Hat Hair

The waiter will not leave us alone, it’s like he wants us to keep ordering shit. I mean, really? What more could we order – appetizers, main courses beverages and desserts have all been pushed down our throats (basically). Does he expect us to start from the beginning again? And why would we do that? It’s not like things aren’t already bad enough. What is the deal with this silence? The staring… oy! What else can I do? He is good in the eyes, but not a lot of content behind them. 

Conversations remain in the air, floating in space, like those three bouncing balls in the text-message field when someone is allegedly typing an answer…except the answer never comes. By the way, why is that? What happened to my answer? Did it mistakenly end up in someone else’s phone and now they’re really confused wondering if they had dinner plans at 8pm that they completely forgot about? Let’s hope they didn’t, because they’re NOT in for a treat. Anyway. Back to this thing… where to go from here? 

This is that turning point, where I basically know what’s gonna happen, and there are only two options, with one outcome. Option A is that I will go home with the boy, screw his eyeballs out and then never see him again, or option B; in which he plays the prude, goes home and I never see him again. Either way, the ultimate outcome is: I never see him again. That’s totally fine, after all, can you imagine raising kids with a non-talking being? That would be complicated. “Honey, did you feed the baby?”. Text-message bouncing balls. The horror! 

He is good to look at though. Those eyes just won’t stop staring, they’re big and translucent and bright, and I really wish they could talk to me. Those eyes actually feel very much alive, they feel as if they have so much to say. They could fill two slots of the David Letterman show. Not just one of those tiny in-between interviews he does with boring physicists who are releasing some boring book about saving the planet. No one cares about saving the planet, Al Gore knows all about that. Ask him! I mean, I care about saving the planet, but I just try not to be too scandalous about it. 

Oh my God, I just realized I think I left the stove on this morning! Shit I hope the cat didn’t burn to death! Oh my God, what does that mean in terms of killing the planet? Wait… gas doesn’t kill the planet… does it? Oh I should bail on this botched date and go turn the stove off, can you imagine the electric bill? I mean gas bill. Oh, who cares it’s al the same, it comes in a bundle and no one looks at that damn thing, it’s all in auto-pay. “oh, put it in auto-pay and we will give you a discount.”. Bullshit! I don’t think anyone has ever gotten anything from putting anything in auto-pay. I certainly didn’t. I haven’t checked either, but I am sure I haven’t. 

This is one of those cases, like when I go to the supermarket and I buy plums that look really pretty and purple and shiny and big. I imagine they’ll taste like a little piece of heaven, and I don’t check the price because, well, they’re plums! How expensive can fruit be, right? And then I get to the register and the lady rings up the plums and my six purple pieces of heaven add up to somewhere north of 40 dollars. For plums! I go crazy on her, it’s absurd! “Are these plums made of Gold?” I say – she just stares at me and says “I don’t know, you’re the one who put the plums in a bag and then in your shopping cart” all while raising those big fat eyebrows in a uniform motion with the shrug. Oh these people! And who reads signs anyways? Also, you should be able to just throw shit in a bag, scan everything with your phone and walk away, check out lines are the worst!

Oh my Godddd – he’s staring at me again. And the waiter is waiting. For WHAT? Oh, thank God, it’s the check, he is waiting for my signature! Somehow the check had magically been filled out with tip and everything, God bless. He went with option B, I can’t blame him, I had a bad case of hat hair tonight anyway, that’s what happens in the winter, you get hat hair and your dates are ruined by it. No one gets lucky in the winter, because of hat hair.

Author: Gabriel Ruas Santos Rocha

writes for passion, eats for pleasure, travels for wonder.