Breakfast
I met Mr. Kirrene for breakfast at the Lucky Cafe. Â He had suggested that we meet there over Facebook. Â He was the first person over 40 to friend me on Facebook. Â I knew him primarily as my high school english teacher. I arrived first. Â The Bold and the Beautiful was playing on a black and white tv mounted to the wall. Â The lone employee, a tall man with long black hair, pockmarked skin, and clothing from several decades previous was locked in conversation with an old man sitting at the counter. Â I felt bad for thinking it, but the choice of restaurant made me wonder if perhaps Mr. Kirrene, a resident of the nicest neighborhood in town and employee of an expensive private school, had perhaps recently fallen from grace in some way. Â
He at last arrived and slid into the sticky vinyl booth next to me, greeting me with my high school nickname.  I was pleased he hadn’t forgotten it--- he gave it to me.  Perhaps there was no fall from grace necessarily but certainly there was a transformation taking place. I had remembered him as a very skinny man with crowded teeth.  He had bulked up quite a bit as though a personal trainer had entered the picture and evidently so had an orthodontist.  He was wearing braces.  I remarked favorably upon these noticeable positive changes, but at the same time I couldn’t really understand why someone who looked dorky his whole life would, in his 40s, want to look less dorky.  I suddenly wanted to recall if there were any pictures on facebook of him with his wife and kids.  I could not recall them.  The waiter, who was really quite striking up close and was wearing an unusual beaded necklace, took our orders.  I ordered a waffle that had bacon inside it.  It occurred to me that I have never had occasion to eat with my high school english teacher, nor had I ever seen him eat.  Like seeing a teacher in jeans at the store on the weekend, the strangeness of Mr. Kirrene being my teacher a decade ago and somehow also being a person in a diner next to me could not be totally reconciled.  Â
As we drank refills of coffee that was really just tepid brown water, the conversation veered towards how I met my boyfriend.  I was sharing the story, I think, as an example of triumph over shyness.  I had approached my boyfriend and told him of my feelings, an act that was, at the time, out of character for me.  Mr. Kirrene said “Wow, I couldn’t imagine doing something like that.  You are very brave.”  Did something he said suggest he needed encouragement in the arena of romance?  I remembered his classroom persona, which was an odd, inappropriate and potent mix of coy flirtatiousness and cruel volatility.  I was very surprised that someone who so obviously relished the power of commanding a classroom could in fact struggle with low confidence.  Even as my hopeful story about my relationship escaped my lips, I wondered why this man was seeking counsel from a 22 year old woman.  I wondered why he was seeking breakfast with a 22 year old woman.  He then brought up the clique of blonde girls in my class, Sary, Mary and Carey, and said over and over again how “special” they were with a wistful twinkle in his eye that gave me a sensation of mild disgust, but I might partially attribute it to the undercooked waffle with chunks of bacon in it.  I assumed he failed to recognize my disgust, but the lens of several years now allows for the possibility that he was relishing in it.  He then told me that my mother is a gorgeous, sexy woman.  “You don’t resemble her at all,” he said, with unmistakable disappointment.  At last the waiter glided over with the check.  I waited, but ended up paying it.  He made thin promises to get me next time, but why would either of us ever want to do whatever this was again?  Two months later all his facebook pictures were with a pretty blonde woman about his age, and his braces had come off. Â
