FooDaddy: Smooth Operator

As a single man in his twenties, The FooDaddy is prone to prowling likely venues for women folk.

Or, rather, he would be if he didn't suffer from a crippling lack of confidence and a tendency to become agitated and start vibrating. Putting this aside for the nonce, he makes an effort to bathe and deodorize hisself, and he sets out for a night on the town with a friend.

"Ready to go?" the friend asks, moving into the FooLair groin-first.

"Quit that," says The FooDaddy. He ducks into the bathroom to curtail any stray nose hairs and to make sure that both of his eyebrows are still the same size.

"Guess not," says the friend, following.

"Do these socks match my hairstyle?" asks a nervous FooDaddy.

"Womens!" grunts the friend, falling to the carpet and convulsing happily.

"Aw man..."

Arriving at a downtown coffee shop proximal to the town's university and thus likely to contain womens of The FooDaddy's age, the two friends enter with a flourish. The FooDaddy, wearing his sexiest pair of socks, kicks the door in and lets out a whoop. The friend slaps him in the back of the head in male camaraderie sure to let the indigenous ladytypes know what a laid-back couple of guys they were dealing with.

"Nobody's paying any attention to us," The FooDaddy whispers.

"That's because you didn't put any cologne on," the friend whispers back. "If you don't smell like a permanent marker, the girls don't want anything to do with you."

Having delivered his advice, the friend sidles off so fast that the air closed on the vacated space with an audible clap. The FooDaddy catches glimpses of him as he darts around the room like a chipmunk with a mission statement.

"Confidence. Right. Gotta act confident," The FooDaddy mutters to himself as he takes his place between a lumpy man with a game of solitaire going on his laptop and a table with three girls playing Scrabble. He thoughtfully leaves an empty chair for his friend, should he exhaust himself and need a base to return to before his next mission.

Time passes.

The FooDaddy realizes that he does not have a coffee beverage. This is highly suspect, this being a coffee shop.

"Ha! Ha!" he says too loudly, "I do not have a beverage! I'mma git me one!"

He picks his way through the crowd, dodging his friend, and stomps purposefully to the counter and squints up at the menu.

"What can I getcha?" asks the spiky man with a nose ring behind the counter.

"I, uh..."

"Need a minute?"

"No!"

"..."

"Yes!"

"Just let me know when you've decided."

The FooDaddy reads through the labyrinthine complexity of coffee beverages, and makes a mental note to do some research before coming back. Pine Mocchiatto? Bavarian Bullnut Blend? Iced Spatchiatto Chucklesauce? The FooDaddy searches in vain for something on the menu he can identify. Something with...coffee...in it.

"Something with," (pause to look back over his shoulder, conspiratorially) "like, coffee in it," he finishes in a low rasp.

"You want a cuppa coffee? Black?"

The FooDaddy brightens.

"Yeah! With sugar!"

The spiky guy tells The FooDaddy where the table with the condiments is located ("behind you") and the transaction is completed when The FooDaddy breaks out the Velcro wallet and rips out a couple of dollar bills. His change in dimes ends up in an air intake duct on the floor near his feet. He stealths back to his table.

"Don't you want your coffee?" asks the spiky coffee counter man. The FooDaddy makes a hasty retrieval.

Time passes.

The FooDaddy decides, now that his coffee is all cold, and his friend has alighted in the chair across from him and engaged in a brief tactical nap, that it is time to go talk to some ladies. He snorks down the last of his beverage and takes the empty cup along so that he looks like he knows what he's doing. He takes two steps to the table of Scrabble-ing girls.

"Hi," he says.

The two with their backs to him turn, and all three of them wave halfheartedly.

"I have coffee in here. Really," The FooDaddy says, shaking the cup and making sloshing noises out of the corner of his mouth.

"What kind?" asks the cute brunette facing him. She smiles, revealing perfect teeth framed by lip-glossed lips. The FooDaddy begins to vibrate slightly.

"Uh," he begins intelligently, and squints across the room at the menu. "Birch Clumpacchino. It's delicious."

The brunette turns and gives the menu a quick scan. "I don't see that up there," she says.

Thinking quickly, the FooDaddy counters: "It's a special order I came up with by my own self. They, uh, they normally don't make something this complex and studly."

"Can I try some?" the brunette asks.

"What's your name? I'm The FooDaddy," he blurts strategically.

"Michelle," she says, eyeing him suspiciously. "You're trying to change the subject." Her smile strikes home, and The FooDaddy staggers slightly.

"Nuh uh. I just don't want to...uh, I mean, I drool a lot when I'm, uh, I mean, this stuff is so cool it makes you, like, salivate a lot, and there's a lot of that in here. I don't want to give you my cold." The FooDaddy explains. "Heh heh!" he adds.

Michelle giggles. "You're an odd man. Do you go to GVSU?"

The FooDaddy, still standing uncomfortably about three feet from Michelle's table, explains that he has no ambition and prefers to spend a lot of his time writing stupid stories for his Blog.

"I bathe regularly, and I smell wonderful," he appends after the thought sinks in that maybe he shouldn't be so honest right off the bat.

"What kind of stuff do you write?" Michelle asks, taking a sip of something cream-colored from her cup.

"Nonsense, mostly," says The FooDaddy, happy to be getting somewhere. "I'm very talented."

"Are you?"

"Yes. Looky here! I appear to be out of whatever it was I told you I was drinking! Gotta, uh, gotta go get more! To drink!"

The FooDaddy bows politely to the ladies, and dives for the exit. In a couple of minutes, his friend joins him out on the sidewalk in front of the building where he has been looking extremely nonchalant.

"How'd it go?" The FooDaddy asks.

"I got three phone numbers!" says the friend. "How about you?"

"Birch Clumpacchino," replies The FooDaddy, remembering.