Dinner With Friends

Kelly Workout, Judi, Paul, and Sergei (along with me and Dave) came to dinner last night at Kelly First and Kevin’s house. Kelly First’s friends Corey and Eric also came for a bit, toting along their cute little ankle biter Owen.

The idea behind dinner was ostensibly to mark the transition between summer and fall, an important transition that inspired an ambitious menu. We planned on grilled flat bread topped with a mixture of the last of the tomatoes from Kelly First’s garden, roasted and chopped green chile, and the last of the season’s locally-produced goat feta. (The goats take a break from milk production during part of the fall). There was also Kelly First’s Moroccan stew--the kind of dish that you taste once and then forever after request, no matter the occasion--made with chickpeas and root vegetables. Kelly Workout brought dolmas and olives, lots of olives, and hummus. There was a big green salad with David’s roachmatoes (so named because some roaches got to a few of the lower hanging fruit on one of the tomato plants), and Corey and Eric brought strawberries and cantaloupe to share. There was also a heavy leches presence: We started with aged gouda and brie and chèvre with figs, and finished with a big tres (some might argue quatro) leches cake, my primary contribution to the proceeding. Everyone else brought wine and beer. There was food enough for twenty and there were ten guests (not counting the ankle biter, who brought his own selections of spoonable things to eat), but we all subscribe to the notion that if there isn’t any food left over, then there wasn’t enough food to begin with. And there was plenty left over, so we did okay.

The recitation of the menu might suggest that, for me, dinner is all about the food. (And, yes, food is important.) But at the end of the evening, the success or the failure of a dinner really is less about the food than it is about the people around the table. With the right crowd, any menu is acceptable--and, of course, with the wrong crowd, there is almost nothing that can save even the most brilliant menu.

By those rules, last night was a particular success.

Judi and Paul are always interesting dinner guests. Poor Judi, though, had a cold and I think it was making her a bit testy. Or, well, a bit more testy than usual--though it was nice to tag her in and let her testy self take over when I was arguing against Kevin’s attempt to defend a crop of milquetoast medical students. Both Judi’s and I object to rewarding timidity, seeing it as a sure path to ineffectual medical care. (Judi has some strong opinions about that as she worked as a psychiatric nurse in a teaching hospital and had to deal with those same medical students, interns, and residents. She has had enough exasperating encounters with apprehensive medicos that she doesn’t even like to entertain the idea of mollycoddling a single student. Ever. My own strong opinions come from having to attend biology and chemistry classes with pre-med majors who were overly impressed with themselves just for being pre-med, and from listening to them discuss, before and after classes, how to scam their way into medical schools by doing things like claiming fictitious minority status or feigning an interest in geriatric medicine when they really wanted to become plastic surgeons. Looking for an effective way to eradicate sympathy for future doctors? Sit in on a biochemistry class someday and listen to that crop of cluelessness.) Anyway, that’s Judi and that’s why we love Judi.

We love Paul, too. Paul’s always got an interesting story to tell about blowing something up or about growing up in New York City. Last night, with Belorussian Sergei in the house, Paul talked about his mother’s family who hailed from NYC by way of Belarus--which prompted Judi to remind Paul that Tatiana was also from Belarus. Tatiana, I in turn had to be reminded, was the woman who once tried to pick up Paul---in front of Judi, no less--by telling him that he had “the eyes of a Ukrainian poet.” For months after that, whenever I saw Paul, I would say to him in a heavy, obviously fake Russian accent, “You have eyes of Ukrainian poet!” and every time Paul would turn to Judi and say, “Did you tell her about Tatiana?”

