Hey girls. Gary Jr.’s here.

So I needed limes, lemons, mako shark fillets, tomatoes and some deep penetrating loving, so I headed to the Berkeley Bowl to look for my favorite boyfriend bagger, Rene. But that jerkface wasn’t working today! #blueballs. Oh and I brought Misha with me today so that he could look in the mirror and gander at his doppleganger. But Rene my other lover wasn’t there and I was muy sad. I’ll say it again, Rene wasn’ there!

Anyway, we picked up the groceries. Got in line. I frantically looked for Rene. He wasn’t there. We got into Aisle 5 and I was about to unload my items. I only had about 10 or 15 items but there was a man behind me who only had 3 things and was holding cash in his hand. So I figured, “Oh what the hell?” and I asked him if he wanted to cut in front of me since he only had a few items. (Also, I wasn’t in a rush. Misha had left the aisle and was hunting for his “favorite chapstick” but he ended up not finding it).

Did I mention that the man I let cut in front of me was a devout Muslim? At least I assume he was. He was wearing a skull cap, maybe a taqiyah or a kufi? Anyway, he had a really long black beard and was wearing the same kind of shirts and pants that you would have expected to see when you traveled through some of the Muslim neighborhoods in Bombay when I lived there. Anyway, he was certainly a practicing Muslim. And he was so stoked about me letting him cut in front of me. He said in thickly accented English, “You know in my country, we have a proverb. ‘You can look at a person on the outside and never know what that person stores on the inside.’ It means you can look at a beautiful person and they might be rotten on the inside. But others could be beautiful on the inside and you might never know it. I was here last week and a lady with many groceries did not offer to let me pass in front of her even though I only had a basket of figs.”

I looked at him. Thought about what he said. And suddenly it hit me. He was calling me an ugly fat fuck with a heart of gold for letting him cut in front of me! So I retorted with, “So what which is it? Am I ugly and beautiful inside? Or beautiful and ugly inside?” He responded with “Oh sir. You are certainly both.” And he winked at me. WHAT! He’s so lucky Misha was looking for chapstick because if Misha heard that, he would have gone Chernobyl on his ass.

I laughed and patted him on the back. He then tried to offer me a Black Mission fig from his basket. I refused. But he insisted. I still refused and he told me that figs are “great for digesting. In fact, I rode my bike last week here. And I ate all the figs before I got home. And I had to go to the toilet all night long because I ate too many.” Now, I’m not sure how foreplay works in Saudi Arabia but it certainly doesn’t work like that at the Berkeley Bowl. By this point even the checker was laughing. The fig-flirter paid with cash and before he left, he handed me a fig and smiled.

And thus Rene was replaced with my Muslim boyfriend. JUST KIDDING RENE! I STILL LOVE YOU!!