Cheesecake Factory

Okay, so normally I avoid the Cheesecake Factory. Not because I am afraid I will end up face down in a cheesecake devouring it, but because I think it represents everything that is bad about popular American restaurants. Portions are HUGE and everything is filled with fat or fried in it or both.

So a dear friend of mine agreed to have lunch with me today while I was here in Seattle, and he suggested the Cheesecake Factory, I resisted the urge to say HELL NO and agreed to go. So we sat down and I started to peruse the menu... let me back up...

As an architect I was first assaulted by what passes for interior design. Holy god, it was a horribly bad Disney movie set. wow. Then comes the menu... I don't think I have ever seen a menu that has advertising for other products, that's right, other products. Not only is it PONDEROUSLY long, but it has advertising like a magazine.

But wait, we haven't even gotten to my real bitch yet... towards the back of the menu I find the, and I quote, "Weight Management Salads".

Now first of all, it is a well known fact that I am on Weight Watchers. I have to date lost in the vicinity of 80 pounds and am proud of it. So in the midst of getting a separate menu that listed the nutritional value of all the entrees, and let me tell you, that is a SCARY read at the Cheesecake Factory, I find something that is aimed at me. I want to say thank you for that much.

BUT... each of the salads, has "Weight Management" in it's name, FORCING the patron to say Weight Management Spicy Chicken Salad to the server. Now I shortened that to Spicy Chicken Salad when I read all the other salad names and assured myself there was no other Spicy Chicken Salad, but then when the food runner brought the salad she made sure to announce for all those around that I was having the Weight Management Spicy Chicken Salad. How nice for me.

The Cheesecake Factory has only managed to shoot their good deed in the foot, and the corporate office can expect a small note from me outlining that misstep.

I'm never totally successful

So once again I find myself back here in the circle that is my fickle adoration with men. I don't know if any other gay men experience this same feeling; that there is simply no way to fit into the community in an appropriate or acceptable manner. And worse than that feeling is the feeling that no one will ever show up in your life that wants to do more than have sex and leave.

When I first came out and moved to San Francisco just over 9 years ago, my first boyfriend (I apply that term generously to him) introduced me to the bear community. I thought to myself, "if I had only known these gay men existed I would never have hidden in the closet. They look just like me." I had such high hopes of being accepted into the "club". I had spent my entire teen years looking at what the few public images of gay men were, and of course porn images of what gay men were, and well, at 6'5" tall and over 200 pounds, I didn't look like them. Even when I was swimming, I didn't look like them. So I decided, how can I be gay? No one will ever want me.

Flash forward to being in my latter 30s in San Francisco, recently divorced and recently out and here are big hairy men, who happen to enjoy the company of other men. Wow, JACKPOT. Or so I thought. It seems that as I was coming out the bear community was becoming more like the rest of the gay community. If you weren't the perfect belly, the perfect amount and pattern of hair, otterish, muscle bound, or some other derivative, you were no longer an "acceptable" bear.

Recently I have taken to saying I am on the F-list of bears hoping some day to be a D-lister... move over Kathy Griffin.

But here I am again this morning back to feeling sorry for myself. A friend told me to snap out of it last night, and he's right, I should. I have a wonderful group of friends, two men I consider my best friends, and a family that loves and accepts me. Why do I need some lug in my life, messing up my sheets and making me compromise. Because I need, no, I crave, the intimacy and complexity and challenge and love that is unique to a relationship.

Steven Sondheim says, "alone is alone, not alive". Sometimes, like today, that feels oh so very true.