Red Room Where the Writers Are

What choice is there, when it comes to vomit. Something long since swallowed returns, right in front of your nose, and neither smells, tastes, nor looks anything like it once did.

When I was last in New York I ran into an old school friend, a cellist, and we arranged to meet for dinner one night at our old haunt, a dingy Chinese restaurant. He assured me it was still there, on one of the last corners of Manhattan still as it once was. Rats and all. A real dive, but the food, as I remembered it, was cheap and good. I don’t remember much. We used to go there because we could bring our own booze. Our gang, young and drunk on life, got fried with the rice. We survived on sex, drugs and classical music. All Juilliard students, with shining futures ahead of us, we were fortified by our great expectations. We’ve all moved on. I don’t even play the piano any more. And my friend the cellist is a humble teacher at a small college in the Midwest, married with children. The only thing we have in common is the many old friends we had who are now dead.

My old friend looks dumpy and middle-aged as any dad should. No surprise, even if he once was a stud. He keeps commenting on what I’ve turned into. I take that as a compliment. I was such an awkward skinny youth. Manhood was just what I needed. Homosexuality has kept me in shape, much as marriage made a dumpling out of him. This dinner feels like a date, with our past selves, as seen through the eyes of forgotten memory. It would almost be a date, if he hadn’t brought his younger brother.

I remember his brother, mostly because we used to make fun of him. He wasn’t a musician. A big fat silent blob, he would tag along with his handsome older brother. It worked because the gregarious cellist was always the master of ceremonies. Wherever we went, he led the way. And he still does. We enter the Chinese restaurant as if we’d been there the night before. The waiters seem to bow to our fearless leader. Twenty years gone by and still they don’t know who we are. But they can tell we like to eat. One look at his younger brother and the cook is ready to slaughter a fresh pig. Just as we’ve all changed for the better or worse, the blob has turned into an enormous blob.

I don’t eat in such restaurants any more. Gastronomy in Europe is all about the wine. What wine do you drink with Moo Shu Pork? Nonetheless I am looking forward to the Moo Shu. And the restaurant finally got a liquor license. I order a beer.

The cellist orders a feast, as he always did, without asking what anyone else would prefer. I don’t mind. He included the Moo Shu in the long list of courses. His brother will apparently eat anything, already devouring those greasy chips, dipping them with his fat fingers in the bowl of orange gook.

I had asked them to pick me up at my hotel, but the cellist insisted I meet them at the brother’s apartment, where he’s staying, not far from the restaurant and similarly vomitous. That apartment is surely a gold mine, one of the last of its kind, the landlord just waiting for the obese man to choke on a cheese sandwich and vomit his life away. As you’d expect, the poor fellow has numerous health problems. While the cellist and I toasted to our former selves, the brother was in the toilet. Strains of nothing less than regurgitation offered a fitting soundtrack for the décor, his apartment and his life an inadvertent statement of resistance to the ever-changing city and times, vomit the only suitable answer to the face of gentrification.

Sitting in the restaurant I’m relieved to have my ass on a chair that doesn’t stick to my pants. Instead I seem to be sliding off fresh grease. The table smells like fish. To think we used to live like this when we were young. The filth was our liberation from the stained purity of our bourgeois upbringing, which we then returned to, as if our brave youth was just a dream. What choice is there, when it comes to filth, like vomit, except to clean it up. So maybe gentrification is a social disease, but the only alternative is entropy.

The blob burps emphatically and I give the cellist a troubled look. Is his brother okay? A silly question. He reassures me with a smile and a wave of the hand. He’s fine, he says, slapping the speechless elephant on the back.

Fortunately the Moo Shu is the first to arrive. I’m ready to leave after one pancake. The disastrous evening was worth it for that fond memory, tasted once more. If only the cellist and I had something to say to each other, never mind the elephant. The cellist tells me about his predictable life. The small town, the small house, the small children. Not that my life is so big, but by comparison it reads rather thrilling. He googled my name and came up with all sorts of titillating quotes. He keeps smiling at me as though he expects me to jump on the table for a pole dance. I tell him my life is really very quiet. I live with an architect in a villa on a lake in Berlin. The architect is busy rebuilding the new Germany while I explore the shadowy world I later turn into fiction. Twice a year we drive down to Italy or France. I have a modest wine cellar. Drinking is a hobby of sorts.

I put down my fork. I realize there’s a piece of ash dusting the Moo Shu. The cook must have been smoking a cigarette. The ash is just the length of an unfiltered butt. The cellist suddenly notices it too. He reassures me with a smile and a wave of the hand. He snaps a finger at the waiter and points out the innocent mistake. The waiter looks at it with grave curiosity, either because he can’t figure out how it got there or why the hell we should care. He scoops it out with his finger and returns the plate. The cellist tells him to take it away. Just in time. The table is filled with more plates than there are mouths to feed. I excuse myself to the men’s room. Not to throw up. I just want to wash my hands.

And my mouth. What no one else noticed but me was the hair on my plate. The beard on the rim. Either the plate forgot to shave, or the cook is a rat. Alone in the men’s room, in the company of my nausea, I decide to call a friend. A new friend. I tell him to call me back in a few minutes so I can excuse myself from a tedious dinner with an old friend. I don’t wash my hands. The sink is too dirty. It doubles as a toilet. I decide, against my will, to stick my finger down my throat and clean the sink. Vomit, I understand, is an antiseptic.

Vomit is the theme of the evening. When I return to the table, an empty plate is being served. A bowl actually. It would seem the blob ate too fast and the gook didn’t go down. As a result it all came back up. On the table. Shredded pork in green sauce. The waiter, never one to fuss, wasted no time in putting a rice bowl under the blob’s chin to scoop up the remains. Presumably for the doggy bag. I’ve never understood the need for proper etiquette, but I hate making a scene. Fortