I Hate Everyone, Except You(51)
I’ll tell you one thing, though: When a perverted old dude tells you his table is wobbly, don’t get on your hands and knees to check the screws on the bottom of the table legs. Because when you spot those two enormous hairy balls hanging out of an open fly, you will hit your head on the underside of the table. Every. Time.
The worst kind of gay table is a four-top of perfectly manicured, well-dressed homosexuals in their late twenties. The worst. They’re so predictable because they always follow this formula: one alpha, two betas, and a gamma. The alpha is the gorgeous one. He’s got a head full of perfect hair, neon-white teeth, and a jawline so sharp you could use it to slice most semisoft cheeses. He’s also got broad gym-puffed shoulders and a waist that looks tiny—even when he’s sitting down. Then, there’s the gamma, who through no fault of his own just wasn’t genetically blessed. Maybe the gamma’s eyes are a little too bulgy or he has a weak chin, you know, the kind of stuff you can’t fix without really expensive surgery and even if you do, you end up looking worse. Those two are easy to deal with.
The alpha’s self-possessed because he spends his life with people gawking at him. It’s like waiting on the Queen of England. “I’ll have the fish.” Across the table, the gamma knows he’ll never be the object of anyone’s lustful attention, at least not in this crowd, so he resigns himself to being the affable one. Someone has to do it because the two betas surely won’t. They’re handsome too, but unlike the alpha, they’re not traffic-stopping beauties. One beta might have really thin lips, the other a too-upturned nose. Well aware of their (some would say minor) flaws, they secretly despise the alpha for being so exquisite. And all this bitterness has to be released somewhere, so the gay waiter is the perfect receptacle.
And it’s not that they’re obnoxious; overt rudeness would tip off the others, including the server, to a simmering resentment. It’s a look up and down the waiter’s uniform. A questioning of the waiter’s aural faculties. (“I said sauce on the side. You heard that, right?”) A blank stare when asked if the food was cooked to their liking. Oh, the gays. Having been both a beta and a gamma, depending on the company, I can tell you, we’ve got so many issues. On the whole, the gays are good tippers though. Even when they’ve brought their date to the table on a leash.
*
Every spring the International Mr. Leather conference is held in Chicago and attended by thousands of gay men with leather fetishes, some of whom—I’m not sure of the percentage—are into BDSM. I’ll just state for the record that at the time I knew nothing about the leather subculture, which is only slightly less than I know about it now. And I don’t judge. I do not care one iota about what turns you or anyone else on sexually, as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult. And no animals at all. I mean, if you stick a gerbil up someone’s ass or screw a horse, I hate you and you should go to jail. As far as I can tell, most leather men like to wear chaps and jeans or a leather codpiece, maybe a leather cuff or two and dance shirtless. Who cares. Knock yourself out. I’ll be at home watching Rear Window for the umpteenth time. I just can’t get enough of that Grace Kelly.
On this Saturday night, during leather weekend, two men in their late thirties arrived at Cornelia’s for dinner. One wore tight black leather pants and a black leather jacket unzipped halfway to reveal a tanned chest covered in coarse dark hair. A vintage-looking motorcycle cap with an eagle medallion and a chain across the brim sat atop his head. His mustache was shaped like a horseshoe. Let’s call him L.D. for Leather Daddy. His companion I’ll call S.B. for Slave Boy. He was dressed similarly, though his leather pants were not as revealing in the crotch. He was shirtless under his jacket too, save for a studded black leather harness worn across the chest. His head was shaved, maybe four days earlier judging by the length of the stubble, and he wore a choker collar, about two inches wide, with a chain attached to it, the other end of which L.D. was holding in his right hand.
When the manager sat L.D. and S.B. by the window in my station, I said to him, “Wouldn’t it be better if Thomas took that table?” Thomas, who pronounced his name tow-MAS, was a fellow waiter whose hair had a tendency to flop into his eyes when he was busy. His retro black-framed glasses made him look like a 1950s chemistry grad student, but he was actually working toward his doctorate in English. He had mentioned to me at the start of the shift that he had a date after work with some guy in town for the convention.
“You want me to ask them to move?” the manager asked.
“No, not move,” I said. “Thomas could take them, and I’ll take his next table.”
“Are you scared of them or something?”
“No I’m not scared of them,” I said. It was sort of a lie. “I just don’t think they’ll like me.” In fact, I’m pretty sure the manager didn’t like me very much ever since I corrected his pronunciation of pollo. There was a dish on the menu called pollo alla pesto, which was one of the more popular menu items at the restaurant and for good reason. It was farfalle pasta with chunks of chicken in a basil pesto sauce that contained golden raisins. Two decades later, I still make it, usually in the summer with fresh basil and grilled chicken. My version is delicious. Anyway, he was calling it POY-o alla pesto, and I said I was pretty sure it was PO-lo alla pesto, because the dish was Italian-inspired, not Spanish.