The Big Cheese

The Big Cheese


There’s this place in my home town called the Big Cheese, they serve hamburgers dripping with cheese, fries and cheese and even their ice cream is shaped like little triangles of cheese. It is my favourite place in the world, simply because it allows me to be the person I am- the smelly, untidy, beer guzzling, cheese-munching person that I am. I have been here so many times and with so many different people that I am convinced that I have more memories here than in any other place in the world.

I have walked through the yellow doors accompanied by nearly everyone I have ever known. When I was younger and got to pick where we ate out for my birthday, my whole family would troop obligingly through those yellow doors. My brother and I have frequented the plasticy, yellow tables just as much as the manager has.

The manager is called Bill, that’s not his real name, not by a long shot. You see the manager of The Big Cheese is a Greek man, a man who rose up through the ranks and inherited the place when the owner decided he no longer wanted to manage the firm. He has always been called Bill, his real name is at least a million characters long and his last name ends in “opolis” – just like the Greeks in all the movies. When he started working at The Big Cheese as a washer-upper, they couldn’t fit his name on the regular yellow plastic tags, so he picked Bill, figuring people would be intrigued enough to ask him how a true blue Greek ended up with a name like Bill.

This curiosity approach obviously works for him, I guess people like the human-interest point, you know, the human touch. I mean, he has been there as long as I can remember, right from the very first birthday party (complete with screaming children), to the very last girlfriend.

You see, The Big Cheese is my Potential Girlfriend Testing Ground. Every girlfriend I have ever had, apart from Casey in the third grade who asked me out during english and dropped me two periods later in maths, has graced these tables. I have seen it all, the turned-up noses, the look of shock and dismay, the tears, as I pull into The Big Cheese’s parking lot. I am not a cruel person, I do not take pleasure in destroying girls romantic dreams; it just allows me to separate the grain from the chaff. Very few girls have ever made it past The Big Cheese stage.

I have been dumped more times in the parking lot outside The Big Cheese than in any other place. Sometimes the girl screams at me, that I’m not caring enough and that taking them to The Big Cheese is just not good enough and that they’re sorry they ever knew me. Other girls sit through the whole experience with their faces gradually drooping as they realise that this is not a joke and that I have actually taken them to The Big Cheese for our first romantic date. They then calmly pat me on the shoulder in the car and tell me that they don’t think that we are going to work out, but that it’s not me it’s them. They can’t understand the amicable conversation I try to hold as I drive them home, they expect me to be devastated- to drive home in a steely silence, or to be holding back tears of embarrassment and rage.

The simple fact is, that I never expected them to pass the test; I knew that sooner or later their composure would crack and that they’d leave me. This expectancy prepared me for the inevitable and I was even quietly looking forward to the moment when I could go home and tell my mom that it had not worked out yet again and we would laugh over their affectations.

I figure that any girl that I am going to seriously consider going steady with needs to have a similar sort of outlook on life as I do. If they can’t be as equally at home in The Big Cheese as in the swanky restaurants that they would be in if they were dating one of my friends, then they’re obviously not the girl for me.

My friends can’t understand how I can still go to The Big Cheese, knowing full well that I have not only been dumped there more times than I can remember, but that I also went there with Marla.

Marla is my soul mate, there is no denying it. The first time I took her to The Big Cheese she smiled and nodded and ordered a hamburger and fries. We talked a little and I waited for her composure to crack. We laughed a lot and I was sure that her larger than life attitude was hiding a deep discomfort at having our first date in a, well - cheesy, first food restaurant. As I am sure you can guess, her larger than life attitude was her normal attitude, though it took me a while longer than it has taken you to figure this out.

Indeed, we were on our fourth date at The Big Cheese, when I realized that her composure was not going to crack. I was astounded; I had found a girl who actually liked going to a cheesy fast-food restaurant on dates- my perfect girl. Her jokes kept me in stitches and my friends were incredibly impressed by this girl who had managed to keep me tied up for well over a month- some four weeks longer than I normally managed.

I don’t have any good pictures of Marla. Sure I have the trashy yearbook photo’s and the ones taken by mutual friends where you all pull faces and make rude gestures. The only good photo I had of her went through the washing machine in the back pocket of my jeans and was never quite the same again.

Even though I don’t have a picture of her, I still refuse any offered to me. I have her red, bouncing curls and smiling eyes right here with me now. What can be better than the real thing? I don’t need remembrances of those memories when I carry the original memories inside of my head; they are far more vivid than any photograph ink. She is my soul mate and her image is etched into a far more reliable surface than any paper.

I wasn’t sad when the cancer killed her, she wouldn’t have wanted me to be. We talked a lot about death, she knew. So I knew that the inevitable was not far off, she would have understood why I refused the photo’s, she knew me inside out. She still does really. She’s not gone, not really. I can still see her now, sitting at the yellow, plastic table in The Big Cheese, telling Bill that she has had the most perfect day and that now she needs a perfect cheeseburger to round it all off.

There’s this place in my home town called The Big Cheese.