Hollandaise sauce pairs very well with political correctness.

 If you've ever been told that you worry too much, chances are you know where I'm coming from with this. I've been having worry-spasms all day over (of all things) a night out downtown during which I remained stone cold sober.

That's not the joke. This is something that has actually been happening in my biology for the last 18 or so hours since I got out of the taxi and walked into my house. 

I went to a club downtown last night for the first time in almost three years, and the reason it was the first time in almost three years was because the last time I went downtown I had a major anxiety episode and wandered around the streets for over an hour without knowing I was even doing it. Now I know why. First of all, I had on an outfit that I thought was neat when I left the house, but I didn't grok just how horrible and stupid it was until I got home and looked in the mirror again. I mean, rhinestoned leggings with a Latin-cut glitter-trimmed little black dress and glittery peep-toe flats? And this dead cold winter? Fuck you, Vannie, and fuck your learning-disabled fashion sense.

Now, the main reason anybody really goes downtown is to drink liquor. I can't drink anymore because I'm not supposed to consume alcohol while I'm on my medication. I only went there because the club was having an '80s/'90s themed night and a lot of my friends were supposed to go. Only two people I know showed up at all, about two hours after I arrived, and I couldn't find them for most of the night. I had put my coat in coat-check when I arrived, but I had to get it out shortly thereafter because the place was cold enough to freeze all of Keith Richards' warts off. While I was sitting at a booth/table thing near the entrance by myself, a group of folks about my age, two girls and three guys, came over and asked if I minded them sitting there as well. We all ended up talking and eventually dancing together; I even allowed myself to freak and be freaked on by one of the fellows when the DJ played "U Can't Touch This", and later to dance in a circle with all three of the guys to "Love Shack." I settled an argument about Placebo at the bar when I went to get a soda; two barely-legal rocker kids couldn't figure out whether or not there were two versions of"Burger Queen"*. When the DJs started getting creative (read: mixing "Just Dance" and "Don't Stop Believin'" together with the most obnoxious goddamned drum beat possible) and I got tired of waiting for them to play the Placebo song I'd requested, I buggered off, thinking I'd had a time. 

I was starvacious by this point, and in no mood to eat vendor-cart hotdogs (a.k.a. street meat) while standing on the sidewalk in an inch of slush with peep-toe shoes on, so I hightailed it over to the Celtic Hearth. While I was looking at the menu, I swear I caught the unmistakable whiff of hollandaise sauce from a couple tables away.

Anyone who's been out to breakfast with me knows how much I hate hollandaise sauce. I don't like cream sauces in general (no one hates Béchamel sauce as much as I do), but hollandaise is its own special hell. I attempted to try Eggs Benedict at Blue a few months back, flush with the small yet artfully-spooned rivulets of sauce in cookbook and menu photos. They served it with damn near a pint of tepid frikking hollandaise all over it. Since then I  haven't been able to even look at the stuff. But I digress. 

When the waiter came back to take my order, I'd decided to have a breakfast called the Hungry Human. Despite the relatively pleasing alliteration of this breakfast title, I couldn't help but be a little annoyed at it because it reminded me of a discussion I'd had with my French class at the beginning of summer. The Guv'nor, where we had our end-of-session breakfast, carried a plate called the "Hungry Person's Brunch." It was obvious that this dish had once been called the Hungry Man's Brunch and, terrible feminists that we are, Ashley and I thought that it was a silly thing to change. "Hungry Man's Brunch" is just far more pleasing to the ear than "Hungry Person's Brunch", which is just awkward. I wondered if the Hungry Human was along the same lines. With the Hungry Person's Brunch, it wasn't only the obvious politically-correct influence that bugged me; it was the hypocrisy. I live in an area where words like "retarded", "squaw", and "cripple" are still in common use even when no offense is intended. Until people around here can be educated that these words are no longer acceptable, there's no sense in local restaurants putting clunkity-ass names on their breakfast dishes in some cack-handed attempt to appear progressive. Swanson's have never done it with their Hungry-Man TV dinners, so why this from some restaurant managers in frikking St. John's, Newfoundland? That isn't how social change works, b'ys.

Either way, I ordered this Hungry Human breakfast. I chose it because with the regular breakfast, you get your choice of ham, bacon, sausage, or bologna, but with this Hungry Human one, I saw by the menu that it contained ham, bacon, and sausage, and I was quite in the mood for breakfast meats. Now, in my experience, when you go to a breakfast restaurant for a similar meal, you get a small serving of each meat, usually a half slice of ham and two each of bacon strips and little brekkie sausages. That's plenty for me usually. At Celtic Hearth, that is not the case. My plate was frikking towering. In addition to the usual eggs, toast, and potatoes, there were five strips of bacon, three sizeable breakfast sausages, and a great thick slice of grilled ham. Thinking to myself, "Oh well, I'll have whatever's left boxed up", I tucked in.

As I was having my scoff, I began going over the night's previous events in my head, and while I was gobbling a piece of toast with strawberry jam, it hit me like a ton of bricks: I had behaved in an absolutely abominable manner. I'd sat by myself like a creepy, socially-inept loser. I'd talked to strangers. I'd insinuated myself into their group. I'd danced with strange men and allowed myself to freak and be freaked on. I'd even done stupid shoulder shimmies to show off my stupid ugly south-of-the-border shoulder fringe. In short, despite being stone cold sober, I'd behaved like a far, far bigger douchebag than any of the club patrons who were completely ossified. And there were people there with cameras! And camera phones! They may have caught me in their photos, which they will upload to their computers, and now evidence of my douchebaggery is going to be all over fucking Facebook for the world to see. FAN-BLOODY-TASTIC. At this point, I decided that I was not fit to ever engage in social situations and vowed never to go out in public again except to find/go to a job. I was sitting at a restaurant table and I was inwardly going batshit fucking insane with worry. I figured I'd better call for the bill and get my ass in a cab before I made a further spectacle of myself. I looked down at my plate.

In the midst of all the hollandaise sauce reek, misplaced political correctness, and crippling (there's that word again!) social anxiety...

I had eaten the entire Hungry Human Breakfast.

I then amended my vow: "I will never go out in public again, except to find/go to a job...or to go to the gym!"


*For the record, there are two versions: "Burger Queen", and "Burger Queen Français", which, as the title suggests, is in French.

1 comment:

Andrea said...

See, I read the description of your time at the club and thought "good for Vanessa! Putting herself out there and being confidant and making new friends! Sounds like so much fun I wish I could be less shy like her!"
Maybe you're looking at it the wrong way? I'm not exactly sure what being freaked on means in the context of dancing, but it sounds like a positive interaction/response from the person you were dancing with.

Also, I'm pretty sure the people who are politically correct enough to be conscious of using gendered language are not the same people who use words like squaw and retarded. Neither would those words survive on a public platform like a restaurant menu without receiving lots of complaints. I fail to see how it's hypocritical. Some people/contexts are PC and some are not.