Speaking of Sergei: One of the big surprises of the night was that he agreed to come at all. I’m convinced that everyone who hears the story about the pastry-addicted, kidney-stone-suffering Belorussian is fascinated. I know I am. Unfortunately, Sergei is quite shy (hence the surprise that he agreed to dinner with a group of mostly strangers), so prying his story out of him is not easy. At one point, asked if he hailed from the city or the country, Sergei said simply, “City,” which exasperated Judi to no end. (She is a pry-baby by nature--just like me and, to a lesser extent, the Kellys.) Sergei found Judi’s response (a evenly-delivered comment along the lines of “Maybe you don’t realize, Sergei, that we are fascinated by your story.”) kind of funny, but it didn’t open the door to Pryville the way I had hoped it would. (Partly because everyone suddenly became shy about asking prying questions. Way to drop the ball, ladies.)

I did find out a couple of things that expanded the story beyond “Sergei: Belorussian pastry-addict and kidney-stone sufferer.” He said, for example, that he used to live in Moscow and work for a nuclear power plant. He is an only child. He learned the bulk of his English after arriving in America and swears by the closed-caption TV watching method of language acquisition. Let’s see, what else? He claims, when I asked why he chose the US, to’ve relocated here that he could make twice the money for the same amount of work. (Which was, by the way, too facile a response for me to believe it to be complete.) And he told us that so far, in pursuit of a permanent visa, he’s spent close to thirty-thousand dollars on attorneys and government fees. (I did tell him that I’m quite the crank when it comes to firing off letters to government agencies, so all he had to do was say the word and I would unleash some letter writing campaign on the INS and State Department. My offer was, of course, dampened by Kelly Workout drawing her hand across her throat while shaking her head vigorously as she tried to express to Sergei the true value of a letter-writing crank.)

Kelly Workout herself was in perfect form as she speculated on the evolution of the bagpipe. (‘It must’ve been, like, someone with a sheep’s bladder under their arm, making noise with it, asking, “I don’t know. Is this a thing? What do you think? Is this a thing?”’) She’s like a New Yorker cartoon come to life. At some point in the evening, I also found myself drawn into her rabbit combing scheme. How did that happen again? Oh, yes, now I remember: It was during a discussion about how we could go off the grid and still manage to survive. My off-the-grid money-making suggestion centered primarily on methamphetamine production--a plan endorsed by Kevin (and good thing because he’s got a strong chemistry background)--but Kelly Workout’s plan embraced the production and sale of sweaters made out of rabbit hair. Kelly Workout’s idea wasn’t nearly as far-fetched as Kelly First’s idea to start a band that consists of her on accordion, Dave on trumpet, and Paul and Kelly Workout on banjo and/or ukelele. (Kelly Workout also suggested the brilliant band name Oboes for Hobos) Sergei and Judi declined the invitation to sing backup, and Kevin, the only credible musician in the group, wisely continued to back my meth lab plan. Kevin laughed when I tried to squelch Kelly First’s optimistic plan by saying, “Your street musician gig versus my meth lab. We’ll see who makes a hundred thousand dollars first.”

Kevin is lucky Kelly didn’t take offense at his laughing at her idea because just the day before, Kelly had shown me the perfect revenge photo that she came across while digging around in a closet. It was a picture taken in the late seventies of Kevin sporting a wispy, low-budget porn star moustache and wearing revealingly short cut-offs and a tank top. (I about fell down on the ground.) Kelly didn’t bring out that photo, but she did tell us a story about going around town to collect money for poor little pagan babies. When she first told me about that, I was sure that she meant that she had done that as an adult in the seventies, when Americans were embracing paganism. But no, she meant that she had, as a child, actually gone door to door to collect money for Russian babies--or maybe Lutheran babies. Unbaptized, pagan babies anyway. Through her laughter, Kelly First speculated that maybe those pagan babies would have found her fund-raising efforts more insulting than helpful. I pointed out that Dave was unbaptized and she could feel free to collect money on his behalf if she wanted to cleanse the guilt from her psyche.

We broke the party up at about 11:30 and I thankfully lost control of the leftovers of the tres leches cake. (I did retain control of about half a pound of brie, which is gone now, which means that I will be going to the gym every day this week.)