جلدي غير متكيف للعيش في هذا الموطن. يتنفخ من القيظ و يحمر من الرطوبة ويتشقق من الوهج كأنني خنزير على الشواية. ما يسمى الجلد الأبيض، علامة النبل لاجدادي الذين غزوا شبه الجزيرة امواجاً—أوباش هتماء البيدمونت ، إرهابيين كونفدراليين، ومغفلي إعلام زائف البطاقة التذكارية—بالواقع يميل في هذه الظروف إلى لون لب الكريفون والسمكة منزوعة من أحشائها.
My skin is not adapted to life in this habitat. It swells up immediately in the heat, and in a few minutes it’s covered in sweat. Another hour out here and it will begin to crack open and seep under the sun like a pig on the spit.
It’s hard to believe my ancestors did any better. They lived back before they had drained the swamps or invented air conditioning. They must have all looked like hell, coming down here to conquer this peninsula in waves—toothless Piedmontese riff-raff, runaway Confederates, and pale, straw-hat marks taken in by the picture ads they saw in the Sears catalogue. The natives must have thought they were all diseased. Who is this white man they speak of? We haven’t seen anyone come down here with white skin. The freaks streaming down here to steal our land all look bright pink, like a peeled grapefruit or a disemboweled fish.
هيليوفايت
ولكن جلد رامة متكيف مثالياً.
but Rama’s skin is perfectly suited for it. It glistens حِنْطِيّاً. Like a pitcher of iced tea. I watch aghast from underneath the safety of the metal awning as she sways back and forth in the middle of the road taking it all in. The sunlight catches the light fuzz on her forearms. She has a look of tranquility, like a happy tropical fruit, both cheeks lit up as she stares directly up at the full Florida sun. She stretches out her arms to expose more of her surface area. She is ripening quickly in the humidity. She takes off her sweater and ties it around her waist. Samrati al-jamilah.
She walks over into the grass median and for a moment it looks like she’s going to lay down and sunbathe right there in the parking lot. But the grass looks bleached and patchy so she settles for taking off her shoes and socks. The grass also doesn’t belong here. I can see it being overtaken by various species of weeds, It’s even growing in the cracks in the sidewalk. I wonder what species exactly. I feel around in my bag for my loupe and the field guide I got from the library. I haven’t tried it out yet. Utopias, Vaccinium, venereal disease, Venice of the South, Volcanoes, Walt Disney, here we go Weeds.
Weeds are a derisive misnomer. Blooming opportunistly amongst the poisoned lawns of Florida, they should not be thought of dismissively as mere “weeds” but as the resilient and rightful inheritors of the landscape. Oftentimes they were the ones here first!
What kind of a field guide is this? I skip ahead and try to identify this one large-leafed plant bursting up out of the drainage ditch by its toothy leaves. It takes me a few minutes but the inflorescence is a giveaway. Iva frutescens, the field guide was right, it’s not a weed at all, it’s a native shrub.
I look closely at the elongated array of many small flower heads, closed up like little berries, with the loupe. Up close they look like the legs of a hermit crab that has taken up shelter in an artichoke.
Suddenly the whole scene goes dark. I come back out of the warped microscopic world of the loupe. It is Rama is standing over me.
Doing some farming already? She asks.
Haha, no, just a little botanizing. This is Iva frutescens, commonly known as Marsh Elder or Jesuit’s Bark since the missionaries promoted drinking it for its medicinal properties. But I wouldn’t drink this stuff, this lawn is all probably covered in herbicide. Looks like it’s killing those palm trees too, they’re all being stilted. She gives me a thumbs up.
All of a sudden I feel embarrassed and get up from the ground. I don’t know why, all Rama does is talk to me about her obscure hobbies: Don the Beachcomber, tent revivals. And I’m an attentive listener. I was so caught up in her telling me the political history of the 1964 World’s Fair that I missed the only M train coming for an hour. And it’s not like she doesn’t know I’m into plants, she finally got me to agree to come with the promise of all the tropical botanical gardens we could visit. I brush the grass off my jeans and take one last look at the Marsh Elder from a distance. Good luck little guy.
