Gucci Handcuffs

"Signs, signs, everywhere a sign—and some big guy with a wooden stick to enforce 'em."

I'm eating at this fancy-pants restaurant the other day when the waiter says, "Hey! You can't bring food in here." I thought it was some kind of conundrum or something, like if you can't bring food in then how do all the people get food at their tables. But he was just being a prick because I didn't want to pay their rip-off prices.

I was trying to be all cool about it, so I tell him I'll take a table and eat their food then, but he tells me you need a jacket and tie to eat there. I tell him I got one of each, but he wanted to see them. Which is how they keep people out, I guess. Who's going to know they want to see that stuff before they go out? I wouldn't have thought to take that with me wherever I go.

The more I thought about it, the more I noticed there's all kind of dumb shit like that meant to keep us out of places. Like when places tell you you can't get served without shirt or shoes, then you have one but they always point out you don't have the other. My girlfriend and I went to a place once, I won't name the restaurant, but we went there to eat and I ordered a Big Mac, and one of us had shoes, the other a shirt, but these guys were just assholes about it. Saying the smell of my feet made everyone nauseous and they wouldn't give us any food until she put a shirt on. Eventually we talked them down to a small fries and we didn't even have to pay for it, but it just bugged me that all these rules gotta cramp your style.

Technically, she wasn't my girlfriend. I mean, technically, we were handcuffed together so that's got to count for something, but how do you convey that when you say "my female friend" or something gay like that? If it had been something kinky I could say "my lover" or "my sex slave," but we were just in the same squad car together after the bachelor party. Sure, I could tell people all that stuff, include all the details of breaking out of the car and spending two days hanging out together at her cousin's trailer, but that takes a lot more time and "girlfriend" seems to say the same thing.

Speaking of which, what do they mean in all these personal ads when they tell you what they're looking for. "No losers," shit like that. Hey, I may be a loser by way of never having won anything, but you'll always be a tiny print ad. "No fatties," "non-smoker," "honest," "must have job"—why don't you just ask for a blond Greek god who shits silver dollars? If an honest, non-smoking, athletic man with a job did need a girlfriend, why would he sit around all day reading the personal ads? Unless he's making fun of them, like me and my fat smoking friends do.

Oh, that reminds me. There was this hot, blonde lady wearing one of them Gucci bags or something on the subway—this was Tuesday, maybe. Anyhow, I was all making eye contact with you and everything, and you was holding your purse all close and everything. Was it just me, or did we have like a serious thing going on? Write me here at the commune. Send a photo if you can, preferably a bikini shot.

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