excused herself to the ladies’ room.
The Greek returned, making excuses for needing to pee so often to anyone who’d listen.
Then he began his dance alone in the middle of the room, forcing the crowd to navigate around him.
And quickly his dance got serious with pursed lips and furrowed brow.
The second half of The Game began.
O’Malley pulled a girl toward a closet, and when she resisted he promptly fell asleep with his head on a table next to a basket of onion rings and a cup of hot cheese.
The girl who’d been on my lap returned from around a corner, radiating that shared sting of perfect tits moving thru a room.
Pausing for The Greek to spin from her path, she rolled her eyes at his dance, glanced at me and sighed.
And I stood and shouted at the top of my voice, Time to go.
“Duh, unga-bunga!”
The room froze.
One Barbarian looked at me, stunned, with a shrimp tail hanging from his mouth.
With the chatter and romp all at once muted, that one Foreigner song surfaced from the background—he wants to know what love is.
And that dull-souled Barbarian, the slopey-chinned nodder-alonger who I’d earlier appraised at The Other Greek Place, broke the silence.
“But we can all stay, can’t we?”
I sauntered over to him like James Coburn and stood face to face.
He held his breath.
My breath heated his cheek.
He cleared his throat and whimpered, “I mean, you wouldn’t mind if we stayed, would you?”
The steel spike of my vision burrowing into his forehead, he wouldn’t look at me.
No one moved.
Slowly, I raised my hand.
Above my waist, above his elbow, higher than my shoulder.
I inserted my index finger just beyond the cusp of his nostril and held it there.
He didn’t breathe.
Lightly, I scraped at the inner walls of his nose with my fingernail, barely breaking apart the crust.
We locked into a stare, not unlike the swollen moment before a kiss.
Aaron came up quick and stood next to me.
“Sir.”
With a sudden thrust I pushed a little further up there.
I puffed out my chest.
With my finger inserted into his nostril so tightly, it took very little effort to pull his head this way or that.
In the overlapping indexes of neon lights, Aaron by my side, my finger jammed in the quiet Barbarian’s head, no one moved.
Until finally, O’Malley and The Greek cracked open into furious hissing laughter.
We stopped for Polishes on the way home.
CHAPTER 3 Diana Herself
Most commonly, unconsciously, people judge attractiveness according to averageness and youthfulness.
Asymmetry is not aesthetically appealing.
People might prefer slight asymmetry, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
People’s unconscious assumptions about health and beauty propel evolution.
That person’s estrogen is wonky.
That person’s got a bad immune system.
Symmetry implies extraversion, openness, lower neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeability, sociability, intelligence, liveliness, and trustworthiness.
People associate deception with twitching, and twitching tenses the face, causing asymmetry.
But I’ve always found Diana Herself to be nothing less than extraverted, open, not neurotic, conscientious, agreeable, sociable, intelligent, lively, and trustworthy.
If you split Diana Herself’s face down the middle with a mirror, she’d undoubtedly look like two very different people.
Her eyes aren’t only different sizes, but very different shapes set at different angles on her face.
Her nose bends so that mirroring one side of her face would give her a huge nose, and the other side, a tiny one.
And if you did do that mirror thing and she looked like two totally different unattractive people, that wouldn’t mean I think she’s unattractive.
That mirror thing is no relevant standard.
I know about physical asymmetry.
Every morning I needed a big breakfast to soak up the hangover aches.
I never wanted yogurt and granola or oatmeal or a fruit cup.
And every morning, knowing I’d see Diana Herself motivated me to keep my nose hairs plucked and ear hair trimmed.
Someone would know if I hadn’t changed my jersey.
I’d roll into The Diner alone by 10 a.m. each morning.
Most mornings, as a matter of disposition, I never much felt like talking, and Diana Herself knew it had nothing to do with her.
I’d sit with my paper and sip my burnt coffee that tasted like a dirty key had sunk to the bottom of the pot.
Diana Herself had a few years on me.
Her three kids, all pretty grown, still lived at home, except when the girl goes missing on a binge.
They’d pilfer her cigarettes and pinch an Andrew Jackson now and then, but what could she do, insist they cough up their painkillers and start paying rent?
Or what?
She was proud of her one son, The Future-Barber.
Twenty years behind that counter, she never imagined a day that she wouldn’t stand there.
She didn’t get maternity leave when her daughter had a kid.
Our routine established our trust.
She had a big honk of a laugh and would forget to breathe when she spoke, which made her voice sound like a barking goose.
And she was the woman I said Good Morning to each morning.
“Duh, unga-bunga.”
And she’d ask how I felt before my day had even really begun.
Big cities privilege younger waitresses, pretty women that any man would want serving him.
But I’d been married and had already suffered my insecure playboy phase.
The ideal waitress for me was just the same one that I’d come to expect every morning.
She knew I preferred breakfasts with limited color palettes—white toast, potatoes, eggs, French toast, pancakes— so she never bothered to take my order, sparing me from having to touch any fingerprint-smudged menus.
When I did feel like talking, she’d listen as long as I needed her to, and she never disagreed.
Her movements always choreographed to the incessant theme of the cheery morning news show on ze Tube behind her.
Her differently shaped eyes moistened at stories of a third grade class buying a homeless man a heavy coat.
Refilling my coffee after every sip, Diana Herself’d spin her wrist, turning her hand over backwards.
Behind