I pit…I pit, I pit, I pit…
I pit absolutely fucking everything. As a newly minted non-smoker, I am struggling with a delightful smorgasbord of delicious withdrawal symptoms, the most prominent of which is a volcanic, borderline-psychotic, what-the-fuck-are-YOU-lookin’-at-CUNT? hair-trigger temper.
I’m not short of things to Pit at the moment. For the sake of bandwidth, I shall focus on one. It’s a small thing, really. And were my synapses not being ravaged by nicotine withdrawal, and were I blessed with a more sanguine disposition, I would have dismissed it as the trivial peccadillo that it is in an instant. Yet in my fevered state, I have not been able to let go. The offence has gnawed at me like a cancer, and I am on the verge of losing control of my bowels. I must retort!
My gripe concerns table manners. Specifically, it concerns a nonsensical and breath-takingly galling custom which has, by some utter mystery, become a ubiquitous aspect of the dining experience, which has gained such cultural heft as a rule of etiquette that to break it is to cause an offence on par with masturbating into the crème brûlée, and which seems to exist for no other reason than to sow resentment between diners and mar an otherwise pleasurable restaurant experience.
I am speaking, of course, of the rule, nay, the law, nay the Holy Fucking Writ which states, and I quote from the Gospel of Emily Post:
“Thou shalt not tuck into the meal thou hast paid good money for, until all thy brethren’s entrées hath been delivered to the table, even if thy numbers are legion, even if thou hast ordered a hot starter, and even if thou waiteth only upon some cunt who ordered a cold meat platter, and the chef hath elected to go out and hunt the livestock personally”
I went out for a meal last night to celebrate a friend’s birthday. He began the evening with a black mark against him by choosing a restaurant which was a full hour away from where I and all of our mutual friends actually live, and is indeed nearly half an hour away from where he fucking lives. But never mind that. About 10 of us all meet up, we sit down and order our starters. I’m fucking hungry. I’ve just quit smoking so I’m hungry anyway, but I’m particularly ravenous today. For my starter, I order the fried calamari.
As luck would have it, my order arrives first. I sit and wait a few moments and say “Mind if I tuck in?”. Now, a quick point here. I resent having to do even this. We dine as equals, and I see no reason why I should have to abase myself before any of my companions and ask for permission to pretty-please, with-sugar-on-top, eat the fucking food I’m paying for. But I ask anyway. It’s the “done thing”. It shouldn’t be, but it is.
My. Christ. Alive. The looks that I got. I doubt I’d have received a frostier response if I’d asked for permission to fuck their children. And that was just for asking for permission to eat MY FUCKING FOOD, before theirs had reached the table. Ooh, I was angry. Seething, I was. But that wasn’t the worst of it, oh no. The wound, the gravest offence, the palpable hit, the sore on the roof of my mouth, which would heal if only I could stop to tonguing it, was inflicted when one of my friends intemperately remarked that “I shouldn’t have to wait long”, that “I’d survive” and that waiting was “General courtesy”.
Here, for your edification and my catharsis, I present the rejoinder I should have made last night, but which, for the sake of propriety, I stifled.
Shut up right now, you stupid fucking cunt. Why should I be forced to sit here, the food that I paid for coagulating in front of me, just because I have had the good fortune to be served first? Would my eating now somehow sully the enjoyment of your meal when it finally arrived? Are they linked at the atomic level or something? No. Of course not. Now here’s the thing: When I’m forced to wait for the delivery of your food, my meal is being sullied. It is losing it’s heat, and consequently it’s flavour. My meal, which I’m paying for with money I emphatically do not possess in abundance, is rapidly cooling, congealing, and depreciating in front of me. Your petty, haughty, and thoroughly obnoxious insistence that I abstain from eating out of deference to you is ruining my own meal.
You on the other hand, were not obliged to share in this misery. Your food, being brought over last, was served piping hot, and you were allowed to enjoy it as it was intended. I was deprived of this pleasure, yet I’m the one who is considered rude.
No, fuckstick. You are the one who is being rude. By insisting that the rest of us wait (and remember, there were about 10 of us, I wasn’t the only one waiting) you were actually robbing us of the full value of our meals. You were also being grossly disrespectful to the chef, who (and I know more than a few chefs) busted his ass in a hot kitchen juggling expensive ingredients for our edification, which you have just tarnished.
Why did you behave this way? What was your motivation? Do you have some weird OCD quirk in which your swallowing reflex seizes up unless all those present commence dining simultaneously? Do you believe this to be a religious ritual? Will the almighty be angered if I dare enjoy the food I’ve come here to eat? Is your enjoyment of the dining experience contingent on our observation of every contrived and banal point of etiquette in existence, even the ones which don’t make any fucking sense? Do you feel that the camaraderie of the table will be irrevocably destroyed if I dare commence my meal before you? If so, believe me when I say that this spirit of fraternity takes a far, far bigger hit when you force people to sit and glumly stare at their slowly ruining meals while you wait for the tardy delivery of your own.
Or maybe you feel disrespected in some way? Well let me tell you something, when I’m forced to eat substandard food which has been allowed to grow tepid and unappetising just because you’re a fucking child who can’t bear the thought of people starting without you, I feel pretty Goddamned disrespected! The next time we go out (and you are still my friend, my transient nicotine-fuelled rage not withstanding) I shall conspire to direct the waitress to bring your food out a full twenty minutes before mine on every course. I’ll make you wait every second of it. See how you like it. Prick.
