If at Birth You Don't Succeed (19 page)

The only reason I am able to provide the uncultured swine's point of view is because on this particular occasion, that swine was me. I'd called Andrew two weeks earlier to see if he had time during his med school rotation at Harvard to finally introduce me to the legendary French cuisine of L'Espalier. He checked with his girlfriend to see if the weekend I suggested worked for her too, and within a few hours we had made our reservation. But in my haste to organize a romantic bro-down weekend with my best friend over some real hoity-toity grub, I'd inadvertently planned an intimate dinner for two plus one. Andrew hadn't mentioned that I'd be a third wheel on four wheels until I had already arrived in Boston. As we sat down for a light snack the night before all the real estate in our stomachs would be taken up with gourmet food we couldn't pronounce, he clued me in.

“Hey, so you're actually gonna be taking part in something that's pretty special for Christina and me. We kind of have two anniversaries, but this one is almost more important to us than the official day.”

“Oh, okay!” I said, thinking that the mere concept of two anniversaries was bullshit. “I didn't mean to infringe upon your special day…”
the dinner I planned …

“No, no, it's fine! We love having you here. It's just a very emotional day for us.”

Christina was more forthcoming with the details. “Andrew and I weren't exactly dating at the time, and it was a stressful period for both of us. So instead of going to an RA event that we were supposed to attend, we just got pizza. I made the decision to put my head on Andrew's shoulder, and that was the moment I knew I loved him.”

“So it's like, your pizzaversary?” I asked.

“Yes,” Andrew agreed, “but it's very meaningful.”

So I was graciously allowed to tag along for the celebration of a tender and personal milestone I had no business being a part of. By every measure, it was a night I'd remember forever.

I was a fish out of water the entire evening, or, more appropriately, a poached salmon out of heirloom tomato water. While Andrew's drink orders were self-assured and sophisticated, suggesting the particular spirits and dryness of cocktail he preferred, I asked the bartender, “Can I have the girliest cocktail that tastes the most like candy? Just the closest thing you've got to juice.” When Andrew and Christina pointed out the rudeness of a guest who had worn his T-shirt to dinner, my only thought was
Gosh, I wish I were rich enough to wear shorts and a Batman T-shirt to this place and not give a shit! I wanna be so classy that having no class at all just shows how important I am!
When the
maître fromager
brought out an extensive cheese platter, I tried to be respectful while knowing that the only types of cheese I can tolerate are on pizza and goldfish crackers. I convinced myself to try everything and resisted the urge to ask if I could substitute the Roquefort Papillon for one of those string cheeses I used to swordfight with in grade school.

By the end of the evening every table but ours had emptied, and when the final chocolate truffles arrived with the bill, the chef came out to thank us. Our stomachs were full and our bank accounts were empty.
1
Each dish was carefully preserved in an iPhone photo uploaded to a cloud for all eternity. But for all its extravagance, the evening was, at its core, commemorating a humble pizza shared between two people who had taken a leap of faith to be vulnerable with each other. We left the restaurant knowing that though we'd scarcely tasted better food or received finer service, we'd all had meals that had meant more to us than this one. Most of mine were at the Olive Garden.

The fact that you are currently reading a book and not playing Angry Birds means that you are probably judging me right now. But I urge you to stop swishing your snifter of brandy, take the needle off of that
Goldberg Variations
vinyl you've got spinning, and hear me out, Evelyn, or Chauncy, or whoever you are.

Before L'Espalier, Andrew and I treated Olive Garden as though it was the most elegant place to dine with a lady. Whenever Andrew had a date, I always suggested he take her to the Olive Garden to seal the deal. We built up the OG's prestige and wonder so much in our heads that we actually started to believe it.

Now, Olive Garden on the surface may not seem like the most magical restaurant. You won't find organic chicken or delicate Rorschach dabs of truffle oil on your plate, and the waitstaff will not tell you a story behind the pretzel bread you are eating, but they will shove a basket of breadsticks in front of your face whenever you shout “More breadsticks!” with a mouthful of breadsticks. They'll even substitute the iceberg lettuce in the salad with mixed greens if you specifically request it. And when the waiter or waitress brings the bill, it's signed with the server's name next to a smiley face, just to let you know that Tiffany also had a good time.

This affection for the Olive Garden has found its way into much of my work. I mention the restaurant whenever possible. I've even written erotic fan fiction about it, which both my literary agent and publisher refused to include in this book. My most important day on social media was not when Sanjay Gupta did a piece on me, or when John Mayer wrote about me on his blog, or even when David Hasselhoff said I would be world famous. Rather, it was the day that the Olive Garden followed me on Twitter. Is there better food in the world? Sure, I guess, if you wanna look at it scientifically. But on several occasions, my outings to the Olive Garden have been less about food and more about nourishment.

The story of how I grew to have such unbridled affection for what most people would dismiss as a typical chain restaurant can be traced back to my time at the University of Texas. Up until that point, I would describe the OG and me as casual lunch buddies—a real hit-it-and-quit-it-type deal. I wasn't looking for a serious relationship with a restaurant at the time. I had just moved to Austin the year before for college and had been introduced to Tex Mex, barbeque brisket, Thai food, two-pound doughnuts, and an unlimited buffet of unexciting but still edible dining hall fare. Food-wise, I was having fun playing the field.

At the time, I was working on a radio show, a television series, and a documentary. I had a core group of close-knit friends and collaborators in Chris Demarais, Aaron Marquis, and my brother Brad. We turned my apartment into a makeshift editing suite—which was really just a bunch of computers set up on two stolen folding tables from the UT business school—and for a few years during college, we didn't just work together, we practically lived together. In some ways, it was the most creatively rewarding period of my life. But when I returned home one Christmas break I got an unexpected reminder that no matter how full my calendar was, my life was still missing something.

