All of The Sweet on the Airplane

After a dentist appointment this morning to have the bionic tooth checked out, Dave and I went to lunch at the bakery. The bakery was packed so we placed our order for the pizza and then we took our coffee (Dave) and diet soda (me) and a concha and a tostada and we went and sat outside for a bit. The cold drove us back indoors after about ten minutes, and we sat at one of the three tiny tables while we waited for our pizza, a medium vegetarian with green chile. While we waited, I read the postcards and such on the walls. The one I liked best was written by a little girl. It said, "I Liked your lemon roll. I ate all of The sweet on The Airplane."

Our pizza came and we ate it--the whole thing--and then, as we were leaving, Chris, the owner's son, leaned over and said, "Do you guys drink?" I said, "Sometimes," and he said, "Hold on a minute," and then he went into the tiny closet of an office and he brought back a bottle of wine in a white bakery bag and he gave it to me and said, "Merry Christmas."

I don't know what made me say, "Sometimes," when he asked me if we, David and I, drink. Dave drinks, but I don't--unless I get a massive mid-summer craving for something like a gin and tonic. (Gin and tonics are the absolute only and best thing to drink at the pinnacle of a long run of very hot, very dry summer days. They're even more perfect if you can deny the craving until the heat of summer compels you to drink, then you should mix them with frozen gin and icy cold tonic. Whether you add citrus is up to you, but you don't need it and you would do well to court simplicity from time to time.)

Wait. Am I talking about drinking? I guess I am.

The whole gifted wine episode triggered a memory I have of the time I went to a Spanish restaurant with some friends in Tokyo. I had been in Tokyo almost a year and that whole time the only Spanish food I had eaten was the stuff I had cobbled together in my minuscule kitchen from supplies sent to me by my relatives. I had cooked and eaten reconstituted refried pinto beans and Velveeta with salsa poured on top and it was a shock after a steady diet of plain cold tofu and natto and plates of kaiten sushi.

At the Spanish restaurant in Ginza, the Spanish on the menu had knocked me out of my fragile orbit of certainty and I proceeded to drown the resulting homesickness in sangria. I left the restaurant drunk-ish. Drunk-ish was not nearly drunk enough so I rode the train back to my little neighborhood and I walked into the 7-11 near the station and bought two cans of Chu-Hi, a kind of strong, syrupy sweet, carbonated mixed drink that comes in fruit flavors like peach, grapefruit, muscat, and yuzu. I bought two of the big cans and I drank one as I staggered home in the dark. A big can of Chu-Hi quickly consumed was enough to tip me from drunk-ish to thoroughly drunk, but even thoroughly drunk I couldn't face an apartment filled with the detritus of my restless existence. Instead of going inside, I parked my drunk, business suit-clad ass on the curb in front of my apartment with my remaining can of Chu-Hi and my cell phone and I started to drunk dial people around the world and cry into the phone.

When Chris handed the bottle of red wine in a white paper sack across the counter to me, all that flooded back in.

Tonight at the gym, I tried to work through some of the statically charged restlessness that remains from that time and that memory. I welcome as an old friend the discomfort of that restlessness.

Lately, I've been thinking that--wait. Nevermind.

Merry Day Before Christmas. Remember this Christmas to eat all of The sweet on The Airplane.