There's a respect for good food among cowboys. Not in the gourmet sense though, no. It's in a sense of making a good tasting meal lout of the most barest of ingredients. The minimal essentials. Simple meat on fire. Beans overs fire, or soup, and charred bread, but only lightly charred. It takes a certain and particular skill and a refined hand and timing. There's an affinity with fire for a gaucho, for a real cowboy. Fire and smoking. Rough cigarettes. No filters, black tobacco, the darker the better because that's what flavor is. In the darkness, in the black crushed pepper of things. And in good food too, don't forget.
I know a thing or two about dark flavor. For my birthday I smuggled an older chocolate ganache cake out of the bakery at the end of the day. Well, I didn't exactly smuggle it. There was a gaping crack in the smooth exterior of it, this rich chocolate wheel on its side, and it was my birthday, so Emily let me have it. "We certainly can't sell it, no one's going to buy this, here. Happy birthday," she said. It took some charming though, I told myself, and I loved flirted with Emily's hazel eyes, loved to watch the dimples in her cheeks grow as she smiled.
I also took a full pint of lentil soup, there was a lot left over that day. It wasn't like the clam chowder, which was always gone come 7:00. That's not to say it wasn't good. All the soups they made at Kelly's were amazing, definition forms of their names and of the richest lip-licking flavors, and never overdoing the salt, which is cheating, but also a bit difficult with the more mundane varieties. Like the lentil. But Kelly never disappoints. She somehow brings the vegetable flavors out to the forefront, right alongside the lentil, and some other spicing that I know is there, I can taste it, but I can't quite make out what it is. There's real skill in her recipes, Kelly.
As always, I also grabbed a full bag of pastries; gingersnap cookies, chocolate chip, some scones, some almond buns, and, my favorite, a handful of powdered apple slippers. It was my birthday dammit!
Matt's delivery shift ended just about the same time mine did, and he brought over my favorite pizza from Pizza My Heart, the walnut apple one, and a gift from Josh. "Josh rolled them, but I put the whole thing together. Oh, and the thing between the legs is a little hash dick."
To be concise, as closely as I can, it was a marijuana scarecrow made of spliffs and toothpicks with a little photo-copy of my face taped to the top. I think I still have the skeleton of the thing in my dad's old briefcase somewhere. Four spliff limbs and a little hash dick. It wasn't so little though. And there was a big fat nugget of Blue Dream in the middle as the body. "Oh and he said one of the spliffs he dipped in hash oil, so... Surprise! Happy Birthday!" And he gave me a lanky long strong Matt hug, the kind I'm accustomed to, the one's when I know he really means it, and kind of squeezes the breath out of me.
Max and Chase Knowles were up for the weekend, and Taylor was over from the city, staying with Sasha. It was a three-day, for Martin Luther King, Jr. After more than a few too many shots of tequila and shotgunned beers, we all wore onesies out to the Blue Lagoon for 80's night like the good old Western/King Street days. Thank god we had enough onesies, which is to say thank god Monster had a rather superfluous and questionable collection of onesies. Nobody was asking questions that night though. It was my birthday.
I opted for the hooded pink zebra-print onesie. Monster wore her white tight sailor onesie, and Chase wore her mother's 80's onesie with the black stirrup tights and the shoulder pad denim top all stitched together somehow. And he'd just buzzed his head before coming up. More like he Bic'ed it really. He looked like a bald lesbian with sunglasses on. He's that handsome. Matter of fact we were all handsome. And pretty. And beautiful, like good friends should be. And we smoked one of my legs before we left, and all wore sunglasses out. I forget who drove, probably Mike, with Alix sitting shotgun, and the rest of us packed into the back seat and the trunk of the Black Mamba. He pulled into the lot on Cedar with a lurch and the slightest screech and luckily there weren't any cops about. There never were, which I guess was wishful thinking and dumb luck, but it happened to be true. We were damned near locals in that little town by then, we knew all the side streets and how to get downtown without so much as seeing another headlight. Easy-peasy. Good drunk-driving practice, and we piled out of the Mamba like it was a goddamn clown car, ten of us. Buzzing. High. Lively and loud and ridiculous, slugging more beers, as many as we could before getting to the bar.
Birthdays at the Blue Lagoon were always great with everyone was a little high. And free drinks, don't forget. Well, not free, but I certainly didn't pay for them. I don't think. I don't remember much after midnight, except a kiss from Callie on the cheek before she put me to bed in the living room.
