Post by Renaissance on Sept 13, 2020 20:53:43 GMT -5
| The Family I Will Never Have I adjust the sleeves on my black Badgley-Mischka frock and lean into my table slightly, caressing one of the two pear-shaped diamond earrings adorning my ears. Self-care. That’s what they tell women-- take care of ourselves, because it is hard being a woman in this day and age. We have so much more mental load than men, we combat so much more in the world in our domestic and professional lives, and thanklessly so. Like weaned yearlings in the wilderness, no one is looking after women-- they have to take care of themselves, their interests, their wellbeing and If they don’t, they’ll become spinsters, die or both. And god forbid they get fat. It is this overused and unnecessary notion of “self-care” that has brought me to Jean-Georges at 1 Central Park West in the luxurious Trump International Hotel & Tower for a particularly expensive meal that I plan to enjoy alone. Rather, had planned. Instead, I am sitting here, pondering the downfall of mankind and how it simply can’t happen soon enough. I’m wondering just what precise catalysts are needed to blow this restaurant into a smoking crater. The sooner the better. Give me 1 million of an estimated 8 million plant and animal species going extinct. Give me 153 million people dying from air pollution. Give me wildfires, extreme weather, hurricanes, droughts, and unprecedented heatwaves. Give me an uninhabitable world in 30 years. I bite my lip. Where was I? Oh, annoyed. I don’t even go out for an evening without at least two reservations. But I picked Jean-Georges over Daniel, and I’m presently regretting my decision. The source of my ire is a mere 50 feet away from my table. Accurately, it is thusly 51 feet away from my $1100 silk v-necked scuba dress sourced from Neiman Marcus and 48 feet away from long meticulously tanned legs clad in Langs, by Jimmy Choo. It is smiling at me innocently, and at one point, waves a sun-shiny but soiled appendage at me. Though it is far away, it might as well be sitting in my lap for the amount that it’s sublimely stupid gaze makes my skin crawl. I wonder who has mistakenly allowed this to happen-- this devaluing of my carefully planned evening experience. Surely this is an error-- it has accidentally snuck in off the streets in the shadow of an overcoat. The more I stare, willing it to fall over and die, the more vividly enraging the truth becomes. They have brought it with them--these two buffoons masquerading as functional adults-- on the premise of spending “quality time” with it. This ‘It’ that now swings its bare feet back and forth under the table in an establishment that is as reputable as Jean-Georges. I’m ten minutes into a month’s long anticipated night, and it is nearly ruined. The maitre’d slides up to my table and asks quietly if I am ready to order a drink and perhaps an aperitif. He recommends the Toasted Egg Yolk, Caviar, and Herbs but I decline with a slight shake of my nose. I tell the maitre’d that I’m still thinking about the perfect wine to accompany my...whatever. An aside: Looking into his eyes, I imagine sticking a fork into the neck of the maitre’d. I imagine the look on his face the moment ‘just another night’ turns into ‘oh my god, I’m rapidly bleeding to death!’. I tell him that I need a few more minutes to decide. Honestly, I’m going to order the Sesame Crusted Sea Trout, Grilled Eggplant and Red Fresno Butter, but I won’t eat any of it. I sigh and open the menu, blocking the blasphemous tableau of the family with the crisp vellum of the day’s hand-scripted offerings. At $198 dollars per person, how could a family of three, apparent yokels, afford to eat at Jean-Georges? Idiots. Unfortunately, in the last four years, I’ve been noticing a trend of this particular brand of churl has been approaching Trump owned establishments more often. Thanks to his rise to prominence, the lesser peasants, ones he’ll never actually help, find themselves following him around like he’s a Messiah. I’m assuming these three people, or two and a half people, are from some backwater village in Ohio and there here, proud of the fact that their meaningless vote helped Donald J Trump become president. Give me quiet. Give me peace. Give me something other than what I have - or don’t have. I look over the top edge of the menu and I see it, the child, and I see the two doting parents. They’re in love, they love the child, the child loves everything. So much love that I imagine needing to eat the Sesame Crusted Sea Trout, simply because I will soon need something to regurgitate. But then they change. I see myself sitting at the table. I see a man who looks both familiar and alien at the same time. In the child, I see myself. I’m the one doting on the child. Feeding it carefully cut chunks of Sautéed Foie Gras and washing that down with Green Apple Puree. It dawns on me that the entire menu is suitable for a child. I find myself ignoring the inevitable creases I’ll be putting into my Badgley-Mischka as I rest on my elbows watching the scene play out. The child is beautiful and my smile is that of a proud parent. My husband is rugged, but playful. When he smiles, we all smile. There’s a sense of