Bex’s ‘Texas Diner’ is Officially Closed for Business

“Hey, take a ride in a big yellow taxi – I’m not here to feed your insecurities!”

(~ Janet Jackson, “The Pleasure Principle”, back in the shoulder paded, bushy browed 80’s)

I love this song! In fact, as a kid, I used to enthusiastically dance to it together with a good guy friend who is now a good gay guy friend.

It’s been years since we innocently jumped up and down to Janet and although I often reminisce about those fun elementary school class parties, it was not until recent years that this particular sentence suddenly took on a whole new & much more serious meaning in my head. 

See, I sometimes feel as though I have been running a ‘greasy spoon’ Diner for the better part of my adult life. A Diner that is somewhere far from any known highway, stuck in a location that is not really on the way to anywhere in particular. Everyone is welcome but usually its the rejects who end up eating there at 3 a.m.

 The menu is wide,  diverse and caters to the various palates. We offer “make your own meal” combos, free refills are poured time and time again into the same $0.99 cups of coffee and if you had the full-on mega $19.99 dinner, then dessert is on the house. We’re a greasy spooner & our motto has always been to give service (with a smile) from the heart, yet the $ tips over the years left much to be desired.

Bad ROI you say?! I couldn’t agree with you more!

To give my ramblings a bit more context; truth be told, I have always seemed to have more male friends than female friends. From a very young age boys were always around me almost too naturally. I was never a Tom-Boy girl… in fact, I was very much a girlie girl… at times maybe a bit too much so, but I always felt most alive and in my element around the boys.

In my teens, when boys started to get their pimples and girls started comparing A cups to B cups, hormones starting to run amok between the high-school corridors, that’s when things started to get a bit more complicated. Boys started to give me some heavy-duty tummy butterflies… I fell in love almost every other day with a different boy. Boys and girls were suddenly “growing-up” very differently, but together we all evolved into the same new world where new boundaries were set and a different and totally new game was to be played. I still wanted to be around boys (much, much more than ever!) but the new rules meant things would never be the same again, and so I found my solace in the “adjustment phase” of being a teenage Fag Hag, where the men around me were those boys who wanted to have breasts like mine rather than have my breasts.

I am sure Freud would be able to analyse this for hours. The bottom line is pretty simple, they had balls, they were the best girlfriends a girl could have and most importantly, I was never a threat to them nor, for that matter, were they ever a threat to me – au contraire my dear Watson… they adored me (and my wardrobe of course!)
Dont get me wrong, I like the company of girls very much (all within the normal platonic boundaries), I have girlfriends – a handful of which I will forever consider my true soul-sisters (and they are usually chicks who despite being super-feminine, actually have a tiny and very subtle bit of ‘dude-attitude’ about them). However, for some reason, many girls never quite knew how to “swallow” me – even those who believed they could chew me up and spit me out with minimum effort.

And so, moving between social & cultural scenes and from one age-group to the next, I found I wanted spend most of my time with the boys. And that’s exactly what happened.

One would have (probably quite logically) assumed that having spent so much time with boys, I would have been able to read them a bit better by now. Big mistake… Big!…. HUGE!

I have been playing with boys since I was 2 and dating them since I was 17, and as Charlotte says in Sex & The City: “I’m exhausted, where is he?!”.

Luckily, that last (and partially ‘desperate’ sounding) modus operandi hasn’t taken over the better part of me, nor has it caused me to foolishly settle-down & tie a knot with ‘Mr. Mediocre’. Though after reviewing the calibre of boys I have been with, I could probably say that mediocre is actually a compliment to most.

See, I realise today that the problem has been ME! (And as much as it’s “All about Me, Me, Me” for this Leo, this is one “Me” I could have done without).

I liked men (still do!), I was (and still am) open-minded, but more so, I went a bit OTT on the hopeless romantic dream for ‘4th of July’ style sparks. And so, I opened a Diner. Bex’s Diner. It was a 24/7 operation that opened its doors to pretty much anyone who wanted a piece of this emotional cake, with the hope of one day hosting its very own big & fabulous Independence Day Bash!

However, many of the diners used to stop by to briefly satisfy a craving whilst on the road to some place else. Most often than not, they would place their baggage under the diner-counter and forget it there before moving on to their next or final destination. At some point, the diner ran out of space in its back-room for all the baggage… and after a while, I got tired of working 24/7… I realised that I was catering to a clientele of retards, who needed their insecurities fed with dishes that were never really on the menu to begin with. I was in a frenzy of scrambled eggs and frankfurters and was drained out till my last drop of instant, free-refill coffee. I eventually became exhausted of time-wasters, tired of being an “Atlas” to the men who were not even really in my life, and quite frankly got bored with sisyphically attempting to shrink those who were not even remotely grand in any way, shape or form.

Freud, once again, I am sure you would have had a feast analysing all the ‘Accidental Tourists’ who made a stop at my Diner throughout the years. But I for one have reached a point where the greasy empty calories can no longer dictate the size of Jeans I am going to fit into.

And so, I have decided to take control & care of my own taste buds for a change and bring back the Pleasure Principle. I have decided to close Bex’s Diner for good and tear down the walls of that dump that was established (in good faith) on the back-road to hell.

As I walk away from the ruins, I don’t look back in anger, but rather look forward with the knowledge that the Gourmet Steak House on the main highway to a well-known destination is right around the corner. And that will be the place where I sink my teeth into some juicy pieces of…

(And to all you men currently in my life, whether as friends or ex-more-than-just-a-friend – please rest assured your name is not listed amongst the pages of “My Accidental Tourist Little Black Book”)