O.K. I'll stop the whining for a bit. I'm feeling better. Much better. I'm still paranoid about the things going on in my gut, but by and large--etc. So. . . yesterday I met a friend for lunch on the Boulevard. A kajillion holiday shoppers crowded the street. The day was perfectly blue and cool and all the motion was new to me. I mean, I have been living in a hermetic shell where nothing moved but the cat and the fans and the bit of flickering on the old t.v. I was glad to be out, glad to be alive. There is a little raw food restaurant that I hadn't been to for a long, long time just off the Boulevard, and thinking such things would be good for my gut, we were on our way there. On the sidewalk, though, a woman was passing out toothpick skewered pieces of chicken from the Turkish restaurant. I never take street food, but I was starving. Damn, damn, it was good.
"Let's go here."
In truth, it is one of my favorite restaurants in this town. Q and I have had some documented fun times there if you look back through the blog posts. We grabbed a vacant cafe table just west of the bar looking out over the street. Fun.
"What do you want?"
"I want a salad and that chicken, but I am going to let you order. Oh. . . and I want a Moslem beer."
A pretty Turkish girl came to the table. She had very big, dark eyes. Did she look like that at everybody? Surely not. It was like a blow job with her eyes. An eye job. Yes, that was it, she gave me an eye job. She was very, very good at it. And though I looked bad with my hospital tan and flabby, un-exercised muscles, my friend had insisted on dressing me before we left the house. She doesn't like my baggy ghetto jeans. I adore them. They are like jeans pajamas. The day before, I had a cleaning fit and had gotten rid of about three hundred pounds of old clothing and shoes. I had beautiful, expensive pants that I used to wear that were now three inches shy of fastening. I had kept them because once I looked wonderful in them, the fabrics that hung so imperially beautiful on my slimmer frame. I would never be that thing again. Out! I don't think I'd ever cleaned the closet before. I was throwing away things that belonged to a long-lost wife. I literally filled the Xterra with stuff and drove it to the Goodwill. In the process of purging, though, I discovered jeans that I had bought and had never worn because they were slim fitting, not comfortably baggy like my 560 Levis. Before I gave things away, I tried them on. Many of these jeans still fit. I kept them.
When my friend came over, I wanted to show her the closet. She was impressed, and she had me playing dress up. Or maybe I volunteered.
"Oh no, no, no, no, no. . . you're going to wear those. Don't even think of putting those others back on."
And so I left the house in a pair of slim jeans I don't know if I had ever worn before and a black t-shirt from a stack of t-shirts I had saved and folded in my closet-cleaning enterprise.
"Jesus you look good," she kept telling me. I didn't believe her, of course, for I still have a mirror in the house.
"Stop it," I said. But flattery, even when it isn't true, has a positive effect.
Thusly. . . I believed the Turkish waitress with the bedroom eyes.
"I'll have a Turkish beer," I tole her.
"Very good," she said. She approved. "Light or dark."
Dark like you, I thought, and then said, "Dark."
"Good, very good," she said as she turned to take my friend's order.
She had a Bloody Mary. It was a very good choice, I found out. It was good to be up, good to be out, good to be alive. She ordered out meal plus a lavash. It was perfect, a perfect day, a perfect table, a perfect waitress, a perfect meal. Oh. . . I have forgotten to mention--I'd left my wallet in my other pants. Lunch was on my friend. Tight jeans, eye jobs, terrific food, drink.
After lunch, we strolled. There were pretty girls everywhere. There were guys, I'm sure, too, but I don't usually see them unless they are in my way. That happens, but I was feeling weak after essentially three weeks in bed, so I decided not to see any fellows at all. My friend noticed the girls, too. I think it was because I made a noise like I'd been punched in the gut when I'd see one. Or maybe it was because I'd bump her and point. I don't know. She seems pretty perceptive. I don't know why I do it, really. I can't help it, though. It is an automatic reflex. It has been mislabeled the "Pig Reflex." I don't think it is, though. I am just sooooo visual that it hurts. I see handsome men sometimes, but I hate them. They are always taller, thinner, stronger, faster, and better dressed, and younger than I. I don't know how they do it, really, but I know they do it just to piss me off.
I should think of this when I am with a woman probably. She may be doing the same thing I am, just not seeing them. Then suddenly, there I am grunting and punching and pointing at the invisible object. Oh, hell. . . why have I never thought of this before? I do get wiser with age, and I promise I will never do it again. I swear, there is no winning in it.
But for the purpose of illustration, I use it here to show that there was a returning to life, a thawing of the river and a flowing of the sap.
Wrong season.
We ambled into the store where I bought my expensive leather chairs that have yet to arrive, and we evaluated my decision. It was a good one but not a thorough one, we thought. I could keep them and get one of the bigger chairs, too. We cuddled up on a tremendously oversized leather couch, a bedsized couch, really, and we pulled the faux-fur throw over us. I want the couch so badly it hurts. If I had it in front of a sixty inch t.v. I know I'd be happier than I've ever been in my life. I'd never leave it. And I'd buy it, too, if I had a room large enough to hold it. I still might. I may build a room to house it and me and the tv. Really. I will. Watch.
It was mid afternoon, and we decided to go back to my house and relax and listen to music.
"Fuck!"
"What?"
"I left my phone at the restaurant."
And here comes the point of the story. Not the one I have written, but the one I was going to write. You see, the double whammy of two very strong antibiotics had put me into a haze much like the haze I imagine chemo patients feel. Wait? Did I tell you this already? See? The motherfuckers have eaten up my brain. Hence the wallet and the phone. It is not like me at all. I don't usually forget anything except birthdays.
So. . . skip ahead, skip ahead. . . .
After listening to music for a long time, I thought I would like to get a cocktail, a Floridita in a beautiful, elegant glass at my favorite bar. Just one. But I wanted it bad. And so as the sun began its Westward fall. . . .
"Pig head carnitas."
My friend was looking at the menu.
"Get it," I said.
"What is it?"
"It's a carnita. Asked the barman."
"Oh, man. . . if you are even thinking about getting it, get it! They split a pig's head and deep fry it for eighteen hours," he said.
I was feeling like Anthony Bourdain, skinny jeans and all.
When the waiter brought it out, everyone was asking, "What is that? What is that?"
"Look at the teeth."
First thing we did was extract those to take with us. Then we dug in.
"What do you think the best part is?"
"Oh. . . the cheeks?"
This was the last thing I needed. The whole head was fat and grease. I tried pulling some meat out from under the skin and laying it in the tortilla. Everything shined. I put on some green sauce and jalepenos and cheese and took a bite. Eh. We went under the snout and back to the neck. I think the tongue fell on the floor. It was something big. I pulled off an ear and took a bite.
"Smash everything around so that it looks like we were eating it," I said.
"Why'd we get this," my friend asked.
"The fucking bartender." Then I said in a measly voice, "If you are even thinking about getting it. . . ."
I worried about the little bit of the very expensive pigs head that I had eaten traveling through my ravaged digestive system. I knew it was the wrong thing to have done. I was just so excited by the day, my friend, the skinny jeans, the music. . . ." I just wanted to live big.
"Why does it always cost a hundred dollars here," my friend asked as she toted up the tip for me.
"Because that' just the way it is, sugar," I said in my best Hollywood voice. "Let's go back to the house.
"Where are the teeth?"
They were nowhere. We were puzzled. They were not on the bar, not on any of the plates. . . they were nowhere. Shit. Maybe she pocketed them, though. Perhaps she plans to give me a hog-toothed necklace for Christmas? Who knows. We never found them.
Just to say. . . it is good to be back. Fingers crossed.
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