My Dinner With Bishonen

Thai dinner last night deserves a revisit, considering that it was at a gay Thai restaurant called “Rice Queen.” The walls were illuminated with translucent male torsos. The international staff looked like they’d walked out of an avante-garde Japanime production. The dishes had names loosely based on their original Thai names given an English-language twist, like “Muscle Top Man” (fish cakes with mussels) and “Gang’s Young Pet” (a stir-fry, I think). I ordered spring rolls and the one soup that was not suggestively named.

My dining companion, a male ex-workmate in the process of coming out, regaled me with a breathy anectode about this guy at a party who put a hand on his shoulder in a deeply intimate way. I did what supportive female friends are supposed to do in this situation, i.e., say things like “Well, I think he really likes you,” and “Go for it!” and “Maybe you should wear your hair down sometimes,” – he has long hair.

If someone had written up the evening as an episode of a yaoi slash story, readers would have said "What a bunch of cliches!" And there it was, unfolding before me. Ah, life.