Biting the hand

So, this past Saturday, Corb and I headed out on our annual pilgrimmage to Provincetown, to have some fun in the sun with our fellow gays.

Where else can I spend hours holding hands with the Corbster and walking up and down the town square, over and over again? I tell you, I kind of know how Kiera Knightley and Orlando Bloom at the end of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Last summer, since we were a bit strapped, we spent a credit crunch day at Provincetown, trying to be as thrifty as possible. Even so, I picked up a great book on the films of Elizabeth Taylor at the used book store.

This year, things are better, so I was REALLY looking to a return to our normal routine. And one big part of that, I have to admit, was our annual dinner at the Patio, this open air restaurant located right on the main drag (pardon the pun). The food has always been great and the place affords a great view of the characters that inhabit the town.

I have to admit, I was thinking about the meal for days in advance. I had really missed going the year before, and perhaps because of the two year gap, the enjoyment I had received from the meals there in the past had been magnified to ten times larger than that giant corn dog that Michele Bachmann tried to shove in her mouth a few weeks ago.

Well, sometimes expectations do not live up to reality, and I'm sorry to report, that was my experience this year at the Patio.

I blame the waiter. He was just kind of snotty, and set the mood for the entire dining experience.

It started from the first moment he came to our table. The minute he saw us, he took one look at us, kind of made a face, and then said, "I'm assuming you won't be looking at the wine menu?" and took the wine glasses off of our table.

Fair enough. As a matter of fact, we weren't looking for any wine.

Then he came by with our water. I took the glass from his hand to place in front of me, and before I could put it down, he practically started to have a nervous breakdown in front of me, because I made the mistake of moving to place the glass down on the table, completely naked.

"Hmmm hmmm hmmm." The waiter started coughing. I looked up, to see him staring at me, aghast. "I was REALLY hoping to place that guy on a coaster." Then he snatched the glass away from Corb, so he could personally place it down, properly.

Okay, so maybe he was a stickler for those sorts of things. Amused, I picked up my blackberry and started to type, "I think our waiter is a control freak."

"Hmmm hmmm hmmm."

I looked up from the Blackberry. There was the waiter, right behind me. Had he read what I wrote? I looked around, nervously, and smiled innocently up at him.

"Ready to order?" In a flash, he took the rolls in his hand and casually tossed them across the table, so that they landed, practically on Corb's lap.

"Um, sure..." We started to order from the menu, even though I had just heard him recite a list of the specials to the people who were seated next to us. People who had ordered wine, by the way. I guess he figured we weren't the kind of people who like specials, either.

Fifteen minutes later, we had our food order, but there was only one thing. The drinks that we had ordered, when the waiter had assumed we didn't want wine? Still not at our table. Who ever heard of someone receiving their dinner before receiving their alchoholic beverages? It boggles the mind. I mean, from a restaurant standpoint, doesn't it make sense to start the guests drinking so they're ready for seconds by the time the food order comes in? More profit that way, I'd say.

So, we had to beg the boy who delivered our food to find out what had happened to our drinks. About five minutes later, our surly waiter arrived with them, along with water refills, which were long overdue.

But wait! It gets better. After dinner was through (I ordered the mac and cheese with lobster, something I have loved in the past, but kind of regretted this time), the waiter came back. "Are you all set for your check?" he asked, somehow forgetting to ask us if we wanted dessert.

I mean, come on. No drinks? No dessert? What waiter in their right mind leaves those things out?

Apparently, a waiter who didn't like his customers much. Rather than ask for a dessert menu (and I did love their desserts), I accepted the bill and paid it.

This is the point where you can always get back at a waiter, however. I left the man a ten percent tip, and deliberately wrote, under my signature, "Service was poor."

Service may have been poor, but I wasn't at the time, and if the waiter had been a bit smarter about things, we would have ordered much more and given him a bigger tip. There's a lesson for you, sinners: no matter how much your customer irritates you, it's probably best just to suck it up, smile for the camera, and pretend as if we had all the manners of Fred Astaire.

The rest of our time in Provincetown was just great, and we had a much nicer waiter at the place we visited for lunch, a waiter we met again at the hilarious drag show we attended, with Dina Martina. He was cute and had a personality, so we both ordered two rounds of drinks, both times. Happy gays are tipsy gays, after all.