Tucker's social graces, or lack thereof

Because Tucker is feral, he lacks certain manners. Table manners, primarily.

I suppose this is because his Mom was a flight attendant, and thus never home when he was growing up, never there to teach him how to use things like forks, knives and napkins. It could be because she kicked him out of the house at 16, and he was forced off to boarding school, where he ripped up scraps with the other little wolves, sporting a wild crudeness that grew into totally disgusting table behavior. Whatever the cause, he eats like a fucking animal.

Even at the finest restaurants, there is no use of a napkin. More often than not, there is no use of table implements, forks, knives, etc. He eats sushi at Nobu in front of Morimoto with his fingers. He eats ribs like a caveman at Carson's, diving in, wolfing the platter down in a manner which leaves sauce mittens on his hands to nearly the wrist mark. You are appalled and say, "Do you want to borrow my napkin?" though you don't want to give it to him for fear of him returning it when finished. And with a great smile of barbeque sauce on his cheeks and chin like clown makeup, he says, "Nah, I'll clean up when I'm done." Luckily, he finishes his food in under two minutes like my Heeler. He excuses himself with the sauce mittens and clown face, and while he's in the loo washing up, the people around you look in your direction with empathy, for you are out on a date with a retarded boy. Awww...

More often than not, this table conduct leaks into other areas of social grace. There is zero filter between brain and mouth, and so everything that is spun up in his brilliant little head is in less than seconds time put out into the air. This can be quite embarrassing. Sometimes it's excruciating. But there are other times--when he says the one honest thing that you are thinking but don't have the balls to say--you fake shock and awe for the sake of maintaining a certain social propriety, but you wholeheartedly feel: God bless Tucker. He's so real.

I had gone to dinner with Tucker, Robert Greene and Neil Strauss, and now we were sitting in a bar off Sunset with two lovely women. They were Albanian, I believe, and almost certainly struggling actresses of some sort. They were flirting with Neil with their backs to Robert. One wore a babydoll dress and seemed to be either dating Neil or at least aiming to do as much. The other had a great Diana Ross type afro of hair and lithe body. She was wearing some sort of eighties dancersize getup you see on Melrose. It was teal, my least favorite color. The babydoll girl was fine. I wanted to punch teal Diana Ross in her left fake tit. There was something really foul about her energy.

Robert seemed a tad bored. Neil noticed this. He told teal Diana Ross, "Robert is Robert Greene."

"Huh?"

"48 Laws of Power Robert Greene."

"Huh?"

"New York Times bestselling author--sold millions of books--Robert Greene."

You should have seen her face. It was disgusting. It lit up like Christmas tree bedecked with gold-digger tinsel. She turned sexily--like LA news women in their promo shots--till she was facing him with little personal space between the two of them, then put her arm around his back.

"So, Robert. Tell me about yourself."

And Robert Greene is not a dweeb. He's quiet, and gentle and very unassuming, and when you first meet him, you think, "What a nice man," but by the end of your time spent in his presence, you're touching your collarbone and thinking, "What a sexy man," because that Art of Seduction shit really works. There's no reason to not find him fascinating, unless you're a soulless whore.

Tucker noticed teal Diana Ross' move. We both did. I clenched my fists under the table and kicked Tucker in the shin. Above the table, I kept smiling and being nice. That was how I dealt with it. Tucker had a different way of dealing with it, a way which involved brutal honesty and no brain to mouth filtering.

He smirked, and said at the highest volume he could muster, "So speaking of prostitution, how'd you girls get into America?"

Sometimes I love that fucker.

Comments

Posted by: feisty_one at November 12, 2006 06:52 PM

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