The most exciting part of a month back in Buffalo was getting the chance to tell stories about my new life to my oldest friend. Even in our early twenties, Andrew and I still had sleepovers, our Shirley Temples now replaced with my brother's homemade eggnog. I told Andrew about my adventures in Texas, like the time I screamed at Andy Dick that I would eat his face. In turn, Andrew recounted tales of cadavers and patients in cardiac arrest who voided their bowels all over him.

Before he left our holiday slumber party, Andrew surprised me with a present. There had been no precedent set for us getting each other stuff over the holidays, so my first thought was
Fuck! I didn't get him anything!
“It's just a little something,” he reassured me. “My mom and I saw this while we were out and thought of you,” and then he tossed a twenty-five-dollar Olive Garden gift card onto my desk. “Take a hot date,” he said. This directive should have been easy enough to carry out, but Andrew's optimistic suggestion forced me to face a harsh truth: after four semesters of college in Austin, there was still not a single woman I felt comfortable asking to a dinner with even the slightest hint of romantic pretext.

I've racked my brain for a concise reason why I thought of myself as undatable for most of my adult life, but I'm still trying to figure it out. When I flipped through old pictures, I was surprised to find that I actually did attend middle school dances with girls, and from all appearances it looked as though I was on my way to being an active participant in the dating scene. Then in high school, I got sick and something changed in me; being social became scary, and the idea of being intimate was taken off the table altogether.

For almost three years, I was home from school nearly every day. My social circle was no longer made up of my peers but of doctors, specialists, and homeschool teachers. When I finally emerged from my Gollum phase, it was good to see the light of day, but I could never shake the feeling that I'd fallen behind. While I was vomiting over toilets, my friends were going on first dates, practicing awkward first kisses, and spilling water on their pants to disguise just how heavy the petting had been. While they moved forward with their romantic and sexual development, I was stuck, even regressing. I couldn't face being forced to explain this period to a girl I assumed was assuming I was further along. It was too scary. So I built walls, constructs, and characters.

Instead of expressing romantic interest for a woman I pined for, I lapsed into what I would call a cowardly Casanova groove, where I would execute big romantic gestures under the guise of extreme, completely platonic thoughtfulness. I'd give my friends with girlfriends romantic advice, telling them the exact gift that they should get their significant others to melt their hearts. I'd use any excuse to be romantic without the threat of rejection and embarrassment.

The best example of this, I think, was when my friend Holly confided in me that the most romantic thing that had ever happened to her was when her then boyfriend got her roses for their anniversary. I was unimpressed and wanted to prove to her that women deserved to feel special on more than just specifically designated days. The problem was that if I got Holly flowers unprovoked, people would start to talk, make assumptions. My friends Chris and, worst of all, Aaron would have opinions. I never wanted to hear what Aaron had to say about my love life because it would inevitably transition into a story about a blow job that
he'd
gotten. So instead of wearing my heart on my sleeve, I decided to take the upstanding gentleman's route and be an asshole to Holly for an entire day so I could buy her roses as an apology without blowing my cover and revealing myself as a secretly decent person.

So there I was, an emotionally stunted romantic idiot with a twenty-five-dollar Olive Garden gift card weighing heavily in his pocket. More than anything, I desperately wanted to shed the obnoxious character I'd created in my
That's Awesome!
days and make real human connections with people. But I couldn't just call up Holly or one of the other four girls I'd talked to on a campus of fifty thousand because that would be too direct. If I was gonna bare my soul, I was going to do it someplace safe and private. Like Facebook.

So one Saturday in January when Chris had a date night and Aaron was off in San Marcos helping his father contest a parking ticket, I sat down at the computer, opened up a Facebook note, and went full Jerry Maguire. I wish I had the note to reference here for posterity's sake, but in all likelihood it would be less moving and more cringe-worthy than I'd care to remember. The gist was that instead of baring my soul for a person I actually wanted to go on a date with, I opened up to all of my Facebook friends. I spent a full eight hours typing out the note and doing my best to put my heart on the line online.

I recounted the whole story of the Olive Garden gift card and explained how I felt like I'd been social without ever taking the time to get to know anyone. I wanted to make a legitimate effort to just talk to people rather than perform for them. So I invited ALL of Facebook to dinner at the Olive Garden with the sincere hope that they would share a meal and some genuine conversation with me. I posted the note, tagging everyone in it, except for members of my family.

The heart-pounding minutes after my Facebook confessional went live took me back to the nights as a kid when I'd call the radio station with requests. With every ring I got more and more nervous, sweating from the inside out, and wondering every half second if I should just hang up. When the DJ finally answered, my throat was so closed off that I could barely squeak out the words “Hi, could you play ‘Gangsta's Paradise' by Coolio?” Though I was never made fun of on air or had my request greeted with that dreaded toilet flush sound effect, the threat of public embarrassment made the wait almost unbearable.

To my relief, the response to my Facebook note, which almost certainly provided fodder for ridicule, was universally positive, even from the people I was sure would call me out for being overly sentimental. Over the coming days, I received long personal notes from Holly and other friends about things that they were going through. A coworker of Andrew's, whom I'd met for all of five minutes a while back, was convinced after reading this note that we were soul mates, and to this day she'll ask me when we're going to Olive Garden. (For the record, if you're reading this, the only reason we haven't gone is because you live in Hawaii.)