Sue-Baby. The Man in Moccasins

It was almost a blind date.
My best friend
invited him to the pizza place
where I worked as a hostess.
I was 17.
He was 26.
He was also a pilot, stationed
at Patrick Air Force Base.
I had just dropped out of college and moved to Florida
for the sunshine.

He was in her math class,
they were attending night school at the community college.
She thought he was cute.
But she had a boyfriend.
So she thought she'd give him to me-
just like a late birthday
present, wrapped in newspaper, the kind of gift you might have gotten
from someone you weren't too keen on, so you recycled it.

It was crowded,
the restaurant was as busy as a roller rink in the eighties.
He waved a quick hello,
two fingers to his temple like a
Tom--Cruise--I--was--in-Top--Gun,
attempt at cool.
With this not quite introduction,
the date was set?
two days away,
Saturday.

Knock, knock, na na knock.
He was one of those
secret password
kind of guys.
The one who does Morse code on the front door-
as if you weren't expecting it to be him, but rather a Russian spy
dressed in a harry black gorilla suit, accompanied by his beatnik
girlfriend with a black beret and a long cigarette holder-pretending to
deliver a singing telegram.

To my surprise, there was no singing telegram behind the knock when I
opened the door.
Sure enough, an entire
5 minutes early,
was the 26-year-old Air Force pilot whom my great, dear friend had
arranged for me to date.

He stood,
with wilted wildflowers-
which I recognized from the
parking lot
of my apartment complex?
random roots still dangling- right hand thrust towards me.

Meanwhile, balancing the extra large, extra grease soaked meaty pizza
pie-oozing orange grease from the bottom of the box and into his cupped
palm, left fingertips pinched upwards.

Perhaps he hadn't realized when we met, the restaurant within which I
worked. Hmmm. Pizza?ponder this.

Excitedly, he entered.
I hadn't recalled that his eye level was so much lower than my
own.
Nor had I recalled, his devout
need, if not dedication-to Rich Little-like impersonations of every
male and female celebrity in Hollywood.

Dinner with Sybil, was not quite what I had in mind.

Delighted at the strange expression on my face, mistaking it for
approval of his humor?

He opened the box
slowly rotating the pizza pie towards me, his eyes
growing wild
with the anticipation of my reaction to his most gentlemanly
deed.

With horror,
the alphabet shaped bread sticks, neatly decorated with red pepperoni
polka dots? leapt out of the box with an exclamation of "Sue-BABY!"
shrieking into my now widely popped eyeballs.

Growing feverish, with the need to character voice the breadsticks,
themselves?
my dear date screeched, in his most Brooklynite accent, "YO, Sue BABY!
--
I had the pizza pie made special for you. I wanned you to know what
kinna girl I thought you was!"

With each syllable he began to shrink
before me?
my eyes slowly moving towards his feet,
afraid that the wave of nausea he had just induced,
might show on my face?
I reached the cuffs of his acid washed Levi Strauss jeans, at which
point, the date
drew near its close?

Just as horrid, as the vision of "Sue-Baby" written in breadsticks atop
the pizza, were the brown tasselly suede moccasins peeking out below
his pant legs on his tiny woman sized feet.
The final conclusion came when his tiny woman sized feet, began to
sweep slowly in a circular shuffle.
He crooned?
his best attempt at Deano-"When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza
pie---"

I didn't allow him to finish.
I drew my flattened palm upwards?and silenced him like a crossing guard
might silence the horn of a Pinto
squeaking its little voice for the passing children to hurry across a
street.

Sometime soon thereafter,
I packed his pizza?
and told him to take his moccasins on home.

And so, he kissed the door
Goodnight.