Yesterday morning M and I go into Tom's for breakfast, good ol' eggs and homefries and pancakes kind of thing. Tom's harkens back to soda fountains, the inside all formica and trinkets and Christmasy though it's mid January. Tom, perhaps in his 50s with his baldness showing through the mesh top of the chef's hat, greets me with "Ah, you're staying today?! Unbelievable! Our takeout girl!" with apparent flirtatiousness. We sit down, order the food. I'm liking the atmosphere, there are banana pancakes coming to me, I'm a kid again. I comment on how nice Tom is, and M says, "He's a pedophile." I look at him. There must have been something in my look as he responds plainly: "It's true, you know. They keep him away from children," then adding, "he does a good job here." I believe M, of course, but my first thought was, jeez, I didn't need to know that. I thought, there must be a lot of things in New York I'm better off not knowing. Then I thought, who's the kid here? If M had said, "Wanna know something about Tom?" I'd have said, "Sure, do tell." I may have felt the same way later, wishing I could purge it, but I'd have wanted the dirt, no doubt. I'm objecting more to the shock and plainness of M's statement, because there were warm fuzzy feelings over pancakes that I was promised, and I had to be delivered into the dark world. I'm naive, yes, but more forcefully childish is to favor my own world over the real one. Everyone is like this, of course, in the face of darkness, we are all children.

---