Three years ago, I was very single, very bored and very, very lonely. It was a Saturday night. My daughter was with my ex and I, naturally, had no plans.
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I was on the phone with a friend of mine when she suggested that I take myself out to dinner.
JESSICA: It’s Saturday night in Los Angeles. No way am I going out to dinner alone.
FRIEND: Don’t be an idiot. Get a shopping bag, put a couple of pieces of clothing in it, grab your camera and then go and sit at the bar. It’ll look like you were just stopping off to have a meal before going back home.
JESSICA: Forget it. Not going to happen.
FRIEND: What else are you going to do? You said you were lonely and bored, what’s the big deal?
JESSICA: Do you hear yourself? You’re telling me to go out to a crowded restaurant ALONE and with a bag full of clothes I already own and a camera and pretend I was out all day, shopping and picturetaking. That’s insanity. No f**king way.
FRIEND: I bet ten bucks you’ll meet someone.
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Me folding a couple of pieces of my pre-owned jeans into a Nordstrom’s Bag that I had from when I could actually afford to shop.
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Me getting into my 1996 Gold Nissan Maxima cockblocker with my camera bag hanging from one shoulder, my purse from the other, holding the shopping bag.
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Me parking my car a mile away from the restaurant, willing to risk getting mugged so that the valets wouldn’t judge me.
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Me, sitting at the bar in this packed Italian restaurant so loud, it was like dining on a helipad, holding this giant camera bag on my lap along with my Nordstrom’s shopping bag, eating a sh**ty meal and planning, in explicit detail, how I was going to end my friend’s life.
Now, I tried to talk to the bartenders, both of whom were young enough to be my sons but neither wanted anything to do with me. It was obvious they weren’t interested by the way they pretended to serve other people and take their money (like they needed it). One of them, I’ll call him, “guy who I had no business flirting with in the first place but I was so desperate even his mother would have understood”, or “gwihnbfwitfpbiwsdehmwhu” for short, that guy, even went so far as to pretend that he had to open a bottle of wine for this waitress that was acting like someone had really ordered it, just to avoid eye contact with me.
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My Nordstrom bag falling onto the floor tossing my pre-worn clothes all around my bar stool.
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The couple in their 60’s, who had been sitting next to me, helping me pick up my clothes and now my camera bag and the contents of my purse, which included, some pens, my wallet, little rubber balls Phoebe had asked me to hold and which were now bouncing all over the place and, of course, a stray tampon disguised as a white bullet (thank you O.B.).
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The woman picking up a pair of my pants and informing me:
WOMAN: There’s a stain on the leg. You might want to take these back. Looks like fresh ketchup.
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My face turning bright red as I knew it probably was ketchup because I am so tired by the end of the every night that I forget to check my clothes for stains even though I have been using them as a back up napkin for most of my life.
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Me paying my bill and slinking out of the restaurant, in search of a priest so that I can immediately convert to Catholicism and then go from the church directly to the convent of St. Donna Karan, which I believe is located just south of her flagship store and not far from my favorite nail salon.
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A year later, this “friend” decides to stop talking to me.
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Two years later. Have new friends, same pants and still Jewish.
