In his place is a new food stand, selling Serbian cevapi, a kind of sausage roll, tended by a young man and an old one.

“How do you know cevapi?”
“I’ve only read about it in a book.”
“From a cookbook!”
“No, by a forensic anthropologist.“
“What kind?”
“Forensic anthropologist. Kind of like an archaeologist and doctor combined. They study skeletons, bones, other human remains and try to figure out what happened. She came with a group of UN workers – to investigate.”
“What?”
“The mass graves. She was helping to identify the bodies, and determine how they’d died.”
“I see. Yes, I see. And she ate cevapi while she was there.”
“Yes. She couldn’t speak the language, but she learned to order cevapi and coffee right away.”

He’s quiet for awhile. The old man, I assume his father, has been standing back and smiling the whole time. He’s meticulous about the placement of my bread, my salad, my onions, my sauce. Deliberate in that way, too, which makes me think of the Ethiopian guy. The son explains to him what I’ve said, maybe more quickly than it should have been. There is a breathless few seconds and in that span, they might have been anyone – victim, aggressor, aggrieved, displaced, completely unaffected, and no way of telling – before the other shoe dropped.

But his smile doesn’t falter when he hands over my to-go box. He explains, through his son, how my food should be assembled and to be more careful with the spicy spread. The younger man shakes my hand as we make our good-byes, but the moment never comes. It’s not my history to share, I know, and ultimately we all three of us just wanted me to buy a sausage roll. The cevapi is cold by the time I get home. I put it away for a little while, content to wait before ingesting this whatever it is. Sympathy. Distance. An “I’m sorry this happened to you,” whether it did or not. Knowing that I’m no longer thinking about the son and father at the farmer’s market, or any bunch of tangled limbs and silence left at the bottom of a hole in the ground. It catches in the throat. I can warm the food in the microwave later and chew and swallow it down into something more closely resembling hunger.

“What about in space? Can they live there?”
“I’m sure they breathe oxygen, but they’d probably still survive longer than an unprotected human.”
“You are ruining all my plans.”
“Because you were going to space? I don’t think they mean to swim, anyway. It’s probably just something that happens when a tarantula finds itself in water.”
“No, I know. But there’s still the chance that you could be in a lake or swimming pool one day and find a spider.”
“So swim in the ocean.”

I can see the gears moving, the stringing up of this new and horrifying pearl of knowledge to a brainecklace that already includes the smell of rotted curry, the existence of Indonesian shit-eating cave crabs. Of bot flies and slow loading times on Hulu, so she can’t watch already-aired episodes of ‘Glee.’

Then: “won’t they be expecting that?”

“I am stoked like fire,” I said. The cashier didn’t even look at me.

I hurried home to unwrap it (it is wrapped, which should have been an obvious sign), expecting a single brick sized parcel containing roughly 900 sticks of gum and endless, chewy enjoyment. Instead, I found this:

Pictured: BETRAYAL

Oh, that’s right. That’s right, you soulless snack harlots, you got me again. I was seduced by your coy presentation and comic book-inspired product title. I thought the wrapper was in place because you were modest. I thought you were protecting me from myself because seeing a pack of gum so super in a state of nature would drive me mad with lust. Well, it worked. But what the hell is this? No, what is it? I’ll tell you what it is. It’s two packs of normal sized Trident gum GLUED TOGETHER, back to back, the candy equivalent of motherfucking PigeonRat. Each opens on their respective sides, the flaps spreading out like the wings of a Ptrollodactyl, cawing “LOL! LOL! LOL!” at me as it flies away, crapping.

Is this my comeuppance for a life steeped in vice and nearly indifferent literacy? Did some titty-giggling mongoloid get hold of a glue gun and decide it was craft hour at the factory? Why do you hate me?

I know I’m ultimately to blame for my own naivete, like the pantless young woman who prances off alone in the night to explore the mouldering basement of a haunted whorehouse. I should have expected this. But I blame you, too, Trident. You’re the ghost predator in that basement and while you didn’t force me to go exploring, you’ve just dick slapped me from beyond the grave of my impulsive gum purchasing decisions. I’m pretty sure this twi-flavored monstrosity is laughing at me even now, delighting in my misery, my woebegotten liberal arts college education and affection for minty fresh breath. It snorts in derision when I flip one side open, then the other, trying to choose between them, then mocks my accent when I don’t even have an accent.

