It was a day like any other Thursday.  I’m wearing a new dress since I have something after work.  I was just trying to make it till 6pm with neither staining it nor having it absorb the myriad of tiny degradations one gets through in a day.

I had resigned myself to the standard lunchtime salad.  Two coworkers were going to Chop’t which is like the Chipotle of Midtown salad places, so I joined.

But something was amiss.  It was…. Drizzling.  1/3 of the people on the street were even carrying umbrellas!  The rain had to be avoided at all costs – they did not have umbrellas, and I assume like me, wanted to avoid frizzy hair.  We decided to walk through the tunnel to Grand Central.  Making conversation, I asked if they had to move to a suburb around New York City, which they would choose.  “I’ll decide that when I have to.”  Ok then.  Conversation denied. 

We entered Grand Central to that familiar train station smell, like a slightly classier Penn Station, due to a lack of Carvels and in-house TGI Fridays.  We went down to the food court.  I was about to head to Hale & Hearty when something caught my eye.  There was a new restaurant called Tri-Tip with a huge line of excited looking people.  This was a new steak sandwich place, which looked like a more healthy version of a normal cheese steak place.  My heart was split.

A Gwyneth Paltrow voice came into my head.  “Go to Hale & Hearty!  It’s only a boring Thursday lunch.  Might as well be healthy.  How much would you really enjoy a heavy steak sandwich?  DO THE RIGHT THING.”

Then this Lindsay Lohan voice took over.  “Wouldn’t it feel great to eat a sandwich and carbs right now?  You deserve it.  You’ve been good all week.  Just one.  Try it.  Look how long that line is, it must be so delicious.  Go for the steak sandwich.  Trust me.  By the way… No pressure….But have you ever had a girl experience?  I heard you were a theatre major, sooo…”

The Lindsay Lohan voice had a point.  (about the steak sandwich – not the lesbian part.  I was a theatre major, but the theatre and film boys were so sensitive so I feel like I had that college lesbian experience in a way anyway)  I stood in line.  I did the requisite debating between the steak salad and sandwich with the sandwich ultimately winning. 

There was steak.  And bacon.   And blue cheese.  On a toasty baguette.  I brought it back to my desk, preparing it on a paper plate with a plastic fork and knife in case things got crazy.  I needn’t have bothered with the fork and knife if you know what I mean.  I took the first bite.  It was as if a bacon cheeseburger had a lost weekend with a Philly cheesesteak at a remote cabin somewhere.  Some crumbled blue cheese stopped by, lost and looking for directions, then the burger and cheesesteak gave him directions but then  were all “Don’t leave now.  Stay awhile… You’ve been with buffalo wings for so long, give yourself a break.  Explore your options.”  And then this baguette from next door popped in – “Hey I was just gonna take a quick dip in the Jacuzzi – care to join me, guys?”  That is what this sandwich was like.  It was the kind of meal that as you are eating it you are getting sadder by the moment that it is soon ending.  You tell yourself to enjoy it and live in the present, but you want this sandwich to last forever and grow resentful that you can’t be together for always. 

It felt like a shame that I was eating it at my desk.  Surrounded by cubicle walls, phones ringing, and work to do.  It was the kind of food that you can only truly enjoy when you are alone in your apartment, shame eating it while watching the better episodes of Sex and the City and wearing something flowy.  It ended almost as soon as it began.  I know that the next time I order it, there is no possible way that it will taste as good as it did today.   Like first love, there is no going back.   Did it change me?  Well yeah, actually I feel slightly nauseous now as I’m typing this. 

To paraphrase Woody Allen, it was the most fun I’ve ever had without laughing.