Celebrity sighting, roach sighting
2004-09-11

I absolutely despise seeing roaches at a restaurant. It's terribly socially awkward, and even after you get out of the meal everyone wanders around feeling disgusted and unsettled.

The worst moment is right after you see the roach darting away, because you know that not only do you have to stop eating, but that you have to call the waiter over and explain that in the middle of your perfectly nice meal vermin started storming across your table, and then there's always the possibility that the waiter will vehemently deny the roach's existence and you'll have to fight and end up paying for your contaminated meal. Even if the management is nice about it and allows you to leave without a fuss, it's still a betrayal of sorts - you go to a restaurant to be taken care of, in a way, and unless you're dining on old pizza in a frat house one of the rules of care is that vermin shouldn't be right next to the plates and utensils.

Part of the nastiness of the whole ordeal has nothing to do with the general grossness of bugs, but that whatever pleasant associations you have with eating in that particular place are going to be wiped out and replaced with an instant mental replay of the moment you saw a roach on your plate. Eating together with someone is such an intimate experience and it's horrible not only to have the experience ruined in the present, but the memories of the past colored as well.

Today my father and I were eating at this nice French place we've been to before. I have nice memories of going to this restaurant with my parents - they don't go out much, and they really enjoyed this place and told me that it was one of the few really good meals they've had in years.

In between the salad and his beef bourginon/my cassoulet a roach the size of a fingerbone runs across his knife.

The waitress, after a bit of consultation, just told us that we could leave without paying. So we got free bread and wine and salad all contaminated by disgusting roaches. And I had a nice memory of my family, who don't often get along well to say the least, happily chatting over food replaced by the memory of my dad and I staring down at the table utterly repulsed. Great.

Plus, once you see one, you can never go back to the restaurant again no matter how good it was in the past. A few weeks ago, I was perusing the menu at my favorite Thai restaurant when I see something small and brown. With six legs. Running across my menu. Fortunately I hadn't ordered yet, so I was free to get up and go without saying anything. But this was absolutely the best Thai place in the neighborhood (and there's a lot, I've tried them all!) and now I can't go back. Even though it smells so good, and the inside's so cute, and it's right by where I live, I can never set foot inside again. It would be breaking a taboo, like picking your nose in public. Or marrying a cousin.

Food is very important in society, you know.

Of course I never see roaches when I actually want to. Whenever someone drags me out to Ruby Tuesday's the roaches stay well in their dark dirty crevices, so I can't scream and yell and say "Never take me to this shitty restaurant again!" without coming off as the pretentious, Ruby Tuesday's/T.G.I. Friday's hating fuckface that I really am.

I saw Michael Moore yesterday. He is very large and scruffy in real life. For those of you who are hatas you'll be glad to know that he tows around a pair of bodyguards. This particular pair looked rather like Mormon missionaries.