A Completely Unreasonable Fantasy
Hi Bestie!!
I am in Maryland this weekend and we had Texas Roadhouse for dinner, because my (sainted) mom has heard my lecture more than once.
Inspired by a Grub Street profile from 2020, it's a rich fantasy for a life in a timeline that doesn't exist: I long to sit in a booth at Texas Roadhouse. I am dining, in person, with someone I really care about (Jacqueline, probably!), and I look great. (A cute blouse and a red lip, with shorts, because I almost never daydream about a season that isn't summer.) It's really, really loud, but I have a really, really good time and I feel free.
This fantasy is wrong, in many ways:
I don't dine in. We ate inside when we visited Joshua Tree—there were no other options—and I was inside for Bob's Big Boy. In New York, I can't think of a time I would have ordered with a waiter without Fiona. (How many times have I cried since 2020, "All I wanted was brunch, and now it's here!" Three times?) I go to bars, sometimes, when someone from work has asked me. (Sharlene's is everything, but usually, we sit outside at a different bar so we can talk shit after last call without getting in the way.) It's not just COVID though, it's also a lack of time and money.
We don't have Texas Roadhouse in New York City—not that I can imagine going to a chain restaurant in one of the boroughs. I wouldn't be tipsy in Frederick, because I would have to drive home. I don't have any idea what my best friend thinks about Texas Roadhouse, its menu, getting drunk in the middle of the day, or chain restaurants.
I suspect I would hate Texas Roadhouse. I went once, when I was 20ish, and I didn't get it. It's loud, and busy, and nationalism makes me feel deeply uncomfortable. The restaurant in Frederick has dedicated parking for Purple Heart veterans ("for people in wheelchairs," my mom said, and I tried not to think of mean people taking it with a sneer), which is good, but it also had lot of pro-America signage all over the exterior that makes me wildly uncomfortable. I don't like loud anymore, and I'm schnaggy about country music; I like Willie Nelson and John Denver, and Loretta Lynn, but I do not like Blake Shelton or Aaron Lewis.
My parents don't dine anywhere at all anymore, because of COVID, but also at the request of family and their doctors. Mom ordered our dinners for takeout and we drove across town to pick it up via a walk-up window. (The to-go team was truly wonderful.) We watched the Evening News, which I cherish with them and at home on my own couch (for a lot of reasons, but one is that it means I'm not at work, and I can watch the sunset, in peace, from either location, a true luxury). We ate in silence, mostly, except for when I yelled, "drop dead!" at a member of the GOP and when we all took turns, unprompted, to say how much we were enjoying our dinners.
It was good. The rolls are overhyped but the dinner didn't taste like a Sysco delivery. (I can't imagine anything sadder than if we'd picked up our food and it all tasted like a corporate shift meal.)
Before dinner, I changed into a pair of shorts I save for the beach and the pool, doused myself in Off!, and cleared out the garden in my parents' front yard. I am slowly drinking an IPA and still covered in Off! and a thin layer of grime. I didn't go with my best friend, and I didn't wear a red lip (I barely brushed my hair this morning to meet her for coffee), but I feel close to free.
Always your friend,
Katherine
Dribs And Drabs at the End
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