A discussion this evening centered on the idea of a memorable meal.
I had a couple I’d been thinking about.
My brother’s rehearsal dinner- I rode my 1964 BMW R50/2 up to Dallas. No voyage to Dallas by highway is complete without a near death experience. This trip was more nearer death than usual on Central Expressway (of course) – my sister on pillion, my brother in a car behind me, the throttle pinned (which meant about 55 mph or so) and my peripheral vision picked up the turn signal of an 18 wheeler who was moving into my lane.
The dinner was at the hotel where the Zany Groomsmen were staying. A mixed bag of actors, clerics, and international arms dealers. The meal was good, but then the toasting started. And kept going. The bridesmaids did their best, but they were outmatched by rapier wit and mapcap japeries of the Zany Groomsmen. Oh, it is to laugh.
Another meal, the one I related earlier this evening (albeit in a manner more suiting the crowd), was a birthday meal I ate in Boston. Consistent with all my memories of my time in Boston, the framing situation is out of focus, but there are moments rendered in a crisp Brueghel style grotesque. It was a sunny, New England day in July. Hot enough, but not too hot.
- Catching a bluefish on a fly rod out of a canoe in the morning. (We were “Unsuccessful Salt Water Fly Fishermen” a standard so low we could comply without effort)
- Coffee, cigarettes, chocolate and weed in the truck on the way back.
- The almost comically long picnic table in the backyard of the Ashmont triple decker (“Dorchester Dream Crib”), complete with grill.
- More people showing up that we figured. (Some good, some bad, some better than I had thought.) All brought food, most brought watermelon.
- Watermelon, bluefish, corn on the cob, beer, and more watermelon.
- Kissing a trombone player from Jamaica Plain.
- Kissing the recent ex-girlfriend who also gave me a tortoise shell Waterman fountain pen.
- The taste of bluefish in the evening, a bluefish that was living the ocean that morning. Everything that John Hersey’s book “Blues” says it is.
A week later, I washed out the trash cans where we had tossed watermelon rinds. I popped the top and looked at the colonies of maggots that were feasting on the entrails of my good time birthday meal. It was time to leave Boston. So I left.
