The Dancing Boys

  “Its been thirty-seven years since Ive had a proper breakfast sandwich”, the old man said, sitting on a plastic bench in a McDonalds.  Across him was a much younger man, barely a man at all.  He only paid the older man half attention, but humored him with a follow-up.

“What was thirty-seven years ago?”

“Oh, it was a diner.  Vermont.  Southern Vermont.  But in the middle of the state, east-to-west wise.”  The olderman tore apart the pancakes in front of him.  The young man had only a cup of coffee.  He stared at the side of the cup, making geometric shapes in the styrofoam with the edge of his thumbnail.

“Ludlow.  Beautiful ski slopes.  Better class of people up there.  Not a McDonalds for a hundred miles”.

“And that was the last time you had a proper breakfast sandwich”.  The young man stated this.  It wasnt a question.  But it was.  It was a prodding for a backstory that the old man was clearly yearning to share.

“The best breakfast I have ever had the pleasure of having in my mouth”.  The old man made this declaration while cutting a piece of hash brown with his plastic fork, dipping it in a ramekin he had brought from home and produced from his inside jacket pocket after sitting down.

“Raspberry Gnuten sauce.  With elderberry oil extract.  And chunks of Bosc pear.  I was in Vermont on business, you see”.  He sat with this thought, and stared into the distance before adding, “Simpler times.  But time has a way of always progressing toward the more complex.”

“What is Gnuten?”,  the boy asked, ignoring the larger, more important platitude.

“I was selling gas powered refrigerators, at that time anyhow.  Probably too young to remember them.  Had the whole of the southern Middle Mid New England region.  From Saratoga Springs all the way to Portsmouth.  New Hampshire, not Ohio, obviously.”  The old man dipped his last piece of hash brown in the Raspberry Gnuten sauce.  He tipped his top hat from the front right, reached up and pulled out a napkin.  He had made sure to restock the inventory during a trip to the Speedway the day before.  He patted at each side of his imperfectly twirled handlebar mustache, just hard enough to dab at any residual Gnutsen sauce but not so hard so as to unfurl either side.  The young man continued to impress upon the coffee cup, which was now half empty.  His main drawing was a large triangle, divided into smaller triangles.  He worked intently and was proud.

“Didn’t need a generator for the refrigerator, during the grid outages.  Saved you a spot on the generator for your air fryer or curling iron.  Did you want an Apple pie?  Before we leave? To go?”

“What was on the breakfast sandwich?”

“Well, let’s see.  It was a carpeted restaurant.  That never sat well with me.  Hard to clean.  You can only imagine what those carpets looked like if you dared shampoo them?  The mind shudders to think.  And back then, they had a coop next to each table, ensuring the freshest eggs.  Brown eggs.  More exotic.  I’m not claiming I could pass a blind taste test, because no one could.  But if you know the eggs are brown before you cook them, they taste better.”  The old man stopped his story to take a drink from his medium sized cup.  Inside was a third Sprite Zero, a third orange juice, and a third black coffee with 3 sugars.  He finished his sip, and gave a slight nod of the cup towards the young man.

“You get three different essential beverages in one.  Your generation just doesn’t know how to conserve.  He then corrected his posture to be as rigidly 90 degrees to his seat as he could still muster,  and turned his head 20 degrees to the right to stare out of the side window and to the cars waiting in line at the drive-thru.

“The most important part of the breakfast sandwich is the bread.  I would rotate the four kinds evenly.  Plain bagel, croissant, biscuit, and English muffin.  Well, I believe on this morning in beautiful snow capped Ludlow, it was Crossiant’s turn.  Now, I want you to understand, the ingredients by themselves were not each the best I had ever had.  But the grand summation of the ingredients, that was the best.  Now, as for the meat, you have options.  I enjoyed Bacon or a sausage patty.  But it depended on the bread.  With a biscuit or an english muffin, a sausage patty was the choice, and so obviously bacon went with the croissant and plain bagel.  So Bacon was the choice.  This was years before the swine shortages.  Are you even old enough to remember bacon?”  The boy was now working on a wide trapezoid, and only listening enough to keep the conversation afloat.