It’s just that I feel something for Rama, something urgent and embarrassing. And I’m thrown off because I have no idea how this is going. It’s not following the usual chain of events. I can’t tell if that’s because she’s being coy or if it’s because i’m not reading some intercultural signals. All I know is We haven’t even kissed yet!
I was so flustered when she first came into the Rat, hiding in the back secretly looking through the old stained cocktail guide to make her the vintage drink she said had been invented at the bar. Maybe it’s all of her questions, her endless and intrusive curiosity, including of me, which is both flattering and unnerving. When she showed up unannounced to the community garden, saying she wanted to see if my other job really was being a farmer, all the kids laughed at me. It was clearer to them than anyone else when someone has a childhood crush.
I go back under the metal awning and put the loupe back in its little velvet bag. I’m already working up a sweat and it’s February. God I hate this place. Rama draws the back of her hand lackadaisical across her forehead, flitting away the slightest bit of perspiration. God. I’m going to do worse things for her too. I haven’t been honest that I’m sober, well that’s an understatement, I’ve been making my own drinks or asking for a “Roy Rogers”. Usually I won’t shut up about it. I’ve been doing all kinds of things that are out of character. I went to that poetry reading and didn’t understand a word. But afterwards she explained it all to me in her way, making it understandable without having to explain it. I came away checking out that Iman Mersal book from the library . You know, it’s fine, for her I’ve come back here. For her, I will even debase myself completely: for her, I will become a tourist.
She turns to look at me in her cat eye sunglasses (نظارات شمسية بإطار عيون القطة). I have to keep it cool, can’t be caught gawking at her. But now that we’re in this tropical sunshine she has shed her Northeast clothing, she takes off another layer and now, God, she’s wearing a spaghetti strap T-shirt. The full view of her shoulders and back is overwhelming. She pulls her sunglasses and looks at me standing in the shade. I am fussing with my backpack, trying to put the field guide back in.
-Is that all you brought? She asks.
Homo Floridus هومو فلوريدانسيس
Rama takes breaks from basking in the sun to check her phone. She is impatient for the rental car guy to show up. She is eager to get out there and explore. She had heard so much about this place, its reputation precedes it.
Florida Man Finds Boa Constrictor in His Car Engine
Florida Man Finds a WWII Grenade, Places It in His Truck, Drives to Taco Bell
Florida Man Claiming People Were “Eating His Brains” Leads Police on Insane Golf Course Chase
I honestly don’t know what I’ll be able to show her. To me, growing up here, I thought this was the most boring place on the planet. It’s not like we’re going to see a bar fight or a house trailer on fire. That’s just the stuff they show on tv. In reality it’s just the same suburbs they have everywhere else. She may be the foreigner, but I’m the one being exoticized.
But no sooner do I think that than slowly pulling up in a tiny car from Exposition Rent A Car, comes a Florida Man. His chopped up and brightly dyed hair and face tattoos are barely contained by the little picture frame of the car window. In fact, he is actively leaning out of it taking a look at Rama standing in the sun. He blinks his eyes in exaggerated astonishment, holds his palm against his forehead like he’s about to faint, and licks his lips like a cartoon wolf. It’s like He is my id come to life. Rama has her face turned up directly towards the sun again and tosses hair off her shoulders to let them get sun too. She doesn’t notice how she’s now preening for the benefit of the clown car doing laps around her.
Florida man parks and steps out of the car while rubbing his hands together. He is wearing the uniform of the rental car company in a letter-of-the-law kind of way and carrying his clipboard loosely like he’s trying to create plausible deniability about his place of employment. Now on foot, he continues to orbit around her, whistling and rubbing his hands together. She is too smitten with sunlight to notice. Or maybe she thinks it’s me who’s taken to whistling, trying to commune with birds. He’s harder to ignore once he starts singing.
