A few housemates were up when I walked into the blue mansion and they were all over me like acne on a prepubescent boy. I told them I learned something that night.
“I highly recommend an ‘eating with your hands’ first date. It’s a good test to see if your date finds it necessary to wash their hands before touching food, and it also works well to weed out people who are closed to different cultural experiences. Moroccan restaurants also work well on this score.”
Mangus needs to shower and prepare for a drive up to Stanford. A heart donation will be taking place in about two hours and he is one of the doctors on the team. He doesn’t talk much about his procedures, but we all know he is real proud of his work and hopes to stay in America to continue his career.
Scotty says he has an online poker tournament starting in about five minutes, so he’s “gonna grab a Miller from the fridge and change into his lucky socks.”
Sheila says she has nowhere to go and nothing to do, so how about a few date stories so she can live vicariously through a single pal? I really love her support. She always has a sincere smile for me when she sees me coming or going, and she listens to my dating woes with a big
heart. She’s on my side, and it feels great.
“Two nights back I stopped into Eulipia on South First to have dinner with Phil. I’ve had a drink with a friend there before, but never had the chance to order food. Phil, the pastry chef, knew Eduardo, Eulipia’s dinner chef, and wanted to sample his new cuisine. Fun, I thought. I loved food, so what a great evening I’d have hanging out with a professional foodie.”
I tell her that I adore South First Street. This was the street where my grandmother’s house once stood. “Casa Grande” was on the corner of South First and Alma, a landmark that sat on the roadway better known as “Blood Alley” by Seventies San Josers.
“You’re from Philly so you don’t know this, but there used to be a long section of Highway 101 between San Jose and Morgan Hill called Old Monterey Road. It was a country lane lined with fruit stands. The road saw many, many traffic fatalities and nearly 750 injuries, mostly from cars carrying fruit buyers from the local stands.”
I bet Chapel of the Flowers Funeral Home over on Second Avenue did a killing in those days!
“Phil knew the road’s history, and remembered the house. He said he heard it had an elevator, and I had to laugh since I was asked that a lot. It’s pretty cool to actually be able to say it was grandma’s house.”
Sheila asks tons of questions, seeing she owns a “mansion” herself. Then it’s back to Phil.
“He grew up in the area and I loved his excitement about it. He told me about childhood day trips to places such as Happy Hollow Baby Zoo, and the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, places I remembered from my own experiences as a child.”
Sheila moves closer to me on the window seat. She pulls her leg up to her chest and I can see her green toenail polish. She always wears low-slung, Middle Eastern skirts, and looks either ready to go out dancing, or lounge in a basement full of pillows. She said she wanted to hear about my family background some time since she didn’t know I lived in San Jose as a kid. I smiled, grateful to have her in my life.
“The conversation with Phil came to a natural impasse, and I took the lead, to ask him all about his tasty career choice. I’d even thought about what I’d ask before we met because, knowing me, I’d blurt out some stupid question about who designed the chef hat, and why is it so darned tall?”
Sheila laughs with a big snort at the end.
He told me that pastry had started out as a hobby, but then became his career. He said, “I try and get an inside feel for what’s happening in our local pastry world, so I go out and see what wines and cordials customers pair their desserts with. I studied at l’Ecole de la Pâtisserie Lenôtre in France, and they taught us to always search for the latest flavor combination, but to respect the French tradition of creating pastries.”
He was currently writing a pastry cookbook that will demonstrate how easy it is to make your favorite desserts at home. Bûche de Noël au Chocolat is considered quite elaborate, but it can be done well by the average person if they know the tricks.
“I really liked this guy. He was masterful, yet humble. He worked with food, but wasn’t gluttonous. He knew the head chef of the restaurant, but wasn’t show-offy about it.”
Please let nothing go wrong, I whispered inside my head. Please let this guy be as fabulous as he seems, so we can advance to the next date, and just maybe I can get off this first-date rollercoaster which seems to get derailed every time.
“No sooner did I feel that I had this one baked to perfection, when a woman walked up to the table and started screaming at him. Nope, it wasn’t a perturbed consumer of a pastry by Phil, but the best friend of his wife! My mouth dropped.
