Of Meat and Meeting

Sometimes I wonder why I don´t have more friends. Then I interact with people.

Sunday night, Manu and I go out to dinner with one of my few sub-equatorial friends Meghan, her mother, who´s in town for the week, Meghan´s friend Danny, and Danny´s recently expatriated friend Felix. We all meet at a popular parilla in San Telmo that boasts meat so tender you can cut it with a spoon-- where, of course, I order fish. So when Felix at the other end of the table starts making the kind of sounds I´ve only ever heard through a wall when someone in another room was watching an adult film, I ask for a bite.

Sure, he says, let me get you a slice-- er, scoop. I return to my own plate and am squeezing lemon on my fish, when I overhear him whisper to Danny, "What´s her name again?" and I, instead of quietly continuing what I´m doing in politely feigned obvliousness, say, pretty loudly, "Jeanette."

Felix turns the same color as the inside of his steak, and I begin apologizing profusely, explaining that the only reason I remember his name is that when I met him yesterday he was talking about how he´d just come from a store named Felix, where he´d bought a t-shirt that said Felix, which he showed me. And then I start talking about the intro psych class I took in college and am rambling on about pneumonic devices and how repetition, like rhymes and acronyms, helps commit things to memory, when I stop myself.

"I´m awkward," I say.

An awkward moment of silence follows.

"Really awkward," I say, realizing that that´s not the best way to break an awkward moment of silence, as another awkward moment of silence follows that is about as unending (and certainly as awkward) as what happens when you divide one by three on a calculator. An era of silence, more like.

Eventually, Meghan´s mom starts talking about the colored antique soda bottles she bought at the fería to accent her newly redocorated bar room back in New Jersey, and how she got the idea from Better Homes and Gardens, or was it House Beautiful? Felix passes me the promised bite of his meat, the consumption of which, indeed, is not unlike an orgasm-- though, in this case, kind of like an orgasm interrupted by your mom walking in. I eat some of Manu´s fries, but don´t finish my fish.

In the taxi home, I´m still thinking about that intro psych class. Maybe I should buy Felix a bottle of fernet, and he can remember me with a limerick:

I once met a girl named Jeanette,
Whose name I did soon forget,
But with this here fernet,
I´ll remember her yet,
Jeanette, Jeanette, Jeanette

Then again, "I once met a girl named Jeanette, who was awkward," has a certain ring to it.