But I’ll tell you what, Trident: once these million sticks are depleted, probably some time in 2034, I’m going back to Orbit Mint Mojito. She’s my pretty lady and she treats me right. Sure the packaging is a little ostentatious, the taste a little too Katy Perry “Ca-li-for-nia girls, we’re unforgettable. Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top” blasting through the open windows of your teal Hyundai Accent hatchback, but fuck it. They’ve never pulled these kinds of shenanigans and you damn well know it.

Optimistic Retard Baby Unicorn looks a lot like Optimistic Redneck Baby Unicorn, but their sentiments are remarkably similar.

I’m getting tired of this asshole, if only because it gets me to watch terrible movies for reasons other than my own equally terrible taste.

I salvaged a Lonely Planet Thai language phrase book years ago, a souvenir of my father’s long-ago Navy travels in Southeast Asia. Practical and illuminating, it highlights the primary concerns of visitors to that sultry locale, so it’s no surprise that a great deal of textual space is dedicated to food, hospitals and sex.

Dì-chǎn ben pà-yâht. translates to “I have intestinal worms.”

His name is Bas, he is a retired store owner from Nakhon Pathom. I am new to the building and look like a Japanese princess. He tells me this by way of introduction. I should call him Bas because his full name, he insists, is too difficult for anyone to pronounce and he is tired of hearing it loused up. I consider this while he presents me with a plate of chicken and beef satay, perching it atop my bag of groceries. I am not Japanese. And I suppose it hardly needs to be clarified that I am also definitely not a member of any country’s ruling or defunct monarchy. At best, I might be descended from a line of minor tropical jungle chieftains or damp, consumptive potato farmers.

I don’t mention any of this to him. It would seem rude, contrary. I was new to the apartment complex and the man had just given me a plate of skewered meat. Instead, I thanked him and promised to return his plate the next day. The satay was followed over time with a noodle dish, coupons for Fresh & Easy, a small pot of pink azaleas, sticky rice, a single energy-efficient light bulb, the admonishment to get married and have children as soon as possible, then more satay. I haven’t known Bas long, but in the months since meeting him officially, I have learned two things about my new neighbor: he is a fine cook and he may be a porn fiend.

Row mâi ben kon fâ-rang-sèt. We’re not French. Kà-nŏm bang tam dôo-ay bâang kôw săh-lee têe mâi dâi ow ram òrk. Whole wheat bread.

His wife died years ago. They met in Bangkok, where she worked as a maid in some rich widow’s house. They ran the store here together and even after his own widowhood set in, he stuck around the neighborhood, probably plying each new tenant with his charcoal-fired version of a welcome basket.

Late some nights, after even the gangsta rap from downstairs has subsided and you can finally hear crickets on the slope outside, the sounds from next door are so faint that they’re hard to figure out at first. Then you realize: synth. Flapping. The ohyeahohyeahohyeah of old fashioned, low budget cinematic boning. I have trouble looking him in the eye after these nights. Not because of the porn, or mostly not because of the porn, but the sheer loneliness. The quiet of his apartment each morning.

“Why don’t you travel some,” I ask. “You could get out of here for a while, maybe visit Thailand. Don’t you miss it?”

“Ah, no.” He waves his hand. “Too old, too old. I’m already here so long. This is my home now.”

It’s hard not to feel bad about that. The name ‘Paradise Hills,’ in addition to being half a misnomer (there is nothing paradisal about it, though hilly certainly, but not exceptionally so), is also better for what lies in proximity rather than what it offers within its own borders. That being: everything else considered by the people who live here as Paradise Hills, sometimes down to and including National City, the South and North Bay Terraces, and on occasion, Bonita. Its citizens are an expansive and imperialistic people, largely working to lower middle class, natives in the sense that any long-rooted military community is native, “a diverse population,” according to Wikipedia, “consisting primarily of people of Filipino and Latino descent.”

This makes Bas something of an anomaly in the area. As a lover of most things anomalous, I’ve begun to treasure him recently, deep evening cock-handling to the best of 80s production sensibilities and all. His too-large trousers cinched up nearly to his chest. The neon green fly swatter whapping when he’s out smoking on his porch. Once, I tried to give him some pizza from Mike’s Giant on Reo Drive. I don’t cook. He was kind enough to never mention it again.

Dì-chăn chôrp năng bóh gàp don-đree bèe pâht. I like erotic movies with bamboo xylophone music. Bas might, too, but I’ve never enquired.

“What’s that book? You are always reading. You should be dating instead, find a nice boy who will read to you.”

