I work in an area of Los Angeles called Century City, which is sort of like LA’s second downtown. I don’t mean this geographically, but in that there’s lots of white-collar industry around here: law firms and banks and other finance, as well as plenty of entertainment industry stuff (Century City is a stone’s throw from Beverly Hills, from the main drag of Wilshire Boulevard, and from Santa Monica). Of course, I live 17.6 miles away in the middle of nowhere in Redondo Fucking Beach, but I digress.

To be honest, there’s not much actually going on in Century City. Aside from the buildings that house these businesses, there are no bars to hit after work or no cool little coffee or sandwich shops or whatnot. There is, however, the Century City mall, a large outdoor mall that has tons of stores, restaurants, and, of course, a food court.

At this point, this food court is my lifeblood, for two reasons. One, the lunch options nearest to my office are severely limited, consisting of a terrible sandwich shop, a terrible sandwich shop, and whatever I bring for lunch. The mall, which is about a fifteen-minute walk from my place of business, has about ten different options, from Greek to Mexican, and each is high quality. So that’s nice.

Second, the mall is quite literally overflowing with beautiful women. Now, where I live, an area called the South Bay, is also filled with beautiful women. However, the women in the Century City mall are quite unlike the women in my neighborhood (or town or city or whatever they call it here). In the South Bay, with all due respect, we’re dealing with super hot just-graduated sorority sisters exposing their midriffs and pounding Jager bombs (not that I have a problem with any of this). In Century City, we’re dealing with supremely hot professional women in skirts and other dressy clothes who probably earn more money than I do and make me seriously contemplate, “What would I get if I walked up and grabbed her boob? Any prison time at all? A fine? Probation? It just might be worth it. God, I bet that boobie is so nice.” So needless to say, I try to get to the mall and food court once a week, both for nourishment of the stomach and nourishment of the loins.

(I really have to start incorporating the word “loins” into my everyday speech. “So how are you?”/”Fine, but my loins are just killing me – I think I slept on them wrong or something.”)

My go-to food at the food court is the same here as it was back in New York. At the South Street Seaport food court, it was found in the Chinese food station. Here in the Century City food court, it’s found in the “cutlery”-type station. That food is honey barbeque chicken shreds. Or maybe it’s teriyaki chicken shreds. Either way, this is what it kinda looks like (and I’m pretty sure there is no “shred” in its title). While I fully understand that this chicken is culled mostly from the beak and the ass of the chicken, I also fully understand that this chicken is delicious. Further, it comes with two sides. Options for the sides include rice, noodles, broccoli, vegetable medley, corn or whatever. However, I go with what is easily the best option: mac and cheese. Not only that, when the Asian woman is scooping the mac and cheese and asks me what other side I want, I say, “I’ll just take the mac and cheese, please”, which leads to an awkward exchange in which she tells me that I get another side and I say that I’m fine with the mac and cheese and she asks if I want double the mac and cheese and I reluctantly (though secretly joyously) say that yes, that would be fine, as I look around to make sure none of the attractive women are watching scoop after scoop of mac and cheese get piled into my little to-go container (I always bring the food back and eat it in my office, since there’s no way I’m going to sit among a sea of hot women stuffing my fat face with a pound and a half of macaroni and cheese and sauce-covered chicken ass).

This is what I got today at the food court, in addition to a diet lemon snapple (not for diet reasons, obviously, but because I prefer the taste). The woman bagged my food container and the snapple and I was shortly zipping back the office, eye-sexually-assaulting every woman in my path.

Because I was eye-sexually-assaulting all these stunningly beautiful women, it was a few minutes before I realized that my food was leaking. When she packed up my food, the woman at the register haphazardly threw it in the bag with the snapple, so that when I grabbed the bag, instead of lying flat, the to-go container essentially stood up and cheese and chicken sauce started leaking out and into the bag. Crap.

Still in the mall (but again, it’s outdoors), I stepped to the side of one of the main walkways to a little plant area, which had a ledge about gut-high, on which I put the food to try to get a hold of the situation. I reached in to grab the container and of course, got the cheese and chicken sauce all over my hand. And of course, I was given one single napkin with my food, about the size and thickness of a single sheet of toilet paper. So this is what I had to work with as I stood there cleaning the sauce off my hands, the food container now half-open on the ledge before me. I would never, ever eat in this food court for fear of looking like a fat fuck in front of hot chicks, and now here I was, orange and brown sauce on one hand, dirty napkin in the other, food container half-open, displaying food that looked slightly better than throw-up but slightly worse than dog food. Crap.

Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone and had a flicker of recognition. I saw her before she saw me, but there was only a brief moment before I heard, “Jason?”

Katherine. Wow.

Also: Katherine. Wow. Crap.