She looks down and is startled, laughing awkwardly and shielding her eyes to try to get a better look. She looks around for me, have I transmogrified into the Florida man? He is not dissuaded, getting to the chorus of his improvised ballad. I can’t hear any of the words, but it’s clearly a love song he’s improvised for her. She must think it’s hilarious. She holds her hands together over her stomach waiting for him to finish. He does, victoriously, with a chivalric curtsy. After a respectful pause to be sure he has finished his mating dance, she then says something in reply and all of a sudden Florida Man goes stiff. She has said something brutal.
I walk out from under the shade of overhang, no longer to save Rama but to save Florida Man.
-Hey, is this our rental car? I say pointing to our rental car.
-Oh shit, it’s waladudah! No way
-Who? Rama asks.
-Damn man, that’s crazy, how’ve you been? Florida man pats me on the back. I squint at him in the sun
– Oh wow, it’s Bryan, hi… Bryan. I’m too taken aback to be more excited and friendly. I was worried we might run into some people from high school, but I thought we’d at least get out of the airport first. Damn, he looks like hell, shriveled up in the sun. Must be the drugs too.
-How are you doing man, long time no see. I ask him.
-You got that right, shit when was the last time I saw you?
I have no idea.
– You always went so hard, I just assumed you died, but here you are on a nice little vacation with your girlfriend, no disrespect.
-I’m not his girlfriend, Rama corrects him, but we are on a date!
-Y’all are on a date at the airport?
-No, this trip is the date, we just came from the big city.
-The Big City, oh really?
Bryan really wants to talk. He certainly doesn’t want to get back to work. He asks why we would possibly want to come here on a date when we live in the greatest city in the world?
Rama explains that a couple nights ago we’d had a few drinks, and one thing led to another and we sort of dared each other to do a multi-stage tropical vacation together.
-we’re also going to Disney and then Puerto Rico to visit some of my friends and family, but first I wanted to see where this guy was from.
I point around to the parking lot.
-Ta-da
It was less of a dare and more of a game of chicken. Just the night before last Rama was keeping me company while I was working the closing shift at the Rat and she was telling me about the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow and I mentioned I was actually originally from Florida. That piqued her interest. She had a million questions. I told her I didn’t see why, Florida sucks, it’s not like it’s someplace exotic like where she was from. Rama had scolded me, how could I say such a preposterous thing? Florida is the id of the entire country, the skeleton key for unlocking America’s ambivalent relationship to modernity! She had followed me out front to dump trash bags on Canal while explaining it as the land of homesick conquistadors, swamp guerilla wars, and gilded age railroad tycoons. I was cleaning out the dishwasher as she went on about jet-age land speculation, wax-mannequin millenarianism, and segregated glass-bottom boats. By the time we locked up she was already looking at flights on her phone. I bet I can prove you wrong, that there’s endlessly fascinating things to see and do. For God’s sake this is where the theme park was invented!
Bryan is trying to atone for his mating dance by pulling her luggage over and trying to convince Rama to upgrade to a suburban. He could get it to us for free. I don’t like the idea of renting a car in the first place. He asks if we want theoretical insurance.
-What’s that?
-It’s to insure you in case of theoretical accidents.
-What about real accidents?
-I’d have to check with my manager.
I take Rama’s luggage from Bryan and put it in the trunk of the car and the put my bag in the front seat and Bryan asks me to sign a form assuring the car has no damages.
-what about that? I say pointing at a large scratch across the back bumper.
-Oh shit, yeah let me mark that.
He scribbles a blob over the back bumper of a car illustration on his clipboard on the form. He looks at the mileage and says something about numerology. Then he gets out and hands me the keys to the car. I hold up my hand to refuse. I motion over to Rama, I don’t drive.
He asks us if we need any other amenities during our visit. Man, he really wants to keep talking to us. I ask if he has a paper map
-Shit man, they don’t even make any of those anymore. But no, like, do you guys need some amenities to help you enjoy yourselves? You look a little tense. How was the flight?
It was hell, being packed in an aluminum tube with dough people on their worst behavior.
لا أزال أشعر بالاندهال من فظاظة أهل المطار. لا أعرف ما هو بهذا اللامكان الذي يمنحهم بالتحشف والشراهة جهراً، ولكن بدلا من ذلك أقول فقط انني سعيد جدا لأكون هنا في الجنة.
