So, Flavian and I have few things in common. Very few things. He sleeps with a blanket that says "binary" in binary. I do not. He wears shirts that have some freaky waterproof teflon-style coating on them. I do not. He drives a clown car cleverly marketed as an urban hipster-mobile. I do not.
But we do have one thing in common that brings us together over and over again: the burning desire to act like pretentious, accent pillow-owning flakes. And to be believed in that role, if only for a short time.
You see, he's been feverishly redecorating his apartment. We're talking fresh paint in warm, soothing colors. We're talking sake sets that will never see any sake. We're talking placemats that will probably never see an actual plate on them unless the chinese take-out people start getting mighty fancy. And tea kettles, people. TWO of them.
So you can see what it is I'm dealing with here. Now I would expell my secret yuppie longings safely in the secrecy of my own apartment, where no one but my closest friends (and those who read their blogs) would ever know about it, too. Except I'm kinda messy. A little bit. Just a hint. And if I *did* buy a sake set, I'd be trying to figure out how to eat cereal from it before the week's end so that I could avoid washing a bowl.
What's a girl to do? Well, I get my yuppie needs out at restaurants. You know the people who frantically scan the wine list for something they can both pronounce and afford (without it being the cheapest wine on the menu, oh heavens!) because they'd rather die than have a less-than-minimum-wage waiter hear them pronounce "sangiovese" wrong? Yeah. that's me.
So I got my moderately priced glass of pinot noir and settled in for a nice evening. Until the waiter came back and smeared his wine-god knowledge all over my pride.
"The cranberry from the wine really goes nicely with the shrimp, doesn't it?"
Goddamn it! I didn't know that there would be a wine pairing test too! I wasn't ready yet! I need at least 4 more episodes of Simply Wine with Andrea Immer on the Fine Living Channel before I can face this!
But face it I did, with the less than acceptable "huuhhh? ohhhhhh yah. yummy."
Meanwhile, Flavian's asking "What did he say has cranberries in it? I didn't get any cranberries in my shrimp!"
Damnit, Flavian. The waiter heard you and you blew our cover. Okay, my 'yummy' comment didn't help. I couldn't go down like that. The only thing worse than being seen as a yuppie was being seen as the person who wanted to be seen as a yuppie. Those people are the lowest life forms of all. They're somewhere below 40 year olds who still eat the paste and people who wear fanny packs in a way that isn't ironically hip.
You can see that the stakes had been raised. It was time to break out all the stops. It was time to pretend to like overpriced desserts. This is an area where I really shine as a yuppie.
We ordered Creme Brulee and Cognac. Okay, *I* mostly ordered the creme brulee. And I'm pretty certain that I also ordered the cognac. I'm a little fuzzy on the details. It turns out that they both taste like shit and I spent dessert trying to chase one bad taste away with the other bad taste in a cruel downward spiral of alcohol and fluffy egg-product.
It was a lesson well learned. Some of us (me) just don't belong in the world of "sophisticated" people. Some of us (again, me) can't handle the pressure of the high stakes rat-race that exists in the world of slightly-above-family-style restaurants. Frankly, some of us shouldn't really be allowed to leave the house. But I escape on ocassion anyway. Next time I plan to escape to someplace a little more down to earth.
Especially since it'll be my turn to buy.
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