Mystic Pizza

Yesterday, I had to order pizza for the office for a birthday celebration (not that I can ever partake in the festivities, unless my office really wants to see my fake-baby-lactose-potbelly in full force), so I called and ordered over the phone. Uneventful- except that I got really flustered when the pizza guy asked if I wanted jalapenos on or off the pizza (it seemed more stressful at the time)- and I said I'd pick it up in twenty-five minutes. Twenty minutes later, I peaced out of the office, armed with my trusty "directions" that the pizza place was on the left side of the street...ummmm, that would be the same street I work on.

I headed out, like, eh, I have to pee, but I'll be back in ten minutes, I'm a trooper, whatevs. I walked up the street...kept walking...kept walking... and finally stopped as I approached the turnpike (not a joke). Unfazed, I obviously chose a foreign jewelry maker to answer my directional queries, met with only a "Up-per CrUST piz-za? Piz... ZA? This... jewelry."

Okay, thanks. Walked back in the same direction, until I could see my office again (too far!), and decided to ask a friendly Newbury hipster gal. She and her skinny jeans pointed in the direction I had just come from and told me that I would walk right past it. I was like, WTF? YOU walk right past it (unproductive thinking). Turned around and headed back in the opposite direction. Far. No Upper Crust Pizza. Now at this point, I naturally assumed that they'd gone out of business in the past fifteen minutes and felt pretty annoyed that no one had given me a heads up when I'd placed the order. More importantly, my peeing situation was escalating to a sheer desperation level at an alarming rate, and I was panicking.

I next asked a group of construction workers (they eat upscale pizza, right?) and they just laughed and said that there's one in Beacon Hill (thanks), and also that "Joe's wife" once said that she had eaten at an Upper Crust on Newbury Street (double thanks).

I'd now been out of the office for a half hour and was worried that A) I would never find it B) If I did find it, the pizza would be cold and C) I would collapse from an exploded bladder and the pizza would be irrelevant. Desperately, I approached a midget douche trying to load a giant box into his small Porsche, and he proceeded to direct me back the way I'd just come, tempting me to load him onto my shoulders to physically point this f-ing place out to me.

Let me paint you a picture: I walked up and down Newbury St, on the same side of the road, over five times and Could. Not. Find. It.

Severely sweating and trying to price out how much a public urination violation would cost me, I suddenly saw my final savior up ahead: the skinny-jeaned hipster. Clutching an organic coffee and staring strangely at my red face and wild eyes, she goes, "Soooo, it's right there." And I looked up...and it's right there.

Picked the pizza up in less than three minutes and told my whole office that the pizza guys had messed up the order and made me wait while they fixed it. I felt like a major creep too, because they'd given me THREE, not just two, jalapeno containers and held the door for me as I walked out. So this will serve as my anonymous apology to Upper Crust Pizza...Sorry (and get a bigger friggin' sign!)