Pepperoni Man

 

When my sister got divorced, she started dating furiously.  I used to write about her and called her “Datingzilla,” and now I think the term Datingzilla still sticks, but it’s a more endearing term—it’s a term I can only strive for in this horrible, horrible dating world. What I didn’t understand at the time was my sister married really young—at 21 she was married and by 24 she’d had her first child.  At 21, I hadn’t figured out how to drink properly; I drank to excess and threw up each time I drank and usually lied down on the carpet behind the counter at the record store where I worked on Saturday mornings.  And on particularly brave nights out, I would take barf breaks to drink more or because the margaritas I was drinking caused such bad heartburn, that I needed to get the "burny" out.  There’s no possible way I could have been married to another human at that point.  And at 24, the only thing I figured out about men was that it feels fucking awful to beg one to love you, fall to your knees, and snot all over yourself when they leave you in the middle of the night while you’re weeping like a sad bastard on the dirty carpet of your duplex that you share with the gay man next door who smokes so much that the smoke smell seeps through the dishwasher, which is located on the mutual wall you share: the same next door neighbor who did not mind me having parties where my male friends dressed in togas and danced in the front yard while wearing beer boxes on their head.  The neighbor didn’t like the noise, but he liked the show. 

My favorite line I remember uttering from that time in my life is, “When you told me you didn’t love me, I thought you were lying.”  Part of me still believes that guy loved me; part of me believes that guy still loves me now.  You don’t want to believe it when someone tells you they don’t love you after all—after you’ve poured your guts into something.  But moreso, you don’t want to believe someone doesn’t love you after you have displayed such pathetic behavior: sobbing, crying, begging.  There’s something about someone leaving you even after you’ve begged that makes the begging seem that much more cringeworthy and pathetic when you reflect on it in the future.

 I don’t understand how my sister continues to find men in this town that are willing to take her to drinks and dinner.  Actually, I can’t believe my sister finds men in this town that have boring jobs and are the kind of men I would potentially date because they have boring jobs and drive fuel-efficient vehicles and have the financial capability to bore her with a night on the town and free dinner.  Essentially, I just want the free dinner and the effort that comes along with spending money on a lady to buy her a piece of meat because you “want to get to know her.”  I’ve had free dinner and drinks and dates out, but it’s generally only after I’ve established a relationship with men.  I want free meat with no cost.  And my sister recently was offered meat for free.  And it turns out, as I am sure we have all had to admit at some point, meat is never free.

Every few weeks, my sister and I trade dating stories; usually, I have found someone I am crushing on who I date and it goes horribly wrong, or I fall into like with someone and don’t know what I want to do or what is going on at all.   Recently, I was relating my woes of not being certain as to what I was doing, but my sister consistently has stories of real dates.  Dates where men drive Priuses or small Nissans that she hates, and they take her to dinner (though sometimes that even falls apart).

My sister went out with a butcher, who seems like a perfect date for me, actually, seeing as I like meat.  But I don’t understand the series of events with this butcher man, necessarily.

My sister met the butcher online.  And funny enough, it’s not the first butcher she’s been out with.  Somewhere in the progression of their conversation online—BEFORE THEY HAD EVEN MET—the man starts sending my sister pictures of his pepperoni-making process.

Here’s the first one:

Note the flyswatter in upper right-hand corner

Let’s discuss this photograph.  If a man, meat or no meat, sent me a picture of a meat grinder before we’d even had our first date, I would seriously reconsider going out with him, and that’s maybe why Datingzilla gets more dates than I ever will.  But I’d also like to note the flyswatter in the photo so close to the meat grinder as a preface to the next photos.  Also, I imagine him saying something like “Girl, I’m gonna spank you with this fly swatter and feed you into my meat grinder,” and this is why Datingzilla is far more successful than me.

Here’s the second picture in the series:

Pepperoni hanging out to dry

All I can say about this is, here’s a picture of the meat that came out of the grinder (who knows what kind of meat it was) and here is the pepperoni hanging to dry because what doesn’t impress a lady  more than a photo of drying meat?

Here’s the third and final photo:

Bag O Pepperoni

This one speaks for itself.

So, here’s the question: at what point does a man think it’s a good idea to send you pictures of his meat-making before he’s even taken you for meat?

My sister went on the date, and she’s lived to tell the story (she was not killed in the grinder):

1.     Butcher and her go to dinner.  It seems okay.

2.     Butcher walks her to her car in parking lot of restaurant and says, “Hold on a sec!” and leaves her standing near here car while he runs to his car.  He runs back with the bag o pepperoni (see above photo).

3.     He gives her the bag o pepperoni, and she says, “Thank you,” because it turns out when someone hands you a bag of meat after a date, you’ve got to say something.

4.     (My sister left these particular details of the date until the very end.  And when I heard this part, I cringed, laughed until I cried, and nearly fell on the floor.  I could not breathe because it’s horrible and awkward and awesome.  It went something like this—in her words as I have re-imagined them):

“His nose bothered me a lot.  It was like, one of those big alcoholic noses.”

“Like the big, purple, veiny bulbous ones?” I asked.

“Yes.  Exactly, but his was creepier.  It was all, like, nubby.  Like diseased-looking.  Like really nubby.  And I feel like a jerk saying this, but it really bothered me.  And I feel guilty, but it was freaky.”

5.     After my sister says thank you, she thinks she sees something on the guy’s nose—something like food, presumably—and she reaches up, and touches his nose with one hand, while clutching a bag of pepperoni in the other.  And it turns out, there was no food on his nose, it was just his nose.

In closing, my sister texted the guy later to let him know his pepperoni was delicious.  She never actually ate it, but she fed it to her son, a 10 year old.  And he loved it.  So, she said something like “Your pepperoni is really good,” because something my sister and I share in common is never wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings even if we secretly think they have creepy noses and they’ve unveiled their secret meat-making process too early in the game.

His response: “As a butcher, I get the special cuts of meat that no one gets.  I get first dibs.  If you keep dating me, I’ll make you all kinds of meat treats.”

It turns out though Pepperoni Man was my sister’s date, in an alternate universe he is my dream man: in this universe, however, he is my worse nightmare and the reason why men continue to be a mystery.