Shortly before they arrived, Ted broke open a gigantic Thai stick his prep school lacrosse coach had given him as a Christmas present. Those who partook of these two delicacies in the proper order—I wasn’t one of them—pronounced the combination nothing short of miraculous, and word had gotten around.
“No thanks,” I said.
“No bong hit?” Ted squinted at me in broken-hearted disbelief. It wounded him when people didn’t want to share in his pleasures.
“Sorry,” I said, my willpower already starting to erode. “I’ve got five hundred pages of Middlemarch to go before I sleep.”
“So?” Ted glanced around the room for support. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You ever try to read George Eliot stoned?” I felt somewhat sheepish advancing this line of argument after splitting two pitchers with Polly, but it was important to my self-image that I at least try to resist. “You can’t get past the epigraphs.”
“Eat some kimchi,” said Donald Park, a Korean-American straight-arrow who only tolerated our dope smoking out of a deep, almost primal craving for his ancestral staple. “It’s scientifically proven to clear the mind and freshen the breath.”
“Danny’s a kimchi virgin,” Sang explained, as though this shameful fact hadn’t already attained the status of common knowledge. He passed the jar across the table to Donald, who unwrapped a pair of restaurant chopsticks he’d removed from his shirt pocket and used them to fish out a radioactive-looking wedge of cabbage, its pale surface speckled with chili powder. He munched it slowly, regarding me with undisguised pity.
“I’m working up to it,” I assured him. “I’m gonna get there any day now.”
Among my friends—especially my more or less omnivorous Asian friends—I was widely celebrated for my strange eating habits. I had grown up in a house where spices were frowned upon, and where eating out inevitably meant pizza or McDonald’s. Before college, the only Chinese food I had ever consumed was a mouthful of canned, uncooked La Choy water chestnuts whose unusual texture had left me deeply traumatized. But it wasn’t just the cuisine of other lands that gave me trouble; I had also cultivated a profound, unshakable revulsion for a number of common American foods, including eggs, raw tomatoes, mayonnaise, mushrooms, sea creatures, and every vegetable known to humankind with the exception of iceberg lettuce, canned corn, and overcooked green beans. On the other hand, the few things I did like—hot dogs, BLTs (minus the T), French dip sandwiches, chocolate pudding, pancakes, saltines with peanut butter—I consumed in amounts that had made me a minor legend in the dining hall. I justified myself by saying that I more than made up in volume what I lacked in variety, but the truth was that I was often embarrassed by my cowardice, the way I forced my friends to bend over backward for me when choosing a restaurant or even ordering pizza. I had a number of self-improvement projects in the works in those days, and one of the main ones involved forcing myself to become a more adventurous eater.
“Tonight’s the night,” sang Hank Yamashita, in a credible imitation of Rod Stewart. Hank was a six-foot-tall Japanese-American from the Upper East Side who read GQ and had taken it upon himself to act as my informal fashion advisor. It was at Hank’s urging that I had replaced my cherished blue suede winter coat with a less eye-catching parka, and had relegated my new Thom McAn cowboy boots to a dusty corner of my closet. (It wasn’t that Hank had anything against cowboy boots per se—he owned several pairs himself—but he did object to the peculiar orange glow mine seemed to give off, especially at twilight or in cloudy weather.) “Vernon’s gonna take the plunge,” he added.
“Tonight?” I asked.
Vernon responded with a skeptical nod, and it wasn’t until then that I noticed the chopstick in his right hand. On the
“No thanks,” I said.
“No bong hit?” Ted squinted at me in broken-hearted disbelief. It wounded him when people didn’t want to share in his pleasures.
“Sorry,” I said, my willpower already starting to erode. “I’ve got five hundred pages of Middlemarch to go before I sleep.”
“So?” Ted glanced around the room for support. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You ever try to read George Eliot stoned?” I felt somewhat sheepish advancing this line of argument after splitting two pitchers with Polly, but it was important to my self-image that I at least try to resist. “You can’t get past the epigraphs.”
“Eat some kimchi,” said Donald Park, a Korean-American straight-arrow who only tolerated our dope smoking out of a deep, almost primal craving for his ancestral staple. “It’s scientifically proven to clear the mind and freshen the breath.”
“Danny’s a kimchi virgin,” Sang explained, as though this shameful fact hadn’t already attained the status of common knowledge. He passed the jar across the table to Donald, who unwrapped a pair of restaurant chopsticks he’d removed from his shirt pocket and used them to fish out a radioactive-looking wedge of cabbage, its pale surface speckled with chili powder. He munched it slowly, regarding me with undisguised pity.
“I’m working up to it,” I assured him. “I’m gonna get there any day now.”
Among my friends—especially my more or less omnivorous Asian friends—I was widely celebrated for my strange eating habits. I had grown up in a house where spices were frowned upon, and where eating out inevitably meant pizza or McDonald’s. Before college, the only Chinese food I had ever consumed was a mouthful of canned, uncooked La Choy water chestnuts whose unusual texture had left me deeply traumatized. But it wasn’t just the cuisine of other lands that gave me trouble; I had also cultivated a profound, unshakable revulsion for a number of common American foods, including eggs, raw tomatoes, mayonnaise, mushrooms, sea creatures, and every vegetable known to humankind with the exception of iceberg lettuce, canned corn, and overcooked green beans. On the other hand, the few things I did like—hot dogs, BLTs (minus the T), French dip sandwiches, chocolate pudding, pancakes, saltines with peanut butter—I consumed in amounts that had made me a minor legend in the dining hall. I justified myself by saying that I more than made up in volume what I lacked in variety, but the truth was that I was often embarrassed by my cowardice, the way I forced my friends to bend over backward for me when choosing a restaurant or even ordering pizza. I had a number of self-improvement projects in the works in those days, and one of the main ones involved forcing myself to become a more adventurous eater.
“Tonight’s the night,” sang Hank Yamashita, in a credible imitation of Rod Stewart. Hank was a six-foot-tall Japanese-American from the Upper East Side who read GQ and had taken it upon himself to act as my informal fashion advisor. It was at Hank’s urging that I had replaced my cherished blue suede winter coat with a less eye-catching parka, and had relegated my new Thom McAn cowboy boots to a dusty corner of my closet. (It wasn’t that Hank had anything against cowboy boots per se—he owned several pairs himself—but he did object to the peculiar orange glow mine seemed to give off, especially at twilight or in cloudy weather.) “Vernon’s gonna take the plunge,” he added.
“Tonight?” I asked.
Vernon responded with a skeptical nod, and it wasn’t until then that I noticed the chopstick in his right hand. On the
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