Honey

I was making peanut butter and honey raison toast for dinner this evening because I had about five pieces of homemade barbeque chicken two hours before the aforementioned meal. However, I didn’t tell anyone about this “snack” because I thought this small dinner portion would look somewhat impressive to my dinner co-participants. Or, even better, I figured they might mistake me for being anorexic. Besides getting me some much-needed negative attention, anorexia is at worst a highly socially acceptable eating disorder. I don’t want to say it’s encouraged (and by “I don’t want to say it’s encouraged” I mean “Our society discourages telling your child, “Be anorexic or I won’t love you’”). Really, I’ve never seen anyone get disgusted with someone who is anorexic — unless being anorexic happens not to make that person skinny. That could get ugly. “Mom, Dad … I’m not sure how to tell you this, but I have a problem with food — with eating.” Oh, sweetie, we know, we know. We — your father and I — just didn’t know how to approach you about it. “Really? Oh my god, you guys are so totally know me and, wow, I love you so much, really. “We love you, too, honey.” I gotta ask you, though, how did you’d find out I was anorexic?” (Pause.) Uhhh, let’s give that a second go. “A second go? What? Wait…what?” Being anorexic, take two!

Anyway, I knocked over a bunch of Tupperware as I was reaching for the honey bear because (conspiracy?) it was on the top shelf and I didn’t realize how light it was. (“Honey bear, have you been working out? Oh my! Flirty little fellow aren’t you? Well, I don’t know, but… Okay, go on … Go on … Uh-huh … Go on … Well, I’ll tell you what, you just meet me in the park with that trumpet mute and we’ll go from there.”) Nothing was hurt, nothing was spilt, but, you bet your vag, there were other people in the room. Needless to say (what does that mean?), they immediately recognized the non-emergency-ness of the situation. I gathered the lids off the floor as nonchalantly as possible, but even without looking, I could feel the rush of their minds jockeying for gratification of the best one-liner. So, fuck it, I just turned around with Mr. Bear and waited with an “alright, guys, I’m a good sport, ha-ha you know me, Good Sport McDave, but, heeyyyyy, let’s not get carried away here, okay? Ha-ha, c’mon, we’re all friends, right? Friendly-friend friends…ehhhhh?”

Well, that tactic worked not at all and they were off: (a) Oooo! (b) Nice one! (c) Smooth work! (d) Dumbass! (e) First day with your new hands!?!?

Not that bad, really, but then there was that awkward silence where you wait for someone to say something but nothing is said and people just make humming noises and repeat what other people have said back to the whole group and laugh and look at the floor or wall and say “Ha-ha, yeeeeah”. And finally, finally, someone introduces a new topic because everyone realizes the jokes have been underwhelming across the board and there’s a general sense shame.

Needless to say (shitass! I said it again), I felt pretty vindicated and, riding that sweetly unwarranted feeling, I invited Mr. Bear back to my place for “private counseling” session. Things went pretty well, I guess, but it turned out he just wanted be friends. You see, he got out of the mood when it came up that I was only into food product dudes and not human dudes. He said the such a stance was insensitive to the whole community and, as a matter of principal, he couldn’t, just couldn’t. He insisted we still be friends, though, and swore he wasn’t pissed or anything. “Perry, I swear to God I’m not pissed at you,” he said. I told him that was fair enough (“Fair enough, Mr. Bear, fair enough”) but that I, in turn, had to respectfully disagree with him. With a little difficulty, I explained my side of the issue and he said I had some good points but, unfortunately, it just wasn’t happening that night. So, eh, we just chilled for a while and ate salt and vinegar chips and drank Mexican beer and watched late night television. At one point, we were watching Ed Norton on the Daily Show, I told him I wanted to be famous just so I could get applauded for directly pointing at strangers in a studio audience. He liked that one and predicted Carson Daily would get cancelled soon.