That book was Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. I bought it at Costco while sample grazing and working out the math of a family pack of potstickers for a single girl with few hobbies. I wondered if this was where the author pictured his work ending up. And before such an indifferent audience! Eat fewer processed foods, sure. More greens, no slick packaging. Meanwhile, we can buy cocktail shrimp by the truckload and chocolate by the crate.

“It’s about food,” I reply. “Our relationship to it and how trends have affected the way we view the things we eat. It’s kind of interesting.”

And it was, insofar as finding that the founder of the Kellogg’s breakfast cereal behemoth did so because of a rectally-fixated paranoia is interesting and enlightening. That is to say, a searing masterwork. From what I remember, Kellogg believed that excessive consumption of meat created toxic chemical deposits in the small intestine that were responsible for compulsive masturbation. To combat this protein-borne perversion, he jockeyed for more carbs on the breakfast table and frequent yogurt enemas. His cereal empire survived in our supermarket aisles, but it’s Kellogg’s intuitive powers that most impress me. Empirical science of the modern age has since told us what he already knew: steak is really just a gateway meat to more depraved sexual acts.

I hate to think what Bas might be doing in the confines of his two bedrooms if he were to eat more of his own incredible barbecue. If rather than cooking fish half the week, he began to substitute carne asada or pork chops. And what about me? I’d only just figured out my ovulation cycle by my level of desire to get all up ons with Robert Downey Jr., which intensifies toward the middle of the month and subsides into a more manageable budding appreciation for Delta Blues music the rest of the time. I would assume that low self-esteem or a cough syrup addiction would be to blame, but maybe it will be a medium done chateaubriand that eventually causes me to hulk out into a raging slut one unsuspecting day. I have meat at almost every meal and if Kellogg was right, I’m not sure there’s enough Valtrex in the world for me to enjoy satay for breakfast anymore.

Bas pooh-poohs this and straightens out of his plastic lawn chair.

“Why do you have to care about that? What food is good to eat. If you like it, it’s good. That’s how to enjoy life.”

He nods goodnight, about to begin what I assume is a nocturnal marathon of self-delight. His screen door creaks shut and I guess he’s right.

And I guess most babies are, even the weird ones with only half a head who die after five minutes in the world before ever hearing about jazz or museum wax.  My nieces were born alive, though, and intact, which we’re all pretty grateful for.  Nearly three and two years old now and they’re still ticking. I’m teaching them about hermaphrodites and Bon Jovi and how to count in French.  They’re not very good conversationalists yet nor particularly continent.  You can’t have everything.

Mayflies can, actually. The males have two penises. The females, two gonopores. That’s vaginas dobles. I know, right? Mayflies only live a few minutes to a day, still better than those half-headed human newborns, and occupy that short time with one thing: fevered insect boning. Their mouths are vestigial and even their tiny thoraxes are just filled with air. No one likes a fat chick, not even bugs, and that’s bad news for me with my plump human limbs and single, off-center vagina. But not necessarily for the men who approach me when I am least aware of my surroundings, inquiring, “Ay, ma, you got a man?” Or the tongue-flicking parking lot toll booth operator with his litany of mixed drinks and “what you like, girly? Sex on the Bish?” Are you serious? I fucking hate the bish, guy. I’ve lived ten minutes from the bish for most of my life and we never get together because it’s littered with used condoms and seagull poo.

Self-defense sometimes comes to mind, so I’ve been thinking of taking up boxing, too. Before the Navy, Dad was a Golden Gloves boxing champ. He was also a butcher, but that doesn’t really relate here. He won a trophy once and used to try to teach me sometimes after school. Being a sort of amateur boxing titleist might come in handy in dark basement alcoves and skanky alleyways where the rape of naïve young ladies always take place in movies.  It could help out the intended victim, probably, but does nothing to cure the other half of that violent equation or address his baser compulsions. This is where my  lucrative idea for an Internet Scared Straight program comes in. From my website, you’ll be able to order a package of blowup dolls, mail order bride brochures, a cologne sampler – all carefully marketed toward the rapefully inclined modern gentleman – and, while these potential defilers of innocent citizens root through their new treasures, a surprise sodomist who looks a lot like Ving Rhames will sneak in through an open window to mete out pre-emptive justice, yelling, “IS. THIS. WHAT. YOU. EVENTUALLY. WANT. TO. DO.” All in a firm, yet pleasing baritone. It might really be Ving Rhames, for all we know. What is that guy up to now besides having his pets maul and eat the latchkey help?