“I thought back over our very long phone conversations, and there had been nothing, nothing at all to have led me to believe he wasn’t single. I made it clear to her—and Phil!—that was this was our first and last date, and I was outta there faster than it takes a fat kid to hork a Ho-Ho.”
Sheila laughed with the snort again, and then her eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know if I’m more pissed off that he tried to cheat with you, or that someone who seemed nearly perfect was way too good to be true.”
We hugged for a long time. She was very sweet for such a loud broad.
A cutie named Josh phoned and wanted to connect. We were set up through the son of a family I helped arrange services for. His pal, Ben’s mother had just passed, so Ben came to the funeral home several times to firm up the details. We were able to talk and joke, and ultimately lament about dating in the Bay Area. He thought Josh was the man for me. I thought that was a pretty cool way to meet.
Our phone conversation was a long one. Josh had question after question, and I happily answered everything he wanted to know. His final question was one I didn’t hear too often. He wanted to know if I could help him with a creative way to disperse his ashes. He said he was serious and wanted to get something down in writing. We perused some options.
I share for as little as $1000, a Georgia firm will mix his ashes with concrete and cast him into an artificial reef to create habitat for endangered ocean species. The Marvel Comics editor who helped create Captain America wanted his ashes mixed with ink and printed into a comic book after his death. His wife followed his wishes, and his remains were printed into a special edition poster of ‘Squadron Supreme’ in 1996. And the Frisbee creator asked his family members to cast his ashes into a series of limited edition discs.
When I walked through the door of Gojo Ethiopian Restaurant I felt beautiful. You know what I mean, Sandra? It was one of those spring evenings when your hair falls just right and you sort of glide on air.
Josh, the humor writer, greeted me with a warm hug and commented that I was “tons more pretty” than Ben had led on. I blushed appropriately and gave him a much-practiced, yet-subtle flip of my right-falling hair. He motioned for me to pull up some wicker across from him and settle in.
Drinks were ordered, and we were washed and ready to eat with our hands. I spied his copy of The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, on the ledge by our table. He looked sheepishly at me after surveying our first course, and confessed that he’d read about this restaurant online but had never eaten here. Rock on! I was always happy to have an opportunity to shine, and when a small first course arrived, I started my instruction.
“Pinch your index finger and thumb together, like you’re picking something up. Now move your hand so that your fingers and thumb are shaped around the food, and use this Ethiopian bread as a makeshift utensil. Place your thumb behind the food, lean your head forward, and put it in your mouth like this.”
He did better than average. I joked that it didn’t quite work with soup; he didn’t get it. I tore into my plate of doro wot, one of the most popular Ethiopian dishes. I love the tender chicken, hard-boiled egg and the soft, spongy bread. I told him that bread was called “injera,” just in case he ever wanted to throw that out and impress some future date he might bring to Gojo. He didn’t smile or laugh at that, either.
I ordered my second beer and smiled happily at my surroundings. I was on a date with a cute guy, and sitting in a restaurant a mere half mile down West San Carlos Street where I used to live in a fabulous corner loft with the former fiancé. I was away from him and his dysfunctional theater, sipping a smooth Kidus Giorgis bira. And I was okay and happy in my life, but I did wish my date would humor me a little bit more.
I studied Josh while he finished up his phone call. He looked virile and handsome in his loose-fitting caftan. He was the kind of guy that my friends would emphatically pronounce “hot” when they met him. Sure, hot, but just not funny.
He seemed to appreciate me and my knowledge of non-fork etiquette, and he clearly was having a fine time, but there wasn’t a connection on my end. What was bugging me was I couldn’t get a smile from him.
“Damit!” I yelled into the phone after Mary answered post-date.
“Josh could have been a serious candidate for the coveted second go-round. Why did he have to be so polite and unentertained by me? Or was it just my brand of humor? After all, everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.”
She wanted to know what I said.
“I was cracking a few harmless jokes just to see if I could make him comfortable, but I really think it was just his humorless personality. We were eating with our hands, for God’s sake, by his choice. He didn’t laugh once. In fact, he didn’t even smile when the hard-boiled egg dropped out of his injera and almost rolled out the front door.”