Decisions: Mayonnaise & Mustard, Blondes & Brunettes, by Paul Shirley

Most days, my lunch is about the same.  I eat a sandwich, a few chips, and a piece of fruit.  The only real choice in a self-imposed dietary prison is which condiment to pluck from the refrigerator and spread on one side of my whole-wheat jailer.

There’s mayonnaise.  And there’s mustard.

The choice is not unlike one of life’s other great dilemmas:

There are blondes.  And there are brunettes.

Redheads do exist, of course, but that existence can be proved negligible.  Every pretty redhead is actually a brownhead with hair that was tinted red, after which tinting the hair tranny updated her facebook with overly confident ejaculations like “Proud to be a redhead!” or “My red hed can’t wait to bed Fred!”*

As for the true redhead – the natural ginger – she can be discounted thanks to a visage likely to be so freckly and wan as to soften the dick of a Somali pirate who’s been at sea since Chile was known for its earthquake, not its trapped miners.

But let’s get back to my lunch.

As I mentioned,

Mayonnaise.

Or mustard.

If it’s been a particularly long and fruitless morning, during which I’ve accomplished little of consequence, and after which I’m feeling both impotent and worthless, I might shrug off any concern for my long-term cardiac well-being and reach for the squeezable Kraft mayonnaise bottle – the one that is built to sit upside-down, thus negating any need for patience on the part of its consumer.

But, if my self-esteem readout is on “High” -  if I’ve had a good morning of writing or if I’ve concluded that the completion of a 45 minute workout constitutes an “accomplishment” – then I aim my grasp for the left side of the fridge, where the yellow bottle of Plochman’s awaits in ambivalence, its screw-top lid and dignified air attesting to its contents: a spicy paste that won’t, one day, clog my arteries.

I have a choice.  Mayonnaise, and pleasure now, because, of course, mayonnaise tastes way better than mustard.

Or mustard, and pleasure later, when I outlive my mayo-loving self, and do so in a non-diabetic state, with tight pecs and a full head of hair.

A similar choice might await the contemporary American male at the bar.

Moving slowly toward a bowtie-clad bartender, our hero winds through a crowd of merry-makers in his quest for a tall dose of Stella Artois.  Out of the lower corner of his right eye, he catches a flash of yellow; it’s a tall blonde whipping past with a jaunty step and a haughty, up-turned nose.  Her flaxen locks draw the attention of every male in her twenty-foot blast zone.  Our hero is smitten by the promise of Nordic purity, of Austrian innocence, of some bestial urge to find out what things look like “down there.”

He’s disgusted with himself.  He’s falling prey to her wiles, like every male who sees her in what will be, for her, a short, but self-esteem-boosting night.

He scans the crowd.  There!  By the 21^st century jukebox, the one that takes credit cards and has every song Third Eye Blind ever wrote.  A brunette sips a vodka-soda with her back to the wall.  She’s just told a joke about last night’s bad date (with Thad from HR), and she’s enjoying that she has made her friend laugh.  She doesn’t care which song that friend picks (although she’d prefer something by the Rolling Stones).  Truth be told, she doesn’t really care about much that’s going on at this bar.  She’d rather be discussing Woody Allen, or the Crimean War, or how a climate bill won’t pass until San Luis Obispo is underwater.

Now there’s a heart-healthy option.

But then the blonde walks past again.  She isn’t wearing a red dress, because that would be a little much.  She’s wearing a white V-neck T-shirt, a checkered scarf, black jeans that are shrink-wrapped to the longest legs in the bar, and boots that stretch to the knobby piece of bone that, on most people, would be called a kneecap but which, on her, is better labeled knee decoration.

One-third of the way down her Xiphoid process, he catches a hint of the inside edge of her left breast.  She knows he can see it because she meant for him to see it.  He know she knows he can see it, but that doesn’t stop the makings of an erection pressing, here and now, on a Friday night at the south location of Paddy O’Shanlihan’s (Happy Hour from 4-7!), against the inside of his Levi’s.  He imagines what he might do to her, if only he could get her into his bed.  The twisting of sheets, the clawing at throats. The ecstacy.  The defilement.

The immediate reward of the blonde.

Back to the jukebox.  The brunette is wearing a similar outfit, but she isn’t wearing it as well.  Instead of showing off her breasts, a black top scoops only to her collarbone.  Her legs are just as long, but her jeans weren’t built to show it.

But there’s a glint of something in her eyes.  Something that smolders and wants to laugh at his jokes and talk about Mad Men until it’s time for bed, when she shows him everything she’s learned to make up for not being blonde.  There’s no rush of blood to the head, so to speak, but he can imagine that there would be.

The slow burn of the brunette.

So, what to do?

For a lunch that’s pretty much the same as all my other lunches,

Mayonnaise.

Or mustard

At a bar where the only thing that changes are the people inside,

Blonde.

Or brunette.

I’ll tell you what I do.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I put mustard on my sandwich.  Each time, I’m pleasantly surprised with the sharp bite and rough edges of the tangy, yellow liniment.  When I’m finished eating, I nod in approval, happy both with my sandwich and with my self-discipline.

Mayonnaise, I save for Tuesday and Thursday.  On those days, when all that’s left on my plate is a few dried crumbs and I’m licking my lips in the hope that I’ll find a remnant molecule of mayo’s creamy balm and, with them, the prolongment of a fleeting moment of bliss, I tell myself that life is too short for self-denial.

Then, on the weekend, I spend my time hoping that someone will perfect Dijonnaise.

—

* I’ll grant the reader that I am being nitpicky: most of the blondes we see wouldn’t be blondes without the help of a job that pays them at least the $85 (+$15 tip) needed to transform their tresses into the hay-colored tangle that stares them in the face every morning.  But at least their hair probably looked that way until they were, I don’t know, 10 or 12.  No one’s hair has ever looked like Joan Holloway’s.

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