What it feels like to be a [very] local celebrity

About three weeks ago my boyfriend and I went to a diner to satisfy our late-night burger/french onion soup craving. We drove to Kouros Bay Diner, which is fairly far from us. It was past 11 p.m. and the place was pretty empty except for maybe four tables. One of the booths was occupied by an old man with long, white hair and glasses. He was dressed like a hippie and seemed to be talking to himself. I chose to sit in the booth in front of his because of the nice view. My mistake.

We placed our orders and sat there, talking about random things. My boyfriend was sitting with his back to the Jesus guy (that's what we call him now) and I was facing him. The whole time we were there I felt a little bit uneasy because the guy was just plain weird. At one point he got up and went to the bathroom, while the boyfriend and I were still discussing something completely unrelated to him.

When he came back he began mumbling something to himself. At first we didn't pay any attention to it and continued talking about how I honest I always am and how that will never help me land a job. Jesus guy's mumbling became louder and he sounded angry. I became alert. Then I heard "sitting with his back to me," and "fuckin' CIA agent." At this point I told my boyfriend that I think that he's talking to us. My boyfriend decided to listen to him for a bit. We could barely understand what he was saying, but from the bits and pieces that we heard, he was saying something about my boyfriend being a CIA agent, who thinks he's better than anyone, and that we're fuckin' immigrants who came here to steal his job. My boyfriend turned around and told him to mind his own businesses. The guy didn't like it and began spewing something else about the Russian CIA (meaning the two of us) trying to get him, etc, etc. My boyfriend told him something like, "Just shut the fuck and and look in your own plate, racist." The guy said something about us being racist and insulting his appearance, which was not true.

At this point the management decided to step in and they asked us to move. Fine, we moved three tables up, but that didn't help things. The dude kept taking and my boyfriend talked back. Everyone was laughing and I was so embarrassed, I matched my cranberry juice in color.  I begged my boyfriend to just stop responding and someone sat down with the Jesus guy to talk to him. Of course as it all wrapped up they decided to bring us our food. My appetite was lost and we decided to leave. The waiter apologized, we paid for our drinks and left.

Last week we decided to go back there because my boyfriend had some unfinished business there: he wanted that french onion soup. I told him right away that if we see that guy there again, I'm leaving and never coming back. Deal.

As soon as we walked in, we were greeted by the owner of place. He told us how very sorry he was for last time and offered us drinks on the house. Unfortunately, both my boyfriend and I were taking antibiotics at the time, so we couldn't accept the offer. But that's not the point. I was surprised they remembered us, and the service that night was extremely attentive. We're definitely going back, be there weird dudes or not.