I dislike buying into franchises. The idea of it just sickens me, really. As an artist, as a musician, as a writer, I am wholly open to small businesses, small ideas that should become big, not in interests of money but in the interest of changing the way people think about things, experience things. A beautiful song or a moving poem can really alter one’s existence, even in the smallest way. A dish, when brought together organically and composed with passion, has the power to end a lover’s quarrel or make you realize, yes maybe you really do like wild mushrooms after all, and ‘well how about that?’
That being said, I did feel like a bit of a hypocrite when I waited in line for about an hour to get into Hooters yesterday.
It’s a cheap gimmick, this I know; (supposedly) small bodied, large breasted women in tiny outfits bringing men of all sizes, from the tiny and meek to the obese and vile, chicken wings and pitchers full of golden, frothy goodness.
At the chance of losing the respect of some of my peers, to defend myself, I certainly didn’t imagine finding myself there. But Rabbit and I were out and about in downtown Campbell, drinking long islands on the patio at the King’s Head, shaking our heads at the disdain of a popular and somewhat divey spot obviously being transformed, baby step at a time, into something Santana Row would swallow up and belch at.
But the drinks were coming quickly and the sun was beating down on us. I was babbling something about Mexico, attempting to coerce a few slutty-looking, uninteresting females to come with us, because we were on our way, we were escaping this provincial town, we were out and gone, we were going to eat carnitas tacos on the beach and drink tequila, singing loudly.
I find that the only time I have the desire to speak to uninteresting people is when I’m drunk. Perhaps I think I will discover something interesting about them, or make something up to make them interesting enough to talk to. This is something that some consider a quirk, or a positive quality. I’m of the opinion that it’s not my nature, which is an anomaly, catastrophic indeed.
In any case, if you couldn’t tell already, he and Beth had had a monstrous battle, wherein neither of them knew what was going to happen in regards to their wedding, which the invitations had already been sent out for months ago. He had packed a bag and said many things in anger, and he was choosing to seize the day and explore the rest of his destiny with the bottle, and well, me.
It wasn’t my idea to go; it just sort of manifested itself. Many people at the Kings Head were discussing the basketball game, which I knew nothing about, but a small group of people got in a few different cars saying they would meet each other at Hooters, which suddenly struck Rabbit as the ultimate way of saying ‘fuck you’ to Beth, something she probably detested and not in the ‘you’re being taken for your dollar’ way, not in the ‘you’re buying into lame marketing’ way, and even more not ‘you’re a chode that agrees with what the general public finds attractive’ way. It was because she was insecure.
As Rabbit once said, she had a small ass. And small tits to match, to be quite honest. Not that I am a fan of the sometimes urban divinity of ‘big ass, big tits’ because usually that equals big woman. But Rabbit wanted to see hooters and so to Hooters we went.
We went when we were drunk enough to not care about waiting in line for an hour. I was flirting with him, horribly so, and I was only halfway worried that I would spot Drew or possibly Johnny. He was responding rather well, which worried me. I thought he would be flirtatious but only in the obviously taken manner, like he always did, more inference than anything.
It wasn’t that way yesterday. I had some fire in me from the long islands and perhaps some anger in me from Johnny’s poor choices and my current stage of abstinence. So after an hour of sun and obscene gestures by motorists, the time came to (finally!) be seated.
Of course! We got a waitress that was cute but by no means stacked. She seemed friendly enough and Rabbit was trying his hardest to bewitch her, but in the condition he was (obviously) in and for how long the restaurant had been open, a little over a week, I was sure she was used to drunk people throwing themselves at her and it wasn’t going to take Rabbit, unshaven, slurring, to change her mind about ignoring them.
She looked to me, hoping for some kind of order rather than the nonsense Rabbit was spewing. She disappeared quickly after I ordered a pitcher of Budweiser.
“What a bitch,” Rabbit said rather loudly, to which I giggled in my palm.
“Just because they’re scantily clad doesn’t mean they want to fuck you,” I rationalized.
“Why the hell not?”
I laughed again.
He seemed sad now, like somewhere in his brain, this plan was going to come together like bits and pieces of a David Lynch film. The engagement would soften up and fall apart and his affair with the Hooters waitress (whose name neither of us remembered) would begin, scathing hot and that would show Beth.
I slapped his back. “Cheer up, mate,” I said, grinning wickedly. “There’s beer on the way.”
