Meiko's Boyfriend Left Her for a Hooters' Girl. It Was the Best Possible Thing

Reid Rolls

Meiko

Singer-songwriter Meiko moved to Los Angeles from a small Georgia town outside Macon in 2001. Her career has since taken off; she signed a major label deal with Universal imprint Concord Records, licensed a bazillion of her songs to TV and film, and got big in Japan (seriously, she's on the radio there -- her one-quarter Japanese heritage may help). You can see her perform at Hotel Cafe tomorrow.

What's the secret to her success? To hear her tell it, it's because her old boyfriend cheated on her with a Hooters' girl. We'll let her tell you the story, a version of which originally appeared on her site.

Mary Rozzi

Meiko

I went to Trader Joe's recently to pick up some string cheese and wine. I asked the older dude who worked there (because I assume that older people know more than younger people) what the best, cheapest wine was. He recommended a Merlot-Malbec blend that was $2.99.

Got home, poured a glass and it was excellent. Opened a string cheese. Tearing off layers of addictive little strands with my teeth, I browsed Facebook and decided to look up an old boyfriend. He wasn't there, thank God.

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I started thinking, "Where the hell would I be now if he wouldn't have cheated on me with that fucking Hooter's girl?"

Backing up... He was my first "love." I met him at a Ruby Tuesday's in Macon, Georgia. It was my first job. I was a hostess and he was a waiter. We made eyes at the all you can eat salad bar and I thought this was IT. We became a pair.

Later that year, he got a job as a fry cook at Hooters, and even though I was a little scared of what could happen, I still had faith, as you do when you're 16. Cut to two years later and I was still madly in love, thinking about kids, different islands to move to, etc. Turns out he was thinking less about us and more about tits and chicken wings, however.

In any case, after graduating high school and deciding that college wasn't my bag, I moved to L.A. with my sister, clothing designer Kelly Nishimoto.

Shortly after we moved to L.A. I convinced my boyfriend to come out West and live with me. We had a place together. It lasted about a year and with a beautiful twist of fate, it was over. He went home for Thanksgiving and, since I couldn't afford a plane ticket, I stayed behind. He came back with his friend two weeks later and, on a drunken night, his friend confessed to me that, at home, my boyfriend slept with one of the Hooters' girls that he used to work with.