لا أزال أشعر بالاصطدام ناتج عن التعرض على كرنفال الفظاظة في المطار: التمطط والترهل، التثأوب والتملل، الشحن والتسوق، والاسترخاء والرقدة ، التحشف واللمباذل، السعال والثرثرة، العطس والخنخنة، التصفح والتفرج، الالتهام والتحسي، الغفل والتبلد، التسديد والدلف.
I still feel the shock of being exposed to the carnival of airport rudeness: stretching and slouching, yawning and fidgeting, loading and shopping, relaxing and lying down, slouching and strutting, coughing and chattering, sneezing and sniffing, browsing and watching, gorging and sensing, obliviousness and numbness, paying and slipping.
But I don’t mention any of this, I lie and tell him I’m afraid of flying.
-Well, if you need any amenities to help take the edge of, I’m sure we could negotiate something in addition to the contract?
-Drugs, he’s trying to sell us drugs.
-Oh. Ohhhhh, oh no thanks Bryan. I appreciate the offer.
-Okay man, just enjoy yourselves then.
-We will. Thanks.
-have a great time, say hi to your dad for me, he says sticking his tongue, this may not be the greatest city in the world, but we have a lot to see and do.
-see? Rama says elbowing me.
-thanks Bryan, We’ll enjoy our time in paradise.
-Yeah, well, I don’t know about that. Maybe It would be paradise without the people.
I close my door gently on Bryan and take another look at him. I don’t remember almost anything about him but am still sad to see him go. Rama adjusts the seat closer to the steering wheel and I notice that this is the first time that we’ve sat next to each other in the front seat of a car. We are always walking down the sidewalk or sitting next to each other on the subway. I enjoy this cozy, domestic feeling, like we are family. Woof, I’m getting carried away.
She plugs her phone in and puts it in the middle console.
-Where to, my native informant?
I feel an immediate panic. Native informant? Shit, I haven’t actually put anytime into thinking what we should actually do while we’re in Tampa. I was just so excited to get to spend the time with her, to do something bold enough that we could decide whether or not this was leading someplace serious. I didn’t think that we’d have to actually be tourists. I panic and search my memory. Only one word comes to me. ‘Shangri-la’ it’s the restaurant where we used to hang out when I was a teenager.
-Shangri-La, she says with exotic intonation. She puts it into the guidance and she starts driving.
Shangri-La
Oh this is amazing, Rama says as we park, look at the “googie” architectural features! She stands in the middle of the parking lot to get a good look at it. They don’t make them like this anymore, this is a relic! All I can see is the surrounding landscape: box stores, strip malls, and parking lots. Parking lots. Parking Lots. I hate this place as much as the day I left.
I hold open the door for her and she tells me she thinks I’m so lucky to have been able to spend so much time in high school in a classic american diner, ohhhhh, they haven’t remodeled the inside either, it’s a living museum!
There is nobody at the host counter and Rama bides her time looking into the display case.
– look at these commemorative Kennedy dining plates in that glass shadow box, and these matchbooks! It looks like they haven’t updated since the early 1960s. I’m going to take a couple extra as a souvenir, she says dumping the fishbowl of them into her bag.
An overworked host in a wrinkly white shirt waives at us from a booth she’s cleaning telling us to come over.
-oh wow. The drop ceilings look original , Rama goes on about Particleboard made from Sugarcane Bagasse (ثقل القصب), and ohhs and awws at the hanging ball lamps.
The hostess tries to greet us but Rama is too busy telling me that diners may now be bourgeois, used for rightwing television set pieces, but they have working class origins. I nod to acknowledge the hostess. Rama says she just saw a talk at the American Studies conference where someone had explained their history: prefabricated diners arose from horse-drawn lunch carts which prowled factory districts at night in the late nineteenth century. The hostess just leaves the menus on the table.
-The only good architecture left these days are those things that have been preserved through neglect! What are those things? She asks pointing at a shelf lined with coozies.
-Those? Those are coozies.
-Yeah, but what are they?
– Oh, it’s like a sleeve, a foam sleeve you put around your beer can. You’ve never seen a coozie before?