Katherine is – easily – one of the most attractive women I’ve ever made out with (I mean, easily). We met years ago on one of my first trips to LA at a party through a friend of a friend of a friend (or something like that) and had hung out for the rest of the time I was in LA, but I didn’t return to west coast for a few months after that and we sort of lost touch (even though I may or may not have sent her a drunken text message maybe a year after we lost touch, which, surprisingly, was not returned). So since that one week, we’ve had no contact (aside from our MySpace and Facebook “friendships”). However, it was Katherine who was instrumental in my falling in love with LA all those years ago. The logic was simple: in only a short time in LA, I was able to locate a beautiful woman who was willing to make out with me on a consistent basis. Therefore, if I moved to LA, I could find all sorts of beautiful women to make out with me on consistent basises.

(Can someone please make the “talk about your all-time backfires”-type joke here for me? It’s just too painful to have to do it myself.)

(And really, I honestly have no explanation why Katherine ever even made out with me in the first place, aside from there was some sort of contest between her and her friends to see who could hook up with the guy who’s as far under their leagues as possible. Without even seeing the other entries, I can tell you that she won. Easily.)

And so there standing before me, after years of not seeing each other, was Katherine* (*not her real name). Of course, she looked terrific, all pretty and well-dressed and with hair that probably smells like cinnamon or candles or heaven. I didn’t know if I was happy to see her, seeing how good she looked, or if I was sad to see her, seeing how good she looked.

But I can tell you that she was probably not wrestling with the same question looking at me. In addition to the bag of cattle feed I was trying, unsuccessfully, to clean up and clean off my hands, I haven’t gotten a haircut since early October and haven’t trimmed my beard in at least a week. Not only that, I was wearing what is probably my oldest shirt, as I haven’t done laundry since I got back to LA early last week. In short, my fastball had no movement and was hovering in the low 80’s. Not my best stuff.

As she approached launched into a hug, I was at least able to quickly close the lid to the food. I obliged the hug, saying, “Hey – good to see you!” as I still held the fucking napkin in my one hand, and my other had still had fucking food on it, both hands not touching her back as we were locked in the hug. As soon as she pulled away from the hug, I offered a weak “Sorry – got some spillage here” before jumping into, “So how are you?”, trying to deflect the attention away from my overall Supreme Fat Chopness.

Katherine is doing fine and works in the area. She got a new job since the last time I saw her and is almost certainly making more money that I am. And, in case you were wondering, her hair smelled more like candles than cinnamon, perhaps a candle of the “ocean breeze” variety.

Meanwhile, nervously tossing the napkin back and forth in my hands, fretting about the fat boy smell emanating from the to-go container, I seemingly could answer no question correctly. Am I still doing TV stuff? (No, not really.) Did my book come out? (Long story, but no, not yet.) Do I live in the area? (No, all the way down in Redondo.) Do I like living in LA? (Ohdeargod, no.) I wanted to blurt out “I WON MY FANTASY BASEBALL LEAGUE!” just to prove that my life was more than a series of mistakes, L’s, and whatever the hell it was that was all over the napkin, which, bless her heart, Katherine only looked at three or four times.

After the pleasantries had been exhausted, Katherine gave me her card and said we should do lunch someday. This is a very popular way to end a conversation with someone in Los Angeles, although occasionally “drinks” or even “dinner” is substituted for “lunch.” As I have no business cards, I took hers with my good hand and said that would be a good idea. As she walked away, she didn’t turn back to look at me. If she had, she would have seen me checking out her butt, then shaking my head, then turning and trying to clean up my feedbag.

This is the (hopefully only current) trajectory of my life. Once, Katherine and I were lovers. Now, as she walks away, I’m left to wrestle with Grade D chicken and fake mac and cheese.

(Which were both delicious, by the way.)

************

Many years ago when I lived in the Lower East Side with my buddies Ben and Brian, there was a Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin Robbins near our apartment (on Houston on the east side of Avenue A) that would we would frequent, mostly on weekends in the early afternoon, mostly when hungover. You might be surprised to learn that we were incredibly gluttonous at the DD/BR, often getting coffee or tea, as well as a bagel or bagel sandwich, and maybe a donut or two thrown in there. As tempting as a sundae was – and believe me, it was always tempting – we as a group made a collective decision that we could never get a sundae with our breakfast foodstuffs. Not for health or any such reason, but because we knew that the day that one of us finally caved and ordered a sundae with his breakfast, he’d walk outside and run into his ex-girlfriend. We decided it would be easier to explain away running into your ex at a gay club (“Here with friends”, “Here to gay bash”, “Writing an article about it”, etc) than to explain away eating a sundae – with Dunkin Donuts – for breakfast.

But today, I got the sundae, and I was summarily punished.

The lesson? Don’t get the sundae. Learn from me. Don’t be a fat fuck in public.

[Queue the NBC PSA “The More You Know” music.]