peace in all of that. A kind of alluring serenity. A feeling I’ll never know. I clear my throat and return to the menu. I think I’ve changed my mind. I’ll be having the Arctic Char, Spiced Jade Emulsion, and Tender Celeriac. That meal will look like a Jackson Pollock painting on the floor if I must endure the happiness hidden behind this menu a moment longer. I can’t help myself though. I’m one of those people who rolls the car window down to get a good look at the gruesome car accident as I drive by. I just have to look. What if there’s blood? Now they’ve changed again. I see my mother and my father. I see myself. I’m much younger, maybe 8 or 9. My mother is off, as she always was, in a Luminal induced fog. You know Luminal, or phenobarbital, the barbiturate? Highly addictive. My father was also ignoring me. Inevitably planning to push me and my mother that much further away. My mother would get over her addiction to Luminal, but my father would never get over himself. I will never get over either of them. Give me a reboot. Give me a smile. Give me a fucking gun. I summon the maitre’d. I tell him that I will buy a bottle of the finest wine they have for the couple and their child. I add that I’ll also pay for their meals. The maitre’d is impressed by my benevolence, but before he responds, I add: I’ll do all of this if they agree to move to the opposite side of the restaurant. The maitre’d looked directly at the table in question, then back at me. He told me that the table was empty and when I looked up, I saw that he was right. I...I must have been mistaken. Emancipation Ricky Schorg, aside from the fact that your last name is ridiculous and when said out loud makes the speaker sound like they’re in the midst of a stroke, there’s not much to you. You seem to be caught in a causality loop of your own doing. Ricky says he will step out of his family’s shadow - Says he will win - Loses - Repeat - Repeat - Repeat. Over and over again. The family man, Ricky Schorg. He wants to step out of the shadows of his family’s name, but feels it necessary to tell us about them. I didn’t know his family; don’t care to know them. There would have been no shadow to step out of, had Ricky just kept his mouth shut. Oh but that’s the point, isn’t it? Ricky knows that he’s completely forgettable without that name. There are probably three, maybe four people who remember that his name is more than just a sound someone makes mid-stroke. Ricky needs that shadow. Without it, he’s even more of a nobody than he already is now. Alex Scott seems to be the inverted version of Ricky Schorg. Alex wants to squeeze what little juice is left out of the ‘Lone Wolf’ gimmick and ‘do things his own way’ and I commend him for that. It takes a true realist to look in the mirror, see how useless he is, and then just live up to said uselessness. Alex Scott doesn’t have a family, he’s a lone wolf, but in reality, look at how he panders to sad little rejects like Brother Zeke. He wants a family, he wants APW to be his family, but he’s too scared, or too busy selling his hackneyed gimmick to just come out, start crying, and admit it. An aside: Is it just me, or do wrestlers cry a lot? Alex Scott would have gone down in history as a well respected member of the Alpha Pro Wrestling family if talented wrestlers had never joined the roster. Now he’s on that Ricky Schorg level where he’ll be fighting for scraps, hoping that one day his win/loss record will at least break even; it never will. Then there’s my favorite part of this whole mess - Sara Cross. What a complete disaster she is, don’t you agree? Another one who, without family, wouldn’t be here right now. I’m pretty sure her half brother is Shotaro Kaneda, her mother is Yoruichi Shihouin, and her father is a Snorlax. Am I close? Before you try to talk ‘Anime’ with me Sara, know this, I Googled your little hobby to come up with those names. Most adults don’t follow such adolescent pursuits. You disgust me, Sara Cross. You’re one of these people who thinks ‘I like Anime’ counts as a personality. You should have stopped there. Now by adding ‘I’m magically a professional wrestler now too! Yay!’ to your list of accomplishments, you’re in my world now. You should have stuck with being a cringy Anime fan. Had you stuck with anime, your only threats would be awkward Tik Tok videos, loneliness, and obesity. But here you are thinking you’ll take APW by storm. You may have had you not been fed to me. You were planning on coming out to some fun music, with your Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-flailing Tubemen assuming the fans would LOVE you. Here’s the thing, that’s already been done and it was so boring that the gimmick was taken out back and shot in the head execution style. Prediction: Sara Cross MIGHT show up for a show or two, but after a couple losses, she’ll just cease to exist, because liking Anime isn’t something you put onto a resume. Liking anime is something you put behind you as you mature into an adult. So to answer the question: No, none of you will be joining me to face the WalMart Great Value version of Pennywise at World War Wrestling. Give me a real opponent. Give me a challenge. Give me a better booking. Goodbye END. |
