The Title is the Hardest Part

[hillwald-blog]

A Food-borne Phobia

I love the restaurant experience. The room bustling with waiters clad in black and white, and animated diners laughing, arguing and spooning food into babies’ mouths while they shovel forkfuls into their own. I never refuse a breadbasket. I never turn down a juicy filet. And I’m always the first to accept the offer of the dessert menu. But when it comes time to order my meal, a wave of panic picks me up, tosses me around, and lands me face down in the thick sands of Fickle Island. The excitement of the room slows to an agonizing display of chewing, swallowing, and lip-licking, all flaunting the thorough satisfaction I anticipate being denied.

            After a scrupulous examination of the surrounding tables’ plates, I turn to my fellow diners and ask everyone at the table what they’re ordering, if they’ve eaten it before, and lastly if they think I myself would enjoy it. I look through every item on the menu as if I’ll be quizzed at the end of the meal. While many diners are eager to put in their order, excitedly awaiting the arrival of the meal they are sure to enjoy, my own ordering experience is characterized by doubt, skepticism and regret.

            I usually have a first instinct as to what I’ll enjoy. But it is inevitable that something else catch my eye, something that upon reflection would quite obviously be the wrong choice, and the doubt begins to boil. It blurs my vision and sprinkles sand on my taste buds. And upon the first bite of my meal, I always arrive at the same destination: disappointment.

But there was one time during Spring Break in Sarasota, Florida, a time that I will never forget, that I ordered perfectly. The meal didn’t have me peering at other tables, envious of the love between diner and dish. Instead I was completely present, proud to be partnered with the bowl in front of me. It was the best meal I ever ate.

This best meal was grilled Red Snapper over linguini tossed in marinara sauce. The fish was tender and fresh, plucked that very same day from the bay the Florida restaurant overlooked.  The noodles were perfectly al dente. And the marinara sauce was the tomato’s proudest moment, sweet and rich with juicy slices of whole tomatoes. I ate the dish slowly, tasting every bite until its fateful slide down my throat. My family watched me in awe, as if the baby of the family was walking for the first time, mindful of every step. When it was over, the shiny white bowl was just barely marked with the leftover marinara I would have licked clean had we not been in public. Upon finishing my meal, each member of my family raised our glasses and toasted to my absolute satisfaction. In my 20 years of living, this meal was no doubt, a milestone.

Since then I’ve had a handful of other lip-licking experiences-- a porchetta sandwich in Florence, braided bacon at Friend of a Farmer, a secret vegetable soup the chef at my restaurant slips me in the kitchen when he can tell I’m fading at the host stand. I really savor those meals and, despite my continual complications with the restaurant experience, I like to believe there are many more ahead. Only time- and taste buds- will tell. 

[hillwald-blog]

2. The Following Monday

The following Monday I was unable to focus in class. In my 8 a.m. I caught myself smiling, too late to pass to it off as anything else, and when I saw the blonde girl across the room smirking at me, I rolled my eyes to make her stop. In my 10 a.m. I scribbled frantically in my notebook. Adding a few lines here and there, I drew a dread-locked head between a pair of legs at the top right corner of the page, and blurred my eyes to see if it would look the same to the eyes on either side of me. I decided it would so I ripped the picture out and stuck it in my purse, well aware, and maybe even hoping, that it could fly from my purse, out into the world, where someone could pick it up and see the drawing as I saw it, and like me, become unable to focus in class. I liked to imagine the entire universe had been jolted by our rendezvous. I needed to see him again. The next weekend, I would.   

[hillwald-blog]

We ain't born typical. 

[hillwald-blog]

Hillary Arrives in Claremont

When the plane touched down in Claremont, I was feeling energized.  During the flight I had started and finished The Last Lecture, a book about how to get what you want out of life, written by a man diagnosed with terminal cancer. Its chapters were deep but simple and short. I swallowed them like pills, crying and laughing and believing, and ordered Bloody Marys from the flight attendant, thinking they were free until she asked for my credit card. I walked toward baggage claim swiftly, catching a breeze that made me realize how sweaty my skin was from the effort of travel.

Poppy came straight from work at the Pitzer Admissions Office to pick me up. When we were campers together through middle school and high school, she wore the same thing everyday- cotton shorts, a wife beater, and Rainbow flip-flops. Waiting for her on the curb outside, I imagined her arriving in that outfit and running from her car to wrap her arms around me so tight I couldn’t move.

