4th of July

Today, a waiter at the restaurant I was having a business meeting in, didn't look us square in the eye the entire time they spoke to us. They were cute, shorter than my colleague and myself, mousey, disheveled hair, and their tie tucked into their shirt.

The ability to connect didn't seem entirely up to them. Recognizing this, I found them charming, endearing almost.

When the waiter left my colleague, who at this juncture had more to offer me than I did him, made that, tongue out, uvula rattling, "ugh" sound. He gave me a look and said something related to, "really?"

"Really what?" I said.

"Just like, could you look at us when you take our order?"

"Really?" I said again, "I just kind of fell in love with them."

He made another comment about how cliché it was that the couple sitting behind us was in all red white and blue. I had a blue and white shirt on and a red bandana in my pocket that would've left the house around my neck had my boyfriend not told me it looked stupid.

Later, after my colleague had veto'd two bars, we ended up at a queer one on 8th Avenue.

Coincidentally, it stood adjacent to the fortune teller my father and I visited on his, "I'm sorry for not speaking to you for six months" trip following my coming out. She had told him he was gay in a past life.

Emboldened by 2 gin martini's I asked to ask my colleague a question that might offend him. Recalling the instance at the restaurant I said, "What do you gain by condemning someone like that?"

"Well," he said, "There's a brand. We paid $x amount of dollars to be there so I expect a certain level of service."

I said we knew nothing about this person. I recognized a similar neurodivergent disposition but that, as he highlighted, was assuming a lot about a stranger. I said in his evaluation he was doing the same.

I closed, perhaps to my entrepreneurial detriment, with proposing that although there is no fault in creating a brand and holding oneself to the standard you create—it is possible to consume differently than you produce.

Ultimately, I said, "I'd value the human before the service," and he, as successful as he was, could see nothing but the inversion.