fishing at olive garden

by Travis Flatt

“Dad, he’s super patient, and he’s got the hook pinched between his finger and his thumb, his tongue’s poked out just a bit. Like this.” I’ve found it best, disarming, to begin dates with these banal stories, things I can act out, you sitting and smiling across from me at our Olive Garden booth, one assumes apprehensive I used somebody else’s picture on my Hinge account. Maybe I’m nervous and talking kind of loud, because everyone in the dining room is staring. “Okay, so he runs the hook up the back of my jacket,” I say, “and flings me down from the cloud.”

Your mouth gapes and you drop your fork into your chicken Parmigiana.

“He casts me—woosh—over the side. I end up in a suburb of, I think, Oklahoma City—hey wait, this is the crazy part—and there’s, like, a kid mowing his lawn, but he’s not wearing a shirt, so I’m thinking, ‘Oh, crap—what am I gonna snatch in my talons?’ All I can think is to grab the steering wheel of the mower.”

You're turning paler and paler, but I haven’t got to the funny part, so it’s cool.“And that’s how we ended up, me and my family, with a riding lawnmower, up on our cloud. How useless is that, right? Dad wasn’t drinking so much honey mead then, never strangling anyone, so he just laughs and is like, ‘Son, we can’t eat a fuckin’ car!’ He didn’t know what a lawnmower was, of course, and Mom comes running out of the hut in her old straw dress, trailing briars and centipedes everywhere. We were still pretty poor when I was a kid; Dad didn’t kill all the neighbor hobgoblins and pillage their cloud farms until me and my sister were in, maybe, junior high. And, she’s like: ‘Jesus Christ, Kloot, tell the boy to put that thing back. We’re going to get struck by lightning again.’”

And you’re just staring. I didn’t realize, getting all worked up for the punchline, that my mask has begun to slip and some of my horns are showing. “We didn’t,” I say. “Get struck by lighting. Obviously.”

You haven’t left yet, so I’m thinking you’re definitely into me. I can drop the goofy-guy act and be myself. “We just bartered the mower for a goat and a couple of puppies. My sister always—” I wave for the waiter “—you’ve got to try the chocolate lasagna. My sister always tried to convince Dad to let us keep the puppies. Instead of, you know.” I spear your cold chicken cutlet off your plate. I hate wasting food.

Now the dining room is empty, and the waiters have left, too, and you shimmy out of the booth. Maybe I detect the quaver of tears in your voice when you thank me for dinner and how it was nice to meet me, blah blah blah, but I’ve already got my phone out, checking Hinge for another hit. Hopefully someone who’ll want somewhere less basic than fucking Olive Garden, which should have been a red flag.   

Photo of Travis Flatt

BIO: Travis Flatt (he/him) is an epileptic teacher and actor living in Cookeville, Tennessee. His stories appear in Flash Frog, Fractured, HAD, Tiny Molecules, Gastropoda, Puerto del Sol, and other places. He enjoys theater, dogs, and theatrical dogs, often with his wife and son.