I am in an abusive relationship with a food truck. Okay, that’s not completely true. It’s not fully abusive. I don’t want to cheapen that word, but what is it when you are in a relationship, and you have a good thing going, and the food truck simply will not text you back? What is going on with the food truck? Doesn’t the food truck recognize that you have something special? 

I am of course referring to the El Peyo food truck that exists sometimes at the entrance of a decommissioned car wash behind the Valero gas station, approximately two klicks from my office. At some point in T’s relentless campaign of doom he warned that if Biden got elected we would have food trucks on every corner. I am still awaiting that horrible, wonderful prediction. 

First, some service journalism: if you’re driving through the Land of Progress and need the specific intersection of said food truck, hit me up. 

Moving on, the food is wonderful. Obviously? Twelve dollars and the best burrito in town since that place next to the Mazda dealership closed. What makes this burrito special is that they fry it just a little bit after wrapping everything up in its little portable poncho, so that the exterior gets wonderfully crisp. This is combined with their sinus-clearing orange salsa and a little side of sliced cucumbers. So innocent! So refreshing! 

But they’re not always there. After becoming slightly infatuated (I am not obsessed), I have finally learned that they aren’t there on Mondays. Fine. My doctor says I need a burrito break anyway. But sometimes they aren’t there on Tuesdays. And then, one day they weren’t there on a Friday, and then last Wednesday evening when I drove by on a lark because the kids were gone and I needed a quick bite, so why not treat myself? Not there. The unpredictability is what makes it so psychologically damaging. Sometimes they are there and open, and it’s wonderful, but randomly they are not, and I am left to U-turn in the parking lot and come up with a Plan B, which is another word for disappointment. I suppose I could just ask them when they’re open and when they’re not, if there is any kind of schedule, but that seems pushy, and when they are open, we have such a lovely time. I pay in cash and they call me “boss.” One lesson of middle age is that I love it when strangers, out of a sense of politeness or joie de vivre, call me “boss.” I had a lady call me “sugar” last week for no reason at all. I mean, I was about to buy a pizza, but “sir” or “mister” or “jackass” or whatever would have been fine. But sugar? Good lord. I would have changed that lady’s tires.

This reminds me of the classic “hon,” which is how the waitresses at the Elite often addressed customers. The Elite was itself a classic Land of Progress restaurant downtown, now closed and boarded up, another victim of the progress. Back in the glory days men would line up on the street in their shirt sleeves to get at those rolls. Sometimes a change is not an improvement. 

Plus I think part of the problem is that the food truck isn’t simply closed. Shut. Whatever. It’s that the black-paneled trailer is completely gone. But you have to pull into the Valero gas station and wheel around the dispensers to discover that it’s not there. There’s only the pitiful remnants of the car wash and the reticulated tracks that lead your car inside, Pied Piper-like, rusted from disuse. 

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day but lunch is the happiest. I live for lunch. I’ve already done a few hours of work. I have somewhat justified my existence. The kids are off at school. I am free briefly to pig out. And it comes without the theatrical complications of dinner. Dinner has to be made, or chosen, or you have to go to the restaurant and sit through the tiresome theater of it all. Dinner is work. Lunch is a holiday. Dinner is marriage. Lunch is a fling. I can have lunch with a friend, or I can go solo and try to catch up on all these goddamned Substacks. I can read my Henry James or listen to a podcast. Note: the burrito obsession does not comport well with Henry James. 

There are no drinks at lunch, no appetizers to decision tree, no dessert foolishness. If it’s quick, fine. Sometimes I have to get back to work. Sometimes my lunch buddy has other stuff to do. Sometimes it goes long, it’s a Friday, we’re playing hooky, we can lounge on the patio and make fun of the pick-up trucks. Dinner is getting everyone fed, but lunch is civilization. For a while whenever I proposed going to lunch with a friend I did it with the name of some jazz standard, but I would substitute the word “lunch” for “love.” So a friend would get texts such as: 

A lunch supreme? 
I can give you anything but lunch? 
There is no greater lunch? 
I fall in lunch too easily? 

This began as a way to be a smart ass over text. For some reason it pains me to communicate straight. But as time went on and I ran out of standards I realized I did find lunch to be a form of love, comradeship, communion, the mutual breaking of bread, pick your Platonic euphemism. But of course, we don’t acknowledge that. If we did, it would break the spell. It’s nothing special. It’s just lunch. The important exchanges are like turtles, startled into the creek if confronted head on. We must lunch with our gaze averted. 

Now I’m hungry. But it’s a Monday, and I know my lover isn’t there.