A Confession

I met up with Red Sox Saturday evening to give him some mail he'd gotten at the apartment, because apparently the postal service only does that mail forwarding thing when they feel like it. I mentioned I'd be heading over to The Young Man's place to have dinner afterward, and when he inquired as to what we'd be having, I lied and said we hadn't decided yet.

The truth is, we were going to order in. And what we were going to order in was Domino's Brooklyn Style Pizza. And I was embarrassed.

I'm not a pizza snob by any means. I ate the cardboard that passed for pizza at the joint that used to be on my corner more times than I can count. I enjoy a Pizza Hut slice every now and then, be it regular or stuffed crust. But I've always had massive amounts of disdain for Domino's. I just don't see the point. There are always better pizza options than Domino's, no matter where you are. It's like Uno's. Why would anyone go to Uno's?

Still, The Young Man (who actually likes Domino's) and I have been intrigued by the "Brooklyn Style" thing. Because to our knowledge, there is no such thing as Brooklyn style pizza. There's New York style pizza, surely, but there's not much difference between a Manhattan slice and a Brooklyn slice. The New York Times doesn't agree with me, as evidenced by this hard-hitting example of journalism, but we'll just have to agree to disagree on that.

So anyway, the pizza. It was slightly better than the crap that Domino's usually tries to pass off as pizza. It had a thinner crust and bigger pepperoni. I have never seen pepperoni that large on pizza, or anywhere else for that matter, and I used to work at a deli. It also gave me a stomach ache. It did not taste like it came from Brooklyn, despite the fact that we were in Brooklyn. Not that I really expected it to -- it's Domino's.

While we were eating, I had this to say to The Young Man:

"The fact that I'm eating Domino's is by no means an indication that I will ever set foot in a fucking Olive Garden, just so you know."

I do have some culinary standards, after all.

You Say, Stay

Summer, in all of her awesomeness, made us a girly sing-along CD for the road trip, complete with the likes of Madonna, Alanis and the Indigo Girls. Also included on the CD was Lisa Loeb's Stay (I Missed You). As I belted out the lyrics from the backseat of our borrowed SUV, I remembered this story from my freshman year of college. I told Summer and My Sharona, and they laughed at me. As well they should have.

Father Mike was my first college boyfriend. And we fought a lot. Tons. I'm talking wake-up-the-RA-and-get-threatened-with-disciplinary-action fighting. It was all in good fun, though, although our roommates never quite saw it that way.

I may have hated Reality Bites in the way I hate all asshole-gets-the-girl movies (I'm looking at you, High Fidelity), but I loved the soundtrack. Father Mike did, too, and once we got tired of the Bob Marley, it became our fooling around soundtrack. And Stay became our song, mostly because it encapsulated the make-up-break-up thing we'd perfected over time.

One day toward the end of the school year, we got into a particularly nasty brawl. Yelling, swearing, throwing everything we could get our hands on at each other. It was time for my dramatic exit, and as I closed his dorm room door, something large hit the other side of it. I poked my head back in.

"What he fuck did you just throw at me?" I yelled, looking down at his school-issued telephone, which lay shattered on the floor.

"I didn't throw it at you." he shot back, but I was already slamming the door behind me. That night, I couldn't call him to either scream at him some more or make up, because cell phones weren't yet standard and his phone was beyond repair. I went to bed miserable, and woke up the same.

In the morning, I headed off to class. As I walked by his dorm, I heard a song booming from the building at top volume. You say, I only hear what I want to… I followed the sound to his third floor window, where he was watching me walk by, a sheepish look on his face. He mouthed 'I'm sorry,' gave me a little wave, and I decided not to go to class.

In hindsight, that may be the cheesiest thing anyone's ever done to win my affection (especially in light of the fact that he was wearing a Bon Jovi shirt when he did it), but at the time? I thought it was pretty much the cutest thing ever. And I still can't believe that little motherfucker is a priest now.