Humorous moment in which I was, simultaneously, completely surprised and also totally busted

Sitting in the hothouse-flower atmosphere that is Cafe Noir (one of my favorite places in the city) on Saturday night. We’ve been there for hours. Since 8 pm, and it’s now 1 in the morning. Cafe Noir is the gathering-place for a certain group of friends of mine – we’ve been congregating there since I first moved to this city years ago. It’s a French-style place, serving Moroccan food, tapas, great wine — and in the summer they open all the windows, and your tables sit on little platforms above the sidewalk, so you’re outside. I love it there. Rebecca was in town – sadly Allison is now out of town – but we got together anyway, me, Rebecca, Fee, and then Rebecca’s brother joined us.

We drank wine. In gesturing wildly across the table about something, I knocked over my glass of water. We ate spicy olives. And bread. Oh, and we also got our favorite little side dish of calamari – grilled, not fried … and they basically look like small octopi lying in the little bowl. Spicy, pungent, drenched in oil. The waitstaff is friendly and all uniformly gorgeous – not in a threatening robotic way – but a kind of multicultural melange of beauty. It’s always been that way. It was hot, man. The crush of bodies was intense, and we luckily got a table up front, squeezing in around it. I had met Rebecca’s brother at her wedding years ago – but I think this was the first time I talked to him one on one. I had brought copies of my piece in The Sewanee Review to give to Fee and Rebecca – and he read it, sitting there in the hot loud Moroccan frenzy, asking me questions about why I chose this word, making an observation (very good one, too) about how I use commas … I loved it. And then came the moment where we were talking about our respective love lives – it was too funny – he had said to me earlier, “Do you see any resemblance between me and Rebecca?” and I didn’t, not really, at least not physically. But once we started really talking … He has that same intensely focused way of asking questions. He asked me a question about my romantic life, something that could be seen as very “personal” – but he asked it in a way which made me feel like telling him everything – and I burst out laughing and said, “Now I can see the resemblance between you guys.” He started laughing, too, and said, “Rebecca and I did not get the small-talk gene.” That’s why Rebecca and I are friends, I would say. So there we sat – Fee and Rebecca across our tiny table – talking, looking at pictures of Fee’s recent trip to Brazil – and he and I talked on our side of the table – and I said something like, “You know, I often feel completely invisible to men in New York.” He said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah. I just get the feeling that I am not what they’re looking for. I don’t feel that way in other cities. By that I mean – I don’t feel completely off the radar the way I do here. Like I go to Ireland for vacation, and within 2 days I have a boyfriend – with whom I have a tearful goodbye when I go back to the States 10 days later.” We started laughing. I wasn’t saying any of this in a whingy way – I was just describing my reality. It’s okay if I’m invisible here – as long as I am not invisible in OTHER cities. Which I am not. We talked about the romantic demographic of New York City, as opposed to other places … and I said, in my melodramatic way, “NOBODY ever approaches me.” Rebecca’s brother said, “Really? Never?” I reiterated, “NEVER.”

Literally, right at that moment, an older gentlemen with dark hair, silvered at his temples, came right up to our table and said to me, jovially, friendly, “You have the most beautiful smile. I love to see that.” My jaw dropped. I swear – he approached us as though on cue. I said, “Thank you!” and he re-joined his own group.

hahahahaha

My entire theory was completely busted – at least in the eyes of Rebecca’s brother. The second the gentleman walked away, we both started laughing.

“Wow. So now I look like a big fat liar to you, don’t I?” I said.

Rebecca’s brother said, “Yeah, I think we can both agree that you are full of shit.”

I’m still laughing about it.

“Nobody EVER approaches me. EVER. I am INVISIBLE here. INVISIBLE.”
“Really? I find that hard to beli—”
“TRUST ME. I AM INVISIBLE.”
Man approaches, out of the blue. “You have a beautiful smile.” Retreats. Leaving me with egg on my face.