“I hate feeling incapacitated,” Janaka said — on his third round of the flu in as many months.

“What was that? You hate living in this house of tears?”

“You’ll what?” I asked delightedly.

You tilted your head in confusion. “I said, ‘I love you.’”

“Oh.”

“Really? But they’re like, small and stuff.”

“They’re the worst things to kill and dress. It’s disgusting. They bleed and bleed and bleed. You chop off their heads, you watch them bleed it all out, and then you pull out their intestines. Don’t do it.”

“We pull out their intestines?” I wobbled a bit in my chair.

“Exactly. And that’s not even the worst part. Don’t do this.”

“What’s the worst part?”

He just shuddered.

“. . . I feel like I need to do it if I’m going to eat meat again.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t get why people say this.”

“People say this?”

“Look. It’s traumatizing. I’m worried about you. I think you’ll be traumatized. Just don’t do it. If you can back out now, back out.” I took a gulp of my beer. “Please,” he said. “Don’t do this.”

Image by Dennis.

“You feel like . . . the Grinch?” he said.

“Oh, at the end of the story,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

The bougiest statements made during our South Dakota camping trip:

1. Oh! I love a stilton!
2. Ah yes! Was that in Chamonix?

(Jamie astutely pointed out that there’s nothing inherently despicable about loving cheese, but put “a” in front of its name, and you’re officially rich.)

Image by Kristy.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“So for the past two years I’ve had this clicking sensation come and go in my sinuses, kind of near the bridge of my nose. It’s this vaguely annoying pressure and movement thing, and it clicks, and it just happens every so often, but it’s weird.”

“Uh huh.”

“And I’d read a story once about this woman who had a similar sensation maybe and it was a cockroach that had climbed up her nose and couldn’t get back out. So for the past two years whenever my nose clicked, I thought, ‘oh, it’s the cockroach that lives there now I guess.’”

” . . . uh huh.”

“But tonight I finally broke down and Googled it, and it turns out, it’s just allergies! And, the cure is using a Neti Pot.”

“Well. Yeah. That makes sense.”

“Sooo . . . aren’t you impressed? I’ve lived the past two years of my life assuming I had a cockroach living in my face, and I managed to not even Google it.”

“I feel like,” he said, “that’s actually insane. To even assume that.” He paused. “Like . . . certifiably.”

“Have any kids?” he asked. I get asked this a lot now. It’s weird.

“I don’t.”
“Husband?”
“Nope.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Uhh . . . well. That’s complicated.”

He shook his head. “Guys are just jerks,” he said. “There are so many beautiful women I see come in here, so many wonderful clients I have, and the guys are just assholes, you know? They don’t stick around. They need to grow up, see what they have right in front of them.”

“Oh,” I said. “No, no, it’s not like that.” We made eye contact in the mirror, his eyebrow raised. “I’m the jerk,” I said.

I looked down at my own, which had become long (and thus, dirty) simply out of neglect. “But I’m mostly straight,” I said, “and my nails are mostly short. I mean, they’re long now, but that’s not on purpose.”

“Adrianne. Think about it. Our hands are our dicks.” She made a hand gesture to illustrate something I’d certainly never experienced. I choked on my coffee and squealed like a seventh grader.

“That’s . . . that’s a very good point. You know, in porn, where they have the obligatory lady-touching-herself scene? And the chick has this ridiculous manicure, with the long acrylic nails that have, like, jewels glued onto them? I can never watch that shit. It actively turns me off. I won’t want to do it for hours.”

A child skipped by our booth, dragging a small white dog by the claw of a stuffed lobster.

“Seriously! That’s so horrifying! Why do they do that?”

“Well, in their defense — I read this book once, A Smart Girl’s Guide to Porn. And the author said something about these women being professionals, obviously, and the nail tips not being sharp, and how they’re not hurting themselves.”

“Ah. I think I read . . . part of that book too.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t very well-written.”

“No. I think that’s why I only read part of it, then gave up.”

“Heh, right. Such a shame. Anyway, so, there’s that I guess. But still, it’s so visually unappealing. It looks painful regardless. I wish they wouldn’t.”

A long, thin elderly man with stooped shoulders and cowboy boots slowly clacked over to our table. “More coffee for you girls?”

“Oh, no thanks!”

“Yeah, I think we’re fine.”

“So I had this fantasy, about [X,] the other day. It really weirded me out. We did [scandalous!], and then [extended scandalous!]. Oh my gosh.”

“You did [scandalous!] with [X]?!” I yelled.

“I know, right? Sometimes I don’t know where my mind comes up with these things. It goes on, like, tangents.”

“I almost never think about faces.”

“Really?”

“Well it’s kind of a funny thing, you know, thinking about men masturbating –”

Suddenly her growing wide eyes met mine.

She whispered: “Adrianne!”

I stopped, and looked around.

You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. The child was sitting on the floor, slowly petting the now-sleepy dog. His grandparents hovered over their toast, sipped heavy mugs of coffee, careful to move their silverware silently on the plates. Linoleum peeled. A faded cardboard cut-out of Marilyn Monroe gleamed in the corner, some kid’s model airplane suspended forever above her. In front of us, a set of grey heads were nearly motionless, frozen in their seats like terrified mannequins.

Without our voices barraging the air, the silence preserved the diner like hardening amber.

“Oh god,” I whispered, “. . . were we really being that loud?”

“Uh, yes. Yes we were.”

“And we were just talking about –”

“I think we forgot,” she whispered back, “I think we just acted very, very city.”

“Seriously?” I cried. “That guy is getting danced all over by that gorgeous near-naked woman, and he looks like he’s in some angry coma? What’s his deal? That doesn’t even seem polite. There are boobs in your face! Smile about it!”

“I think it’s a power thing for the guys,” Macon said.

“Yeah, this isn’t like burlesque, Adrianne.”

“Well I’m going to look interested,” I declared. “Because I am. Those people are naked, and they are doing crazy things with their butts.”

I am officially of the age that causes 19-year-olds to say “oh my God.”

I put my head in my hands, and she added  – “but you don’t look it!”