Depraved Brunch at the Waffle House

Luke is wearing sunglasses indoors, which is either incredibly affected or simply necessary because he’s that hungover. I can actually smell the raspberry vodka wafting off his breath. The fact that we are friends at all is something I’ve given up trying to explain to people. He calls the waiter over for the third time to ask about gluten content because he’s a pill-popping hypochondriac who once left a dinner party because he refuses to shit on someone else’s toilet. A tried and true weirdo.

The girl next to me is called Natasha. Or Nicole. At the party last night she was standing very close to the speakers while telling me something she clearly considered important, which meant I was essentially watching a silent film with lip-reading, vivacious hand gestures and a bass line. Eventually we kissed in the kitchen and it was aggressive and tasted like Hennessy. Now she’s rearranging cheese sticks on a plate the size of a manhole cover, mid-lecture on the contemporary failures of a bottle-blonde pop star I couldn’t identify in a police lineup. I suspect she’s been refining this monologue for days, waiting for the right victim to deploy the dark (and mind-numbingly boring) alchemy of fame and fashion.

"Yeah, well I still listen to Madonna.”

“Wasn’t she from the 80’s?” she asks.

Luke is talking about his book again. He’s been working on it for three years, (so as to not “idealize unfruitful productivity”) which means he’s written maybe 40 pages. He’s genuinely talented at the pitch, with a velvet voice and all the right buzzwords and publishing salutations. He’s the kind of bullshitter who can talk an indie publisher into reading an unfinished manuscript purely on the strength of one conversation at a party neither of them remembers accurately. I’ve read the damn thing and it’s mostly just descriptions of what characters are wearing and eating. Quite bizarre.

“What’s your name again?” Natasha/Nicole asks.

“Luke”

“Yuck…it rhymes with puke.”

Natasha/Nicole orders another orange juice and starts talking about her therapist’s “sanitized moral vision” of contemporary dating, which apparently involves fewer decisions based on the procurement of cocaine. The blurred lines of fantasy and reality seem especially conspicuous today. Maybe it’s the hangover or maybe it’s just Tuesday.

“The Girl Boss narrative is completely over,” Natasha/Nicole announces, with the unearned authority of someone who believes she can retire concepts through sheer force of declaration. I recognize this type of preening egomaniac immediately: the kind who experiences culture as a series of things to be pronounced as they see them. She definitely has no earthly clue that her headache inducing stupidity is transparent—I bet she has a Substack.

My phone buzzes. A text from someone whose contact name is just an eggplant emoji, no name, no context. I don’t remember saving it that way. Luke has cornered another waiter and is now explaining his gluten sensitivity while Natasha/Nicole is taking a photo of herself holding a fry to her lips. I signal for the check even though we haven’t finished eating.

The afternoon is already visible from here, and will no doubt stretch ahead, infinite and exhausting, full of more people convinced that their particular noise is the most crucial noise. I toss bills on the table. More than I need to. Nobody asks where I’m going, which tells you that my existence has ceased to register as a groundbreaking event. Somewhere outside, a song about hard partyin’ and girls with big boobs plays through unseen speakers. My reflection in the window looks bored…and seemingly, perfectly content.