That seemed to help a bit. When the pitcher came the waitress wanted our order, which we hadn’t prepared for at all. She seemed a bit irritated at us and I figured we needed to stop acting so drunk or she wouldn’t serve us anymore. But it didn’t seem fair that we had waited in line over an hour and the time it was taking to order was getting her panties in a twist.
Not that their menu is extensive or diverse enough to require a whole hell of a lot of time to decide either. But soon enough we decided on just a ten piece hot wings and an order of nachos. The next time we saw her, our waitress seemed pleased that we finally had made up our minds and had started softening again. I looked around and noticed that she seemed to have a large section. And it certainly was busy. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and stopped thinking ill of her, the place that we had chosen and its ill represented signature perk. I just let the beer go down.
We got through the first pitcher almost immediately after we ordered, so we ordered another. It was sitting well with me, and the air conditioning was working wonders. I had noticed Rabbit had moved considerably closer to me and that thought gave me a chill that was much like how I responded when Drew would make subtle advances.
We drank quickly and laughed a lot. Once or twice I thought I felt Rabbit’s hand on my knee, but it disappeared shortly thereafter, so I had no problem admitting it might have just been wishful thinking. But then, there it was. His fingers, tracing around my knee, circling and swaying upwards, dangerously close to my center.
He leaned over and whispered in my ear. “I want you.”
He was a man of few words. I didn’t know to giggle or to kiss him. I smiled, looked into his eyes and then looked away.
Food. Just in time. The waitress looked at us like both of us were guilty, as if she knew Rabbit was involved. I thought to myself it would have been hilarious if this was a Beth friend and in Rabbit’s state of depression and drunkenness he had merely not noticed. But that was only comical in a rhetorical sense, should that have been the case I’m sure Rabbit’s life as he knew it would come crashing to a halt, and all the ideas he had built about love and home would have to be reconfigured.
I took my time eating, drinking. I wondered if this was what Rabbit really had needed after all. Did he need a new path? Or did he just want the old one tweaked so that he felt freer, less of a pet and more of a man? I wanted to liberate him but knew myself too well; we would have amazing sex, learn much from each other and then go along on our merry ways, changed for the better. But we would never walk down an aisle; I would never bear the children he longed for.
The only thing we would have that we didn’t now was the sex. And sex, although ultimately of gargantuan importance to me, wasn’t something that was hard to come across. The friendship Rabbit and I had, on the other hand, was.
The nachos were greasy, delicious. The wings didn’t live up to the hype.
Another pitcher later and my judgment wavered, as it often does. He snuck a kiss, and although tight-lipped and short-lived, was very sweet, causing warmth and a rumbling inside me.
The next thing I knew my hand was on Rabbit’s jeans, rubbing softly, then ferociously at the newfound firmness. My fingers found the zipper, pulled down slowly, creating a space for him to push through. This was it, this was going to be the make or break moment; the opportunity we would have to save the friendship, prevent all possibilities of awkwardness or hurt feelings later.
Then there it was, lengthy, solid in my warm hand. The look on his face was of torment, of restrained lust and I felt powerful and good. Slowly, carefully, my palm and finger twisted around, back and forth, so as to take my time and not be obvious. We were in a room filled with people, which aided my buzz and desire that much more.
I let go for a minute, lifted my beer glass, drank the ass, just to make him crazy. He poured what was left in the pitcher in both our respective glasses and my hand went back down under the table, a bit colder this time.
I whispered in his ear to talk to me; it would look mighty peculiar if he was just sitting there making faces, silently, my hand not-so-discreetly under the table. He started trying to make small talk which was proving impossible and very obvious, but by then I didn’t care who was paying attention, I was laughing at the two of us, accepting an onslaught of emotions in those small moments.
I wondered if he was thinking about Beth, because I was, if only for fleeting instances. I imagined her on her knees in their bathroom, scrub scrub scrubbing away at the floor that was never white enough; the faint sound of John Mayer in the background, the smell of hibiscus oil and dog shit.
He was pulsing madly, very close. My mind trailed to eight years ago, when I was standing close to this very spot, seating patrons and cleaning menus at Spoons, what Hooters once was. I spent slow hours studying for algebra tests in the back booths, attempting to flirt with the bartender, trying to get free milkshakes.
Knowing less and hoping for more. Now here we were, drunk and lascivious, in the public eye, half-cheating each other, half-cheating ourselves.
And then at last, the check came.
