- From the page: “My wife Elaine and I are having a weekend away. We’re eating dinner in a restaurant in a country house hotel. I’m about to inadvertently do a terrible thing.
We’ve been waiting for our soup for half-an-hour. I’m sitting there, shooting waiters paranoid, hungry glances. When it finally arrives I begin to eat it ravenously.
“Jon,” whispers Elaine. “See that girl on the next table?”
I look up from my soup and spot a frumpy young girl, about 14, wearing a ball gown and sitting with her parents.
“I just saw her mimic the way you ate your soup,” whispers Elaine.
“Really?” I whisper.
“Spoiled rich cow,” whispers Elaine. “She did this impersonation for her parents of someone eating their soup disgustingly, and I know it was an impersonation of you because you ARE eating your soup disgustingly. It was like this”
Elaine does an imitation of the girl doing an imitation of me. She twists her face, and mimes some gargoyle hunchback stuffing soup into their mouth.
“Oh, so what?” I say. “She’s only 14 or something. How did her parents respond?”
“They smiled,” says Elaine.
I feel a flash of anger.
“She’s hardly Gwyneth Paltrow herself,” says Elaine.
I turn back to my soup, but suddenly it doesn’t taste so nice. Suddenly, my soup is a big issue.
“I’m going to the toilet,” I say.
The toilets are at the other end of a grand hallway. As I walk back to the table, I see the girl walking towards me, on her way to the toilet. It is just me and her, alone in this grand hallway.
“She’s so rude,” I think. “And the awful thing is, she’ll never know that I know she mimicked me.”
I narrow my eyes. “I have to say something to her,” I think. “Maybe I should be unambiguous: – It’s not nice to grotesquely mime the way someone eats their soup.’ Or maybe I should be insulting: – I see YOU hunched over YOUR food frumpily, but I don’t mimic YOU.'”
I pause. “No,” I think. “Too much.”
And then, suddenly, I know exactly what to do.
“It’s perfect,” I think. “It’s simple and devastating. I’ll just catch her eye and silently do an impersonation of someone eating soup disgustingly. I’ll mimic her mimicking me! Not a word will pass between us. But she’ll know. She’ll know she’s been caught out.”
We’re six feet apart now. I suddenly feel nervous about the whole thing. It is very combative, and I’m not usually a combative person.
“Do it, Jon,” I think. “Teach her a lesson. If you don’t you’ll regret it.”
And so I do. My heart is racing. Still, I make it look casual. I look her straight in the eye, open my mouth and rhythmically move my hand up and down, up and down towards it – clenched as if holding a soup spoon – up and down, towards my open mouth.
“This is great!” I think. “Withering!”
I shoot her a proud look as I continue my impersonation.
“You’d better think twice next time you decide to grotesquely mimic the eating habits of your betters. Yes, your betters!'” I think.
The girl looks appropriately startled.
It is at this moment that the awful truth dawns on me. My impersonation of someone eating their soup ravenously is identical to the way people mime blowjobs. I am–for all intent and purpose–a 39-year-old man miming a blowjob to a passing 14-year-old girl in a hotel lobby.
“Oh Jesus Christ,” I think.
I stare at the ground and walk hurriedly back to our table.
“What happened?” says Elaine. “You look as white as a sheet. You’re shaking.”
“Shall we get the bill?” I ask.”