The Omnivorous Fish

Meals are telling in our lives, in one way or another. Depending on what they consist of or what the surroundings are, we know the occasion. A turkey surrounded by sweet potatoes and cranberries tell us something specific. Lilies and silver trays say “occasion.” Sitting in the middle of a construction site I paid $300K for, eating Indian food out of a paper carton on Friday night says that times are changing. I’ve been staying here for the last week, since the Agent told me we should spend the week apart to see how we feel. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know what to do or think or say. I still don’t.

My meals this week have been more telling than usual. I had lunch with old friends who happened to be in town; a meat binge on the way to bring a mattress up to my place. Then I went “home” to pack a bag and went to another old friend’s to eat leftover Thai food to avoid thinking about the bag in the car. Tuesday, I went to dinner with my oldest friend in New York, who met me as an eccentric, sleepless, sexually ambivalent seventeen year old, obsessed with getting our diesel biology teacher to come out once and for all. I cooked for money back then, and if Ferran Adria had been around (in South Jersey) I would have thought he was the shit (now I’m not impressed). We already covered what I ate Wednesday.

Thursday was dinner with some of the South/West Orange crew, coincidentally at a slightly disappointing but overall decent “comfort food” place out in their hood.

Tonight, samosas and chicken biryana from the Indian place. Yes, up here it’s the Indian place. There’s the Indian place, the sushi place, the sort-of mexican place and the other place up here, and that’s pretty much it. Sure, there are Chinese joints and pizzerias, but they’re all garbage. There are two fusion-type restaurants, one Asian-Latino, the other Pan-Asian-American, but they’re both pricey ad neither really delivers the goods. Besides, they’re both trying to be the nice restaurant in a non-shishy area, and since the food isn’t amazing, they’re both pretty much just plain pretentious. Further east are several Latino places that I will begin checking out, but I’m trying to drum up some recs from my super before I go one alone.

Besides, I hate eating alone. Meals at their best are a fellowship; to use a word that has been sullied by religion, communion. Food prepared by and for each other that nourishes our bodies, our souls and our psyches. The Agent and I were good at this, which is why it’s hard to have these repetitive let-me-tell-you-what-happened meals interspersed with these lonely ones. I’m adjusting to the sleeping alone (center of the bed- good advice from Shuna) and the empty apartment when I get home from the theater, but the meals are the toughest part thus far.

Listening: “Good Morning, Lazarus” by The Low Road. Lots of them this week.