At some point in the past few years it occurred to me that the two types of people in the world are the people who wrap their arms around others and the people who get wrapped inside others’ arms. Poppy was the former and I was the latter and we clung to each other like magnets in the beginning. In high school, when her attachment to me became a greater burden than I could carry, I pushed her to the outskirts of my life over a series of angry phone conversations. I felt like I knew something so obvious about her that she wasn’t admitting to- like I was being more affected by her being gay than she was. I thought, Just admit it so it can be yours and not mine!

Sophomore year of college she told me she had a girlfriend and it brought back to me all the feelings of love and admiration I had felt before resentment spoiled things. We began to rekindle our friendship, but never to the extent that it had once been. It was pleasant to have Poppy back in my life without bearing the weight of her sexual identity, but it felt strange that she was no longer moved by me. It made it so that whenever we were together, I felt a little desperate and not pretty until she became at all flirtatious.

I envied her gayness. Our relationship made sense in her story. Something came of it. For me, I didn’t know what it meant, or how exactly it changed me, or what to do with it. I wanted everything that Poppy was- passionate, smart, adoring- from a man.

I had been expecting Poppy to arrive in her forest green station wagon so when she pulled up in front of me in a black SUV, I hadn’t noticed.

“Hillayyy,” Poppy called out to me in a relaxed way from the driver’s seat. I could see she was wearing a black suit. I couldn’t help but always picture her dressed as the person she was when we were close, and for a moment the difference made me nervous about the way I had been imagining the whole weekend in general.

“Hi, Po!” I said it with a cheerfulness that was unlike me but it was the very start of my trip and the fantasy of reinventing myself for Poppy's friends and the people I would meet in Los Angeles had not yet dissolved. I opened the back door and wrestled to get my carryon onto the seat. Excited and a little bit uncomfortable, we said hi a few more times, giggling as I climbed into the front seat next to her. 

[hillwald-blog]

When I finally figure out what city my fate is in, she'll look at me with a bitchy glare for making her wait so long and then she'll offer me the rest of her ice cream cone. 

The most important part though is that she's wearing platform sneakers. 

[hillwald-blog]

[hillwald-blog]

1. Standing Alone at the Bar

Standing alone at the bar, I wondered why I recognized the boy at the end of it; the one with the short dreadlocks and dark Mediterranean eyes that were as intimidating as they were inviting.

“He looks like Jafar,” I said to myself quietly and I felt fear stir inside of me like when I was a little girl, only this time it didn't send me hiding behind the living room couch. Instead it excited me. 

When he stepped outside, I thought, if he’s on his phone, he must have a girlfriend and I will erase him from my memory eternally. Through the glass door I watched smoke escape his mouth and I decided that he not only did not have a girlfriend, but also that he wanted company. I sucked down the last of my whiskey-Coke and headed purposefully toward him.

As I pushed through the front door, I realized too late why I recognized this boy. Pre-dreads, we had shared an ecstasy-induced night at the Aragon ballroom on the eve of 2012, shamelessly enhancing each other’s highs- exchanging back rubs, smearing VapoRub under each other’s eyes and passionately groping each other until the houselights returned to us our inhibitions. Suddenly self-conscious, I turned away from him and lit a cigarette, peering down the icy street at the chaos of streetlights and drunken undergrads. I could feel his eyes on me though and from a few feet behind me he spoke.

“Hey. Cara?” I was immediately ashamed so I pretended to be puzzled and then I pretended to have just recognized him.

“Adrien! Hi! It is Adrien, right?”

His warmth was cooler than my confusion but I would make up for it eventually, I hoped. We hugged like strangers and I took a drag from my cigarette, hoping he would be impressed with my sexy French inhale. 

“The last time I saw you-- ” He raised his eyebrows, shaking his head side to side.

“Ya,” I said, smiling, my cheeks burning hot against the freezing winter air. I supposed there really was no reason for coyness.

“I just remember saying to my friends at the end of the night, ‘And that’s why they call it ecstasy.”

He threw his head back laughing and, feeling more confident, I laughed with him. 

“Oh, god,” he said, recovering. “I was so fucked up.” He took a drag from his cigarette and smiled with amusement but I worried how different our recollections of that night would be.  I had spent the semester leading up to that New Year’s Eve, first semester junior year, mourning the end of a secret relationship I had had with my first boyfriend’s fraternity brother, Kyle. That time was characterized by three things: my inability to finish a plate of food, my obsessive doodling of the outline of a man with a horizontal line across his hollow face, and a nightly web search for “literotica” that was to replace the very real, very satisfying sex I had been having with a human. That night with Adrien was the first time I felt truly attracted to anyone since Kyle, and having purged my insides due to the stomach flu the day before, I considered this turn of events to be the karmic revival of my youth, my life even.