Today might be looked back on eventually as the day I started writing again, despite the greater chance that it’ll go down as the day I didn’t. Fueled by restless leg syndrome and the physically intimidating combination of Emergen-C + Sprite, and I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack. This taste is half-Armageddon, half-Solid Gold, almost entirely hyphenate. I did this to myself and continue to do so in the name of aiding my lackadaisical immune system.  This is a surprise to us both, since I’d assumed almost a year ago that I’d simply run out of things to say and ingest, or that I’d already be dead of smallpox. So here’s what the haps is:

-Recent Events in Dinner Menu Form-

Korean Short Ribs with Teriyaki Citrus Glaze
Served with asparagus spears, science boner and exemplary personal hygiene

Spent the past weekends enjoying the CliffsNotes fruits of scientific progress and the taming of murderous sea life, thanks to a visit from Stephen and a half-off admission month. The Charles Darwin exhibit, in its last days before leaving the Natural History Museum, was well done. The San Diego Children’s Museum, surprisingly chic and organized. The Birch Aquarium at Scripps was smaller than expected, but they had jellyfish, and that’s all any self-respecting aquarium really needs besides an interactive display to show me how much water I’m wasting by drinking cocktails in the shower for 30 minutes instead of shampooing my pubes to a rich, foamy lather. Drinking a cocktail in the shower for 30 minutes, incidentally, the real cherry on the heaping sundae of my life, would have been exactly as glamorous as expected, if I had first managed to avoid drinking said cocktail out of a ramekin because all the dishes were dirty.

Chicken Mango Sausage with Spinach Salad and Marinated Artichokes
Served with Cinnamon Toast Crunch, eaten out of a coffe mug with an ice cream scoop

There can’t be many suitable ways to tell a person really terrible news, especially not a woman whose husband had a heart attack and collapsed after playing basketball with their son. Not her husband, anyway, who was fit and active, who recently lost over 20 pounds to avoid all this. Tap dancing only seems to agitate. Candygrams are juvenile and don’t carry much in the way of sincere emotional clout, sugar in any form having been corrupted by the cheap tenderness of Valentines’ and Christmas. Anyway, no one believes you’re really sorry via lollipop, even if it is Blue Raspberry. Flowers are out. They wilt over and corrupt too soon, and the last thing you want is to remind her again why she’s staring at the angles of tiles and chairs and doors, at anything, waiting, heavy and still as stone, hoping you aren’t going to tell her what she has to know someone is going to tell her. That was my Auntie Beng and that was my Uncle Ernie. That was also a spoiler, in case you didn’t want any spoilers.

Interlude in Brine
To be stabbed by the forkful and eaten whole with anything else

Have you ever had cornichons? I just did and regular pickles seem so inefficient now.

Jamaican Jerk Pork with Plantains and Cornmeal Fritters (Festival)
Served with rum punch, young coconut, Alzheimer’s, gainful employment

It’s so, so legit. Holy crap.

I have been at my job for over a year at this point, which is an accomplishment, and four months closer to two years, which is even more. It’s something to be grateful for, that they understand jokes about seppuku and xenomorphs, that I have health insurance and that despite living on the bleeding edge of poverty with everyone else, I have not yet tumbled completely in. The question isn’t even ‘what else’ anymore, but ‘what next.’ We already know what else I’m not doing and can move on to what progresses from this point. The desire here these days being to cut away, to slough off and pack up when what I should want is to buy plane tickets for overdue visits, to expand outward telephonically, electronically, palm-to-assedly, wide open and loving heartedly. And I don’t, which isn’t too uncharacteristic, but is more so in the comprehension of its adamance. It feels a bit like I am compressing, compartmentalizing my personal relationships in order to find some room for myself again. It feels a bit more like I just can’t be fucked to care right now. I am making changes – or trying to – in tiny, miniature horse and canapé ways. Who knows if it will work, my understanding of advanced robotics being limited to a toothbrush sterilizing pod that I still haven’t gotten batteries for.

Black Dynamite Midnight Jive Turkey Sandwich
Served with bacon, faux blaxploitation, kung fu, farting and laughing

I received a Martha Stewart cupcake cookbook and the Jurassic Park Adventure Pack as a belated Festivus present. It was 1993 when the first film premiered and blew our minds all over our pants. ’93! Mention the 90s anymore and it’s like talking about phonographs and stevedores. Home permanents. Leeches. The thing is, Sam Neill is a handsome wrinkled gentleman and already was one, even back then. We’re all getting older and I don’t know how I feel about it. I worry that one day I’ll leave my underground bunker and no one will remember the lyrics to Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” anymore. It’s all I can think about, besides sperm racing.