Picture it. Toronto. Last Friday afternoon.

I finally decide it’s time to get around to phoning Justin. He is sleepy, having been up all night, which is adorable, but leads to some odd conversational topics. Once we’ve managed to get him woken up, the question is posed: Am I busy tonight? Would I like to be?

So, the problem – one of us is in Weston, the other is WayDowntown. Does he make the hour long commute to the city, or do I head uptown? My place is not suitable for entertaining, and I really want this evening to end with smoochies, so I vote for me trekking up to Weston. He agrees to meet me at the bus stop, and gallantly offers to make me dinner, if by “make” I understand that he means “get take out.” Being a bachelor, he has no actual food in his fridge.

6pm

I arrive at last at Weston. Man makes awkward but adorable joke about our matching outfits (we are both wearing newsboy/racing hats, except mine is pink and fuzzy). Dining in Weston is limited and not really geared for romance. Walking along, it occurs to me that the ratio of dollar stores to city blocks is roughly on par with how many coffee shops I have in my area. Weston folks make their own damn coffee, in their own kitchens, yo. Dining choices include: fried chicken and spicy fries at Burger King, Wendy’s, extremely dodgy and MSG-laden Chinese food, or Thai. We do the right thing, and head for the Thai place. This is hilarious.

The Thai Place

I instantly love the Thai place. It is a converted flip, toss and shake parlour of the 60s glitter formica counter variety. There’s a long, low bar with round bar stools crowded along its length, and the back wall is filled with empty glassware of the parfait and milkshake variety, as well as other old school dusty chrome paraphernalia.

JVL suggests we try to order shakes, but after speculating that the only available ingredients are likely shrimp and peanuts, decides against it. The unfortunate fluorescent overhead lighting is offset by charming decor in the form of dozens of tiny, tacky wooden keychains dangling wind pipes and carved masks that are taped to the walls. Dangling not-so-lusciously from the ceiling is a long, anemic string of sunbleached plastic grapes and grape leaves.

The waiter comes to take our order, and because we are average white folks, we order pad thai. Except the waiter will not write it down until we point it out to him on the menu (presumably because our pronunciation of “pad thai” was garbled and incomprehensible?). We spend five minutes finding item #38, buried on the back page, because clearly *nobody* *ever* orders pad thai. Relieved to finally see our food arrive packaged in take-out bags, we beat a hasty retreat to Casa del Justin.

…next installment to follow, must go to Olivia’s house for now…