  For him, who pressed his boner in between my butt cheeks while we danced, that night was likely as meaningful as placing a hot dog inside its bun. Though I wished he wouldn’t, Adrien continued to divulge the many dimensions of his fucked-up-ness.

“I took a tab of acid earlier that day and my buddy and I were just pounding shots at the bar until the show started.” Not wanting to hear more, I scrunched my nose and took another long dizzying drag, hoping that the end of our cigarettes would mean the end of that conversation.

Back inside, I stood next to him at the bar, desperate for the fearless intoxication that had brought us together in the first place.  It was crowded and dark and as people pushed by us I moved closer toward him. I wondered if he had come with any of his friends but I didn’t want to remind him that he had, if he had, so I didn’t ask. Instead I said, “I think I’m going to call it a night.” And when he looked disappointed, I added,

“Do you want to do that with me?”

[hillwald-blog]

I'm gonna fuck you down. Here's a buttered scone and some tea. 

Also I have this hug for you. 

[hillwald-blog]

This is good.

Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes. 

- William Gibson

[hillwald-blog]

Well, I’m not lonely when I travel, but like every writer, I’m a bit lonely when I have to sit down and write the thing, because you can only do that by yourself.

- Jan Morris

[hillwald-blog]

"I Hate Ro-"

I shuffle toward the edge of the tram platform at Largo Argentina, my pruned feet sinking into my drenched sneakers. There’s something liberating about your clothes being completely drenched. Rather than shielding yourself from the rain, you take ownership of your sodden state, shifting side to side just to feel the swampy squishiness between your toes. 

I had just been through the trauma of Roman transportation- a fifteen-minute tram and a half hour bus ride to Roma Termini: boob grab and penis poking included. 50 euro for a sex show in Amsterdam? Why not take the 64 bus for 1.50 euro instead? Anger and disgust aside, I can’t totally blame these middle-aged men for “accidentally” copping a feel- I myself am guilty of straddling an 80 year-old woman due to the unanticipated jerking of the tram. How the accordion players hold their instrument and their stance, I’ll never understand.

Upon exiting the bus, a flash flood was cast upon us and I unashamedly screamed like a maniac until I reached the doorway of Termini. Fully saturated, I slid my way across the station to meet my friend Anna to whom I was returning, unbeknownst to her, only one Nike gym shoe before she headed back to Florence. This is one less sneaker than I had intended to return, but the other one had been forgotten in Barcelona. As I came closer and closer to her, I realized how entirely idiotic this operation was. Is there anything in the world with less purpose than one single gym shoe? Unsure of how dire this situation felt on her end, my lamentations wavered between a Carrie Matheson quivering lip and the cavity-inducing optimism of Dora the Explorer. She seemed unconvinced and irritated so I desperately closed my sermon with, “I fucking hate this city!” as if, upon hearing my pleas the skies would open and a cherub would arrive with her other shoe on a velvet pillow.  

Shall we indulge a bit more in the negative? After waiting in the cab line outside the station for fifteen minutes, I was finally up. No boob grabs in a cab! (Hopefully). But as I dodged the shifting lines of cabs and approached my shining white chariot, it occurred to me I had no cash. “Do you take cards?” I shouted over the rain and honking vehicles. “No.” And then came the moment that comes all too often. The moment when foreign equals stupid and you’ll say anything in your desperation. “Um, do any of these other cabs take a card?” She drove off without looking at me. I felt like Cher Horowitz abandoned in the parking lot of a run down 7Eleven.

A return trip on the Harassment Express brings me back to the Largo Argentina platform where I repeatedly squish my toes up and down into the soaked bottoms of my shoes and sulk excessively. My cheeks become hot and heavy as I lose my ability to look at this scenario as one of those “you’re abroad, embrace it!” moments. I look around at the Italians standing under their umbrellas. I want to kick the couple making out under the polka dot one. And I hate the ridiculously stylish man wearing stupid Gucci rain boots standing to my left. My face is now boiling and it takes every ounce of me not to scream. Instead I dare to open my mouth and say in a quiet yet lucid tone, “I hate Ro-“ when suddenly I feel a gentle tug on my arm and a short slur of Italian. I look to my right and a petite, magenta-lipped older woman smiles at me, hooks her arm in mine and places her pink umbrella over both of our heads. I stare at her, stunned, and my eyes fill with tears as I breathe heavily through my nose. “Grazie, thank you so much, grazie,” My words barely make it past the lump in my throat and I wonder if she can feel my quivering as I turn away from her to cry.