-Maybe I wasn’t paying attention, what do you use them for?
-To keep your drink cool, or to keep your hand warm, depending on who you ask. Growing up, you basically couldn’t drink a soda without having one, it would be like eating out of your hand.
-Why are they called coozies?
-Hmmm, I don’t know.
-You don’t know?! You used them your whole life and you’ve never once thought about why they’re called coozie?
-I don’t know, Why is a rock called a rock? I don’t know, they were everywhere.
-Maybe it’s like a portmanteau?
-A what?
-Like a portmanteau of cool and cozy.
-Oh shit, yeah, duh, it’s a combination of the words cool and cozy. Damn, I’d never thought of that before.
-Weird, I can’t believe I’ve been in America for two years and never seen one before.
Poor Rama, she’s spent all this time during her program on the one little American island that is nothing like the rest of the country. We pick up our tombstone-sized menus. Rama lets me know You can get breakfast all day. Oh they do a Surf and Turf, classic. Holy shit! Look at these prices.
I look at the prices. Holy shit look at the prices, how is all of this so cheap. Last week we went out to a Filipino restaurant in Nolita and a single eggroll cost as much as the rack of ribs they have here. I look up. Rama has a sultan’s grin. Were going to eat like kings, she says.
She also wants to see what everyone else is ordering. She looks around with detached, anthropological curiosity. In the booth behind her, she looks over the shoulder of a man eating pancakes (breakfast all day). She reads the gothic lettering circling the skull on his leather jacket out loud.
Tampa Blue Knights Law Enforcement Motorcycle Club
The man tries to look back over his thick neck to see who’s reading his jacket and she’s a pretty woman. His scowl turns to confidence.
-a Boot licking outlaw, isn’t that a contradiction? She asks the man’s jacket. The scowl returns. He tries to defend himself, saying something about a fraternal order, but Rama is practicing what anthropologists call ‘active non-intervention’ and turns back to me without acknowledging him. She instead tells me that she shouldn’t be surprised that American subcultures wouldn’t make any sense. They’re ultimately condensed manifestations of the specific ideological contradictions of the historical conjuncture. In the case of pro-cop bike gangs, they’re actually a skeleton key for understanding the Paranoid Style in American Politics.
She keeps saying educated things that I don’t know how to respond to, it makes me feel self-conscious, like I’m not holding up my half of the conversation. When she asks me which subculture I belonged to in high school all I can do is respond with a Descendents lyric.
I wanna be stereotyped
I wanna be classified
I wanna be a clone
I want a suburban home, suburban home
Suburban home
Suburban home
Complaining about the suburbs, singing punk songs in a diner booth, this diner is bringing back my high-school era twerpish attitude. She asks me what years I went to high school, I give her the dates and she says that I was probably sitting in this diner while she was being bombed by the Zionists. I don’t know how to respond to that either. Luckily, we’re interrupted by the sound of a ship bell.
I had forgotten about the special they have here. It’s the middle of a weekday but multiple tables have ordered it. Everytime they do, someone has to ring a bell, and someone has to carry it out with sparklers stuck in it and everyone has to look. And before that, some poor employee has to put it all together on a confectionary assembly line while tourists take pictures. It’s all so degrading.
Rama has a macabre curiosity and as soon as the waitress dressed in candy cane stripes tells us she’s going to take care of us, Rama asks about the special. The woman with faded hair gives her automaton speech, Rama gives her full human attention. It seems decadent (baadhikh), maybe Rama will come to her senses and we can just get lunch.
-We’ll get two!
-Two? Me and the waitress ask together in disbelief.
-Two Kitchen Sinks! Rama declares with regal decisiveness. I mean come on, look how cheap this is. We can each get our own.
-Yeah we can, but that doesn’t mean we should. I think you’re getting carried away, there’s no way we’ll be able to finish even one, much less two!
-I mean, if you eat one by yourself, you do get your picture taken for the Wall of Fame. The waitress points over to a wall covered with pictures of people dazed, their mouths slathered in cream and spittle, giving the thumbs up.
