Dinner with Raymond Carver

I was sitting down for a meal at a rectangular table in a diner with what may have been a group of literary dignitaries, although the only person I recognized was Raymond Carver, who was quietly eating across from me. The food had already been served and the men were poking fun at vegetarians as they enjoyed their meaty meals. I told them I was a vegetaerian, but didn't feel like explaining myself at the moment so I left it at that. Someone asked if I believed in god and I told them I was an aetheist. Carver set down his burger and looked at me.

"Do you think saying that makes you brave," he asked and I said no.

There was an uneasy silence that I eventually broke by asking if everyone at the table--all older white men--was Christian, either Catholic or Protestant. Everyone but Carver nodded or said yes.

"Not me," he said. "I'm an aetheist."

After we were done eating two waitresses came over to bus the table. One of them, a Guyanese woman in her late 40s who was dressed like a 16 year old Hot Topic employee, began swooning about something. When our bill was brought, Carver reminded me that Yacki's sister, Sumi, had left us her bag so we could pay for her food. He went through her bag and pulled out a credit card from her wallet, but I told him not to worry about it, I would cover it.

When I went to throw in my money I counted the pot to ensure we had enough for a decent tip and found that someone had paid in Euros. Suddenly I realized that it was the 1950s and it was understandable that people would pay in foreign currency. In a disconnected world pre-globalization you couldn't expect everyone to have the same currency. (Nevermind that the Euro wasn't created 'til 1999.)

Besides the American dollars and Euros, someone had also decided to pay with three playing cards.

- Arv

rough-draught.blogspot.com

Now that I think about it, we must have been inside one of those tech rooms at Stuy. Natalie and I are sitting in the back and Natalie is sleepy. She puts her head down while I flip through magazines -- literally, just flipping because I am actually peeping at my ex-boyfriend who is canoodling this round little asian girl. The girl is wearing this large black t-shirt with a long checklist. My favorite one was, "he f*cks to his ex-gf's picture." oh yes, he does.

Anyway, it's getting late so Natalie and I head out. We get into a taxi but we're not moving and no one says anything. We sit there in silence for ten minutes until I really had to pee. So I went back inside, peed, and came running back out to see Natalie looking around, terrified. For some reason, between the time I left to pee and came back, Natalie's hair exploded into this voluminous fro.

The taxi guy finally asks where we are going and starts moving. We were driving for awhile, heading into Queens, but the taxi guy decides its okay to abandon us by a highway with a motorized wheelchair. Natalie is really sleepy and groggy now. So I had to go find someone who could tell me how to get back to Bayside. Fortunately, that was easy. A woman tells me that I had to make a left from where we were, keep going until we saw the dinosaur, make a right at the dinosaur until we came up to a sandy flight of stairs and I would be able to recognize my way home from there. She offered me a ride, but I insisted that I wanted to drive the wheelchair and claimed I had done it billions of times. So I strap into the wheelchair, tie Natalie to the back, and I drive the wheelchair down the highway towards the dinosaur. It would have sucked if my battery operated wheelchair just stopped in the middle of the highway. Luckily, I see the dinosaur, so I make a right and I'm all excited because the sandy flight of stairs is up ahead. I don't really know why there is so much sand but thank god it was there because as soon as I unstrapped Natalie from the wheelchair, her limp body falls to the ground and she face-plants into the sand. But even then, Natalie won't get up and insists on sleeping there.