Fat Camp

The second reason that I'm happy to be sitting in an Upper East Side Manhattan diner is that the waiter with the buff build who's smiling down at me looks a lot like Chad Michael Murray, the TV hottie. The first reason is the bacon avocado Swiss cheeseburger, medium-rare, sweet potato fries please, salad with blue cheese dressing, and a cherry Coke that he's going to bring me.

"Cam," my mom says in a world-weary tone, as she's tallying up the calories and triple-digit grams of fat in her head.

I look up in time to see my dad shoot her a give her a break look that I'm not supposed to see.

CMM nods and starts scribbling everything down in a little pad that fits into the palm of his hand. And a date with you, I'm tempted to add to see if he's really paying attention.

My farewell-to-food feast is taking place at EJ's Luncheonette, which is down the street from our apartment and next door to a boutique where wife beaters cost almost as much as an iPod and a drugstore that's open 24/7 for emergency chip-and-dip runs.

EJ's is a reincarnation of the diners that were popular before I was born, says my mom, a nostalgia buff. She gets almost misty-eyed when she describes the chrome trim on everything but the food, the way the counter stools were covered in vinyl with glittery silver slivers underneath, and how each table had its own little accordion-size jukebox where you could play three songs for a quarter.

None of that matters to me except that if they made hamburgers the way EJ's does ' big, flat, and juicy, not round like meatballs ' then I wouldn't have minded living then. I also like EJ's because the waiters are all cute and keep smiling even when bratty kids throw tantrums and drop open grilled-cheese sandwiches that fall facedown and stick to the floor.

Most of the waiters look like guys who are studying to be actors but in the meantime have to pay their rent so take any night jobs they can get to keep from panhandling while they spend their days auditioning.

After taking my order, CMM turns to my mom, who tries unsuccessfully to look upbeat. She looks to my dad for support, but I think that he's more interested in staring at the twenty-something mom in the next booth who's wearing a tank top that does a pathetic job of covering her shaky boobs.

"Broiled salmon," she says to him, almost self-righteously. "With a baked potato and steamed spinach." My dad nods resignedly, as though her choice is fine with him too, although I'm sure that he'd rather pig out and say, "Way to go, make that two" after I order. CMM has already turned away when my mom calls after him.