my way home, H&M bag in tow I felt cool, confident and sexy. I had successfuly rekindled an old flame and secured wardrobe for the following day. And got home, let Gucci out of the bathroom and poured myself a glass of wine. I sat down, put on some Rolling Stones and closed my eyes long enought to feel content. I had a cute guy coming over to my apartment in a half hour, and because we had already done this rigamarole there would be no awkward feelings or need to talk afterwards. And this feeling of contentment lasted about two seconds.

There was about to be another human, with eyes and a sense of smell, in my apartment. Then, suddenly, I saw the apartment through the eyes of a stranger. Four pizza boxes, overflowing trashcan, cat litter Gucci kicked on the bathroom sink and everywhere else, tumbleweeds of cat fur, seven hundred shoe boxes thrown around, my bed was covered with aluminum foil to keep Gucci off and the cherry of the sundae of mess was me, who forgot to shower that day because I was too busy scrubbing the cat pee out of the carpet with white vinegar and Resolve. Then I looked at the computer screen, articles about cat pee, three browser windows full of them. Gucci's feather toy tied to the dresser. Half-finished USA Today crosswords everywhere. Suddenly, mayonnaise on my sleeve was the least of my worries.

It's not enough just to bring home the bacon, now I've got to bring home the boys. I picked up my phone and sent H&M boy a message:

I hope you're not allergic to cats.

The gay glitterati

If you live in Chicago it's impossible to ignore that we live in one of the gayest cities in the country. When people think of gay friendly cities they think San Francisco, New York, P-town, but Chicago is notorious for two things: our Deep Dish Pizza and our gays. There's the real estate gays, with professional headshot photos on their business cards and Louis Vuitton briefcases. Then there are the I'm-not-really-gay gays who are too afraid to come out of the closet but not afraid of bouncing their towel in the steam room of LVAC, usually spotted with a blackberry and white collar getup. And, of course, there are retail gays--pointing you toward the most expensive products in stores all over the city, each trying desperately to beat a path into the fashion cannon with their animal prints and creative haircuts.

Then there is another species swishing all over the city: the I'm-better-than-you-at-everything gays. They exist everywhere, appear out of nowhere, materialize when you least expect them and least want to see them. The moment you step out of a bagel shop in sweatpants with unbrushed hair nose deep in a bialy schmear, boom there he goes walking by you looking perfect stopping just long enough to make you feel like a schmuck and tell you there's lox spread on you oversized Hanes shirt. The day you're feeling good about yourself after swimming twenty laps in the pool, six of them jump in the pool in their tiny speedos and bounce around enough to show of their muscles. They're at Hollywood beach in their massive groups of 'loose' acquaintances and tight swim trunks, taking over the bars at Sidetrack in American Apparel tank tops. They seem to multiply daily, are almost never seen without a nebulous clump of similarly dressed cohorts surrounding them.

They exist to do one thing and one thing only: make you feel bad about yourself. They are never mean or rude or insulting, to your face at least (which is almost worse because it causes neurotic people like me to imagine what they're saying behind my back). Here is a sample conversation with a friend of a friend of a friend:

I'm in Starbucks having just spilled coffee on myself because of an unsecured lid, which I assume was a malicious oversight of my barista for ordering a double grande nonfat no water dirty chai.

"Hi Zack, you look great!" (Given that I haven't showered and am covered in milk foam I can only assume that this is a joke)

"Oh, hi, that's nice of you to say."

"How's your relationship with that guy, the bar owner, you were like in love moving in last time I hear right? All inclusive vacation in the spring? Right?" (Don't be fooled by the feigned ignorance, as I writer I do detect the past tense in this question i.e. so you're single and miserable right?)

"Oh gosh, yeah no wasn't mean to be."

"Oh sorry, well good for you!" (this insult doesn't translate, only single people understand) "Hey did you hear about Marcy whatsherface? Getting married, god love her right!" (I'm going to add insult to injury now.)

"Oh, uh, nope didn't hear."

"So are you going to the wedding next month?" (I'm no fool, I know you weren't invited. Is that an open wound, here I conveniently have a hot poker to stick in it.)

"Don't think I'll make it. Geez, good to see you I gotta scoot though. Yep."

"How's that writing thing going? When can I download your book on my Kindle?" (I have some salt too, that's good for open wounds right?)

"Okay, bye."

"Alright, it was great seeing you, facebook me!" (Troll, wash your face.)

These guys never miss a beat. They know everything going on with everyone. They wake up early for pilates, they do yoga, they lift everyday. They raise money for charities, they're always polite and well dressed, they have great jobs are are obnoxiously blithe about it. They have perfect abs and perfect relationships and perfect condos on lakeshore drive. They're better at everything and not afraid to point it out to you in passive aggressive ways all the time. And the only comeback you have is to try to smile and cover the ketchup stain on your chinos (somehow, you will only run into them when some food spilled on you, or it could be that they cause you to spill food when you feel the sonic shock wave of their perfection coming toward you, or it could also be that you're just clumsy and on any given day have some food spilled on you). They're shiny glossy perfect faces are splashed across the boy magazines of gay bars, they're the "it boys" of the gayborhood. They're usually into something stupid like buddhism, kabbalah, or pescetarianism.

And they have some stupid "non-flaw" that they can drag out when needed to pretend that they've overcome great obstacles in life. Like they overcame an addiction to Nyquil, or they have an autistic sister, or they're one fourteenth Apache. 

Basically, they are portraits of what you're supposed to be if you're gay in Chicago, successful, well groomed and popular. It almost seems juvenile to say but it's they same way I felt in high school gym class when everyone is picking teams for basketball and I'm last, after the guy with B.O. and the guy in a wheelchair, and the guy that's into Dungeons and Dragons. And people like me, that should be so insignificant as to be completely off their radar seem to shine brightly like a beacon for criticism.

These gay glitteratti are front page center and I'm just the wildly unpopular internationally ignored blogging sensation sweeping the internet or just getting swept under the carpet.

Where do these strange perfect creatures come from, and where can I go to escape them?