Thursday, May 10, 2012

Dinner

I had dinner with a great friend last night.
We sat together for hours, we took turns telling each other what was going on in each others' lives.
It's been a big couple of years for both of us, and there's always lots to tell.

We met at the end of each of our respective days--I was coming from work, and she from her home, where she is on mat-leave with her little son right now.
We arrive almost at the same time (we're both extremely punctual. First-born trait, I'm convinced of it).
The restaurant, a pizza-place, has rough-hewn walls planked with wood. A downstairs bar. A thick wooden counter on the bar, with hooks underneath (my favourite bar feature, besides chardonnay. Meaning: your purse never has to sit on the floor, which my sister says is bad-money-luck.) So we sat at said bar, for a nice long dinner and catch-up. At the end of the evening, almost, someone we once worked with at another restaurant came over. We were friendly. I was privately unimpressed (I'm alot more polite than I used to be). After he dashed off (he was working) I blurted out to my friend "That was housepet guy".
Housepet.
In my recent contribution to lettersforourdaughters.  It was a line that came to me as I was writing and for a little while I wondered why it came to me.
I'll give the background story: When I worked at said restaurant, years ago, this group of guys went on a trip. When they returned they told stories about this girl they had met who had stayed with them and they (or just one of them?) referred to her as "the housepet". Which at first (keep in mind, I was in my early-to-mid-twenties) did not quite jump out at me the way it really should have. My friend, my treasured guy friend pointed this out to me. Because it really really bothered him to hear a female talked about this way. And it hit me: very very wrong. What was even more wrong was that I needed a man to point this out. But once I got it, I never really got over it. I know. Strange. So, having just written this, and then running into this person was strange for me. Like....I'd conjured it all up.

Weird, I know. It reminds me of how many stories I still have left to write on this crazy often incoherent blog.
As it stands right now, it's way past my bedtime, I've had a searing headache for most of the day (stress, I'm convinced) and this is night five or six of uncommon insomnia for me. Is it the moon? Weird weather? As my sister mentioned on the phone tonight, weather's been the talk of the town this week. That, and an extremely bad week on the Toronto roads. Moon? I don't know.
I'm going to try to get some sleep now. More about said restaurant later. As I drove into the parking lot on the day I left said restaurant, coming up on two years this July, I had a thought as I looked up at the sign on the way in--is this place cursed for me?
Part of me is still undecided.

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