Empty Calories

When you're not working in a city like Chicago the thought of going outside can seem daunting. The outside world is cold, expensive, and the streets are full of people with jobs that you silently resent. I began the ritualistic unemployed life. My days were filled with home cooked meals (from the freezer section at Trader Joes), box wine and daytime television. At some point in the unemployment process you just stop sending out resumes, you stop looking, you halt everything. It's usually the point when you've sent out about 100 resumes that you forget which places you've already applied and just have to stop and wait to hear back. And you will wait. And, it seems, you will never hear back. For every 100 resumes I send out probably one of them will call me in for an interview, which is no surprise since this is how resumes are processed in the food and beverage industry:

The resume pops up in an e-mail to some assistant manager, they absentmindedly print it and forget about it, the hostess then prints a stack of menus that the resume gets mingled into. On the floor, the hostess will fold the resume in half and write a reservation on the back of it. One of the servers will tear a corner off to write a phone number on and then use the rest to take an order with. When the server goes to the kitchen to run food he'll toss it on the counter where a line cook will spill au jus on it. The chef will wander through at some point during the night and yell at whoever is passing by for this paper being here. They'll bring it to the managers office where another assistant manager with fold it into a paper airplane and throw it on the ground. Two hours later it will still be sitting in the same spot when the GM finds it wants to know what the fuck this is and the F&B director will rush over to take the resume from him and file it away in a drawer full of resumes that have been treated the same way, never looked at, and are in no discernible order. A month later when there aren't enough servers to cover the shifts one of the managers will remember all those resumes and pull ten at random to interview. If a resume is not pulled then it will remain in that drawer until the end of time.

For the time being I was just going to have to sit my days out, constantly pressing the refresh button on my inbox. And if I were to recommend a pairing for jobless days it would not be dateless nights. The antidote to daytime ennui is the nightly blind date. And I do mean nightly. Night after night I sit in booths, bar stools, benches outside museums, and nightclubs waiting for dates. When applying for the job of boyfriend it's important to be persistent and keep searching. Highlights include:

Nookies: "Wait, you live in Indiana?"

Ralph Lauren: "I'll have the calamari and foie gras to start and the steak Diane rare as an entree and a Martini for now but leave the wine list."

"I'll have a small caesar and water."

"I'm sorry, are you on the Karen Carpenter diet?"

The Modern Wing: "I think the point of the piece is to simply make you experience something. Like this one makes me think of my childhood."

"I spent my childhood miserable and abused."

"Would you excuse me, I need to go powder my nose or something."

Bandera: "I'm really happy with my job, I think I make a really good living and have good benefits."

"That's great! What do you do?"

"I'm a bagger at Trader Joes."

"Oh that's funny I buy their--actually, never mind it's not funny. It's actually sad."

Valenties day was approaching and all of the smug coupled people will post schmaltzy updates on Facebook about love and things like, "Don't worry singles you'll get here one day," like we're in the traffic jam of romance or something. And then all the singles post pictures on Facebook with their animals and pretend not to notice what day it is, quickly removing anything mentioning Valentines from the news feed.

As the hunt for a date continued the dates became more desperate and unfulfilling. In the diet of life, these dates were the empty calories.

Roscoes: “Oh I hope you don't mind I brought two of my buds.”

Lets step back in a very meta fictional way here. Sometimes men will make power plays such as this. The instinct to bring ones friends on a date is a smug attempt to put you off guard. This turns you into the gazelle and him the pack of hyenas. Now I bet you think I turned right around and left since this idiot brought two men obviously more attractive than i, but have no fear I know exactly how to handle this situation. In fighting when encountered by an enemy larger than oneself you simply need to leverage their weight against them or in this case use the attractiveness of his friends to smite him. Observe.

“So you don't mind right,”

“ no that's great you're friends are cute too– introduce me.”

This reaction is effective not only because it immediately instigates his jealous competitive instincts, but it's also the exact opposite he's expecting. He's waiting for me to stomp out in a huff or call him an asshole or pout the whole night, which makes him feel emasculated. But instead I have taken his power play and deflected it back on him.

Observe:

“Oh,” he said unsure of this response. “Well I just came here with them we can go somewhere else. Together.”

“But you're not going to introduce me? They seem nice; I'm just going to go say hi–”

“Are you hungry I'm hungry why don't we get dinner somewhere less crowded?”

“That sounds nice. What did you have in mind?”

“How about pie hole?”

What do I think of pie hole? I think it's a great place for a date if your date is a drag queen or craving gluten free pizza and a can if pop.

“I just remembered I have to give my cat his anti-psychotic medication.”