-That settles it. Rama says. Two kitchen sinks please.
The waitress tells us she’ll also get us some waters and walks off. Rama asks me what the big deal is.
-I just don’t like food waste.
-Well that’s up to you. I plan on finishing mine!
I sit back in the booth and sulk a little. I’m also mad that of all the places in Tampa my mind went here. Back in high school we used to only ever order coffee. I look around in disbelief at everyone dressed in their pajamas (بمَباذِلهم). Well this may not be the best first impression of my hometown to show Rama, but it certainly is authentic.
-You know, everyone can see you looking at them with disdain.
-I don’t think they can see out over their plates of food.
I try to look around less judgmentally. Is anyone else from high school here? Maybe that lady with the screaming kids, she looks familiar. But who can tell. A couple booths down I see a group of people all dressed in green. I squint. Oh, it looks like someone is having a Publix themed birthday party.
-What’s Publix?
-The local grocery store, people are really into it.
-They’re having a supermarket themed birthday party? Whatever happened to, like, Princesses and superheroes? That’s psychotic.
-Why? People really like Publix here, it’s a local pride thing.
-Local pride about a supermarket chain?
-You know, it’s the local supermarket, it was started in Lakeland.
-That’s sad. Americans have a bizarre sense of what constitutes cultural heritage.
That I do have a lot to say about, but I’ll end up sounding like a twerp (فلعوص) complaining about the suburbs again, so I ask her about her heritage, I’m sorry, Lebanon? I don’t know much about it, she said at one point her family was a religion whose name I didn’t recognize. I am genuinely interested but I don’t want to ask stupid or insensitive questions.
But Rama appreciates my attempt, and explains something about the religions in Lebanon without using any grad school words.
-Man, that country sounds fucked up.
-You got that right!
The bell is rung. It rings for us. A couple of the other waiters join a conga line to deliver our order. Two high school boys are conscripted to carry over the enormous kitchen sinks, holding them by the pipes.
-Oh, they’re literally kitchen sinks.
-Yeah, what did you think?
The waiters set the literal kitchen sinks down, a large metal basin completely overflowing with an ice cream sundae. Rama blows out the sparklers. Everyone claps. She clinks her spoon to mine and says bon appetit. Before they leave, the waitress asks if we want to have any bacon bits grated on top? I wince, no thank you. Rama asks me how long I’ve been a vegetarian. Since high school.
I poke at my sundae and ask Rama if she had a place like this where she used to hang out after class. She talks about the shawarma at restaurant Barbar. She asks me if I was always interested in agriculture and botany. I tell her I wanted to be a veterinarian but I didn’t have the grades. We’re settling into a comfortable, candid rhythm. Or is this all supposed to be ironic. I can’t tell. In any case, it’s my turn. I ask Rama what kind of student she was in high school. She says she was diligent.
-What?
-A good student, she clarifies.
-No, I say, I mean what clique were you in, a jock, a mean girl, a theater kid?
-We have enough sectarianism, we didn’t need to add subcultures to the mix.
-So no Restaurant Barbar themed birthday parties?
-Ha, no. Oh and I was in Model UN, so maybe like a nerd? (نَحِّيْت دِرَاسِة) my parents always instilled a love of reading. My father filled my life with poetry, everything, Abu Tamam, Aragon, Etel Adnan.
Rama asks me about the values my parents taught me. Hmm, that’s an interesting question. I don’t really know how to answer. Values? That sounds so antiquated. I think about it for a second as Rama eats one of the frozen banana halves from the sundae. Did my mother teach me anything other than ordinary, common sense values?
-You know, I’ve never thought about it like that. Nothing out of the ordinary I guess. My mom taught me a love for animals maybe?
Rama seems underwhelmed by my answer. As for my father, the only thing he stood for was the pursuit of money and a vast indifference to truth or beauty. But I don’t say any of that.
It’s my turn again. The Lebanon religions questions went okay, so I’ll I’ve finally ask her about her family. She seems pleasantly surprised, like she’s been waiting a long time for this prompt, until now frustrated in her attempts to tell the long, sweeping narrative of her identity. It’s a complex epic, wars and exile, grandparents at the polytechnique and great aunts in the Caribbean, and she only takes breaks to scoop ice cream into her mouth. She’s making good progress. I pay as much attention as I can, trying to have my ignorance of demographics and history come off as thoughtful follow-up questions. She tries to keep from indulging herself, but can’t help but be proud and excited to tell it all. Her family is everything to her.
Her phone rings. Speak of the devil she says. She answers the call and says the same set of unintelligible words that I have begun to recognize. I guess Arabic has lots of different ways to say hello and how are you. She’s speaking to her father, probably telling him that we have arrived. Or is she telling him she’s on a trip at all? Has she even mentioned me? Hard to tell. It seems as though they have these conversations 3 or 4 times a day. It’s a strange ritual.
I take the opportunity to get up and walk over to the entrance of the restaurant where they have a rack of brochures for local attractions. The aquarium, the Zoo, the Children’s Museum? God this is dire. I am going to fail this test. What did I think we were going to do once we got here, just make out on the beach? The Official Downtown Tampa Ghost Tour? Busch Gardens, oh yeah that’s right, the Salvador Dali museum, why do we have a Salvador Dali museum in Tampa? Being a tourist is so weird, suddenly becoming a person compelled by the need to see a shark in a tank or ride a rollercoaster. It’s absurd. I would be perfectly content to botanize in a salt flat, but I don’t think Rama would be into that. She wants to find the skeleton key.
I can see Rama is finishing up her call, so I grab a brochure for a dolphin cruise just in case and walk back to the table.
Rama finishes her call in the same way she started it, repeating a few phrases over and over again, what must be different ways to say goodbye. I have no idea really but it seems to me like the entire conversation is made up of different ways of saying hello and saying goodbye.
-Hi she says.
-Hi
-So what about you?
I ask what she means.
-Where is your family originally from? I shrug.
-White american, who knows what constitutes my cultural heritage, I could be from anywhere!
This was not the right thing to say. She looks at me as though this has invalidated all of my patient listening, as though confirming I think everything she’s just told me is nonsense. The waiter comes back and encourages Rama to keep going, she’s over half way done eating the Kitchen sink. I’ve only had a few bites of mine. Rama says she’s done with the ice cream, but that she would like some waffles.
-Waffles? The waitress asks in disbelief. I want to be a good sport, so I tell her we’ll both have waffles even though I’m about to throw up.
-That also comes with hash browns, sausage or bacon, and two eggs your way
Rama asks for sausage, and two eggs scrambled.
I say just the waffles for me please.
Rama asks, don’t you even want the eggs?
I shake my head no, and thank the waitress. Rama insists, why don’t I eat eggs? I usually evade giving an explanation, but we’re in a sharing mood, and it’s a topic I actually know something about. I tell her some of the basic facts I have memorized about CAFOs, that The U.S. chicken industry also breeds and slaughters about 9.5 billion chickens each year, which is about 26 million birds per day. I should have quit there, but the high school twerpness has come out and I am talking about confining chickens in crates, stuffing them in windowless barracks, the hundreds of male chick crushed in cogs every minute, unable to lay eggs, the broiler chickens bred for their oversized breasts, too heavy to walk, their short path to full-growth which ends with the stunning and electric buzzsaws and the heat death of armies of birds.
I’m only cut off by the delivery of our waffles. She looks down at the steaming eggs, moral abomination abstracted into gelatinous yellow mush. Rama just crosses her arms. I ask her if everything is okay. She says well now you’re making me feel bad.
-Oh no, don’t worry about it, this isn’t the first time you’ve eaten eggs around me.
-What the hell?
Offf, I shouldn’t have said anything. Now I’m self-conscious. Rama surgically moves the waffles away from everything else on her plate. She looks down at them, cuts them all up into perfect little squares, and tells me you know not everyone can get as much pleasure out of being ascetic as you do, before taking a bite. She passes me the maple syrup. I go to refuse, but she looks at me angrily. I laugh and feel myself being supervised as I pour a modest amount of maple corn syrup in the corner.