“I know what bacon is”.

“So it was a croissant with bacon.  This restaurant I remember, had a soda fountain that was self-serve.  Honest, you grabbed a cup and you’re free to dispense as much soda as you liked.  Coffee and Orange juice were on the counter beside the fountain.  Very quaint.  A family atmosphere.  Couldn’t get away without around these parts.  Back in those days I enjoyed a diet coke with my breakfast.  The carbonation I found was a natural stimulant.  Its hard to feel too sleepy whilst belching.”

A shift change was occurring in the McDonalds as the menu changed from breakfast to lunch.  The man shook his cup, gauging how much of the coffee/sprite/orange juice concoction was left.  He took a modest sip from the brim, holding the straw betwixt his first and middle fingers.

“Egg is not the most delicious part of a breakfast sandwich, but it can make or break it.  You dont want a disc of egg product.  That’s what I had here.  That’s not egg.  It may be egg, I’ve never investigated.  But it’s not the egg one would have on the best breakfast sandwich they have ever had.  I dont think its the egg anyone would choose, had they a choice between that and a homemade egg, no matter how you like egg.  Now I already told you about the coops.  They made for an awful smell and a noisy dining experience, but you couldnt beat the taste.  Two fresh brown eggs ejaculated right out of the chicken rolled down the metal truss from the coop to the table.  Upon ordering, the server took the eggs.  That’s how you knew you were eating fresh eggs, you know?”

The boy stopped his fractal making to finish the rest of the coffee that remained in the cup.  His gaze was fixed on whatever was happening outside of the restaurant, but his posture was one of not being in a hurry to go anywhere.  

“How come there’s no cheesy cereal?  Think about it.  It’s too much dairy!  So thin.  Thin on the cheese.  American.  Cheddar.  Fine.  That’s it though.  And really, who needs it?  But, the more ingredients, the more important the sandwich.  So if you can tolerate it, and it wont detract from the overall enjoyment of the sandwich, always opt for extra ingredients.  Are you listening?  These are lessons that will get you through this life.”

The young man shrugged his shoulders, sighed, raised his eyebrows, leaned slightly to one side, smiled, winced, and relaxed.  “So what are we getting into”, he was cut off.

“Let’s not obfuscate our point.  The sandwich was a Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Croissant. Simple enough.  There wasn’t any Ghouda?!  How many times had the bacon been smoked?  Listen, the actual food part of a meal is important, but its not everything.  If I’m not violently ill after a meal, then that is a successful meal.  But what of the surrounding?  It was Vermont.  I could have been eating vienna sausages from a can but in the middle of southern central western Vermont, that a good meal does make.  Indifferently.  Lad?  See here’s the thing, petrol powered refrigerators?  They’re a gas.”

…

“What I was selling, what we’re all selling, is ourselves.  Huh?  If you don’t have two loaves for the blowfish, you don’t have a pot in the fire.  And stuff.”
The young man stood up, tossed his cup in the garbage hole, and took his jacket from the back of his chair.  The old man now positioned himself supine on the enlarged disc that was the table.  He lifted his legs, slowly, and with resistance, until his body was at a perfect 90 degree angle, the soles of his wooden clogs now parallel with the moldy ceiling tile overhead.  The boy removed his purple velvet parka to reveal a naked chest underneath, though painted, entirely in Barbie pink, arms and hands included.  From his removed parka the youngster fetched a pink ski mask and placed it over his facial region.  His black Lee jeans and black slip resistant kitchen shoes made him a perfect bichrome.

With the old man already supine on the table, he then leaned his head back over the edge, such that he was facing the lad, but upside down.  The younger of the two then lowered himself onto the greasy tile floor, his face just one tile east of a brass drain cover.  He began to shriek in high pitched, staccatoed attacks and he shook his legs like Elvis Presley.  On the table, the old man smiled. He began to wave his arms each in windmill like fashion opposite of the other, and shout in monotone:

WE ARE THE DANCING BOYS

WE ARE THE DANCING BOYS