valis2 | Always.

I am a weirdness magnet.

gillieweed can attest to this; if you're bored, check out her what happened in FL when I visited her.

Today was one of the rare days where I went to work but my sister (who works at the same place) did not. So I drove in alone, and decided to go to the Middle Eastern restaurant across the street for lunch because a) my sister never wants to go to Middle Eastern restaurants for lunch and b) I love Middle Eastern food. I brought a book in with me, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris. The cover of the book is indicative of his humor--it's a naked Barbie torso, humiliating but funny, just like his stories (here's the cover on Amazon). I also brought my notebook, which contains all of the notes for my giant Riptide fic.

Anyway, I go inside, and surprise! I am the only customer.

The young Lebanese guy who is the host/waiter at the moment tells me that I can sit wherever I like. So I do, and he hands me the menu and points out the lunch specials, telling me I can have anything I want, "All for $7.95, baby." Er. Hard to resist.

So I ask for chicken kefta and a side of tabbouli, and rice & salad. I really like this little restaurant, and I'm so happy about getting a yummy lunch. I pick up my book.

"What are you reading?" asks the guy.

Ugh. I do not want to show him the cover of this book, because I know he'll be completely baffled. But I do, and he is. He asks what it's about. I have no idea how to convey the concept--I mean, I'm only about sixty pages into it, after all. "It's a guy writing about his life with his crazy parents," I say.

Not only is he baffled, but the image and my awful synopsis combine to provoke him into a bizarre monologue. I will attempt to recreate it.

"This guy, he writes, and he makes money, and then he has money. And you buy the book. If you were starving, you would not buy the book."

Actually, the book was given to me, but he was on a roll.

"But you are not starving."

I begin to wonder if that's a dig at my well-nourished physique.

"So you buy the book, and he is a millionaire. He is a fake. They are all fakes. Everyone is a fake. All of America is a fake. All of my country, Lebanon, they are fakes."

I had thought that "all of America" and "Lebanon" were kind of covered by "everyone," but apparently not.

"I don't know what I'm saying," he says.

Well, that was pretty obvious.

"I could write a book," he announces.

"Yes, you probably could," I agree. I mean, it would be entertaining, at the very least.

"I could write a book about my life, and how I lost the money, and smoked the marijuana, and drank every day. I could talk about the women I dated, how I broke their hearts." He pantomimes a crying woman. And just in case I didn't get that the first time, he repeats it. "I could talk about all the many women I date, how I broke all their hearts!"

"That would be an interesting book," I say.

Then another group comes in. He asks them if they have a book. "If you have book, you can't eat," he proclaims. They stare at each other and then him, and then he explains that it's a grand joke because "the lady here is reading."

Eventually he brings me my food, which is not chicken kefta, it's shish tawook. And no tabbouli.

Thank goodness I wasn't reading the Riptide notes.

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marginaliana

*cracking up*

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Bornino

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