"He Eats Alone"

Sunday morning. I'm not feeling my best. Feels like another cold coming on. No surprise. It's that time of year. Everybody's had it at least once. I work in a large office. I think we're time-sharing the same virus. "Whose turn is it this week?" Stress lowers resistance to disease, and work has been stressful of late. So...cough. Sneeze. Snurfle.

Still, I want to go out for breakfast. I don't usually go out for breakfast on Sunday. That's more of a Saturday thing, after an evening of V&Ts or pints of Guinness at Cardozo's. And I didn't go out Saturday night, except to Mom's house for meatloaf. (I know, I should stay away from Mom if I even suspect that I have a cold or the flu. But I've cancelled out on her so often because of my work schedule that I would have felt guilty for doing so again, especially on a weekend when work couldn't be blamed.)

I'm restless. Nothing in La Casa del Terror's well-stocked cupboards--soups, chili, peas, mac and cheese--immediately excites my tastebuds. So I armor up against the February freeze. I pull on the parka. Wrap my neck with a scarf. Slip on Dad's old leather mittens, which look and feel like welterweight boxing gloves. Head out into the cold.

About two blocks from La Casa, I find a adult-size green mitten lying on the ice on the corner. It's nice. And I tend to rescue such items. A single mitten, though? Even a nice one? Even I'm not that sentimental. So I leave it there...until I spot its companion half a block away, half-buried in the snow. I grab the left-hand mitten and go back for the right-hand one. They're nice. Maybe I'll use them. Someday. Not today. I slip them in the backpack and continue on my way.

The breakfast place closest to me is a cozy little storefront at a busy intersection. Seats no more than twenty, I'm sure. Sometimes, it's packed. Today it's not, though it's hardly empty either. There's a spot right next to the door where nobody likes to sit, especially on cold days like this. Nobody but me, that is. The cold isn't constant, and I'll be drinking hot coffee. I'll trade the mild discomfort for the opportunity to spread out my Sunday paper and relax for a few.

A young, sandy-haired waitress who appears to have multiple piercings (most removed during work hours) looks quizzically at my spot, which has four seats, and asks, "How many?"

Another, older waitress--the younger one's mom, I'm pretty sure--swings up behind her, coffee pot in hand, and corrects her daughter/co-worker. "No, he eats alone," she says, filling my cup with steaming black liquid.

I look over the menu. Settle on a ham-and-cheese omelet. Sip my coffee and gatefully take a refill from one of the owners. They're a middle-aged, Middle-Eastern couple. At least one of them is always there. Both of them are usually smiling. Both take turns apologizing for how cold my spot is. I don't mind, I say. The coffee keeps me warm, I say.

So I drink my coffee and look at my omelet like it's too beautiful to eat (because it is) and pull the Show section from the Sunday Sun-Times and try not to think about what the waitress pointed out to her daughter.

"He eats alone," she said.

And she's right, of course. I usually eat alone. Drink alone, too.

I didn't always feel comfortable doing that. And I don't always. Sometimes friends join me at dinner or Cardozo's or the Davis to catch the latest blockbuster. But that's not usually the case. Usually, I do whatever I do--eat, drink, shop, breathe--alone.

That's how it is when you haven't had sex in eons. Been in love in years. Or even kissed a girl in a while. (The last time I did kiss a woman, she said I was "a great kisser." So at least that's something. Not much, but something.)

Not that I've completely given up hope. My travel reading of late has been a book titled The Lowdown on Going Down, a guide for giving better oral sex to women written by a speech therapist. (You're never too old to learn--or, in this case, to learn how to do something better.) When I bought it at Virgin Megastore, the checkout clerk found it fascinating, and an alternachick clerk--short, cute, pierced, tattooed--who'd taken care of me in the recent past flipped through it while the first clerk rung me up. The alternachick nodded approvingly--"Eye contact, yes, very important...hmmm. Very good." She slipped the book into the translucent Virgin Megastore bag and handed the bag to me. "Have fun," she said with a smile. "I will," I replied, smiling even more and, I'm certain, blushing furiously.

Lately, I've even lit candles to St. Jude on behalf of my sex life. Not my love life--my sex life. Of course, I still want to fall in love again someday, preferably with a woman who wants to fall in love with me. But JB has said more than once (and less than 500 times) that I'm too damn young and attractive to be going without. And would I reject a one-night stand at this point? Or even a quickie? Hell to the no.

But not this Sunday. This Sunday, I'm sitting in a small storefront cafe, sipping coffee and tucking into the ham-and-cheese omelet (no matter how beautiful it is) and compare my Oscar picks with Roger Ebert's and find that we agree on some choices and disagree on others. I look out onto the bustling intersection and sip my coffee some more.

And, for now, I eat alone.