last week i had sushi with K, in a neighborhood neither of us will ever be able to afford to live in.
it's this old money enclave on the edge of houston’s i-610. there's a shopping mall and a bunch of tiny clinics beside it. depending on when you pass through the block, it'll either be empty or packed beyond belief. the foot traffic is usually pretty diverse: bunches of kids bullshitting, and folks on tinder dates, and families sitting around staring at each other. but an izakaya sits in the middle of all that. if you're not looking for the building then you'll miss it. but there's an outdoor patio, and there's a dining room, and seats by the bar, and when it gets chilly like it occasionally does in this swampcity then you can catch your breath wafting over the steam from the takoyaki and the udon and the rice.
it was my turn to pick a place. K and i usually switch off. we're lucky to live in a city where you could eat a new thing every day—literally every fucking day—on a nothing budget, if you're willing to drive. so i asked K if he'd be interested in sushi and he gave me a long look and he told me that'd be great. he said that was not a thing he’d expected me to suggest. and i told him that sometimes surprises are a good thing, and K said, ha, just like that. which, for all of its brevity was exactly correct.
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when i say it was my first time eating sushi in a minute it really was. that's not bullshit. i grew up next to this other izakaya out in the suburbs. this was like two decades ago. things are way different now, but the restaurants over there were mostly white, even though the residents mostly weren't. so it was a big deal to have something that wasn't a burger king or a chili’s. my fam ate there most wednesdays, i think. i tried a different roll every week (i had no fear). but it wasn’t too long before the place changed management and lost its momentum: the owner, a guy just about everyone loved, died in a car accident.
things just sort of fizzled down from there. the local food scene diversified, thankfully. but then i stopped getting a new roll every week. and then i stopped eating at that place entirely. and i couldn't really tell you why, but maybe the impulse just settled down in the way things sometimes do.
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the first thing K and i did was order beer, and then tea, and then more beer. and the next thing we did was order sushi rolls. K asked if i had a preference for sushi, and i told him that i do not. but everything on the menu looked delicious. which is kind of a stupid problem to have.
when we asked our waiter for his recommendation, he looked us in the eyes and said, Everything. so we ordered a pickled cucumber dish, and also the potato korokke. then K chose two orders of hosomaki, one order of uramaki, and i picked a fourth order of futomaki. then we ordered curry over pork katsu, which was when our waiter asked if we needed two plates, and we shared that blip where there's a sort of mental calculus exchanged between everyone involved, and a film reel of your life and its possibilities beams across the table beside whoever you're eating with, displaying what kind of home you may or may not share and what kind of sex you may or may not be having and whether or not you'll be splitting the bill over the napkins and then K and I said, yes fine of course we'll share.
we'd made it through about three or four dishes when i realized we were eating off of each other's plates. it just sort of happened. but it's really the only way i've eaten out with folks i care about over the past few years. i grew up sharing meals. everyone just swapped everything with everyone else. but there was this palpable disconnect when i was a kid, at least before i came out, and along with it came a tangible tentativeness about sharing anything, let alone something as nourishing as food; because you can put on a front about a lot of things, i think, or even most things, but sharing a meal is another matter entirely.
it’s intimate. like, really really intimate. here's this thing that was made for you, or that you made for yourself, or that was conjured with you in mind, whether it's an arepa or a steak or a chocolate bar or bowl of lu rou fan. and you're giving it away. you're doing that for someone else's benefit. there’s a looseness to the gesture, but also an intentionality, something that only emerges from a certain kind of comfort.
but today was nice. we didn't rush each other (which is a thing that can happen). we weren't stalking certain pieces of sushi (which is another thing that can happen). K and i mostly talked about boys and the melting icecaps and how fucking beautiful everyone in the restaurant was, and how old money could do that, and when it came time to pay for the tab we quietly fought over the receipt.
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in the parking lot, K said that no matter which neighborhood you find yourself in around houston, the sun tilts at a particular slant. doesn't matter where. it was a weeknight, so the roads were mostly clear, and i squinted to see if i could spot that tilt, and i couldn't. but K said that was the point, and we were stuffed, but not too stuffed to walk—so that's what we started to do.
for about a year after i came out, i took most of my meals alone. that’s just what i was comfortable doing. that way, i didn't have to talk to anyone about anything i didn't want to talk about. but, eventually, i stopped doing that, and started eating with people out in the world again, and with those shared meals came a bunch of other miracles. some of them have happened this year—in the past few months even. but sharing those meals, and getting to share those meals, is chief among them. those are the memories that will probably last the longest. the ones i’ll be able to reach out and touch. because, when you share a meal, you are giving your buddypartner(s)nephewniecesondaughterboyfriendgirlfriend a part of what would be otherwise nourishing you. that’s not something you forget, unless it happens enough that it's become a part of you. and that is a gift, too.
but also, whatever. K and i popped into a coffee shop, and then we ended up on this parking garage's roof. we drank what we bought. it'd gotten a bit colder, but not cold enough to go inside, and we wondered aloud, a little dumbly, about where we’d eat next. we were both pretty busy. we live across town from each other. and neither of us answered, but that was fine, because the lack of an answer implied possibility. the possibility was the point. the point was that there'll be a place to go next. and that next, by itself, feels like a tiny miracle. it is the biggest thing to look forward to, no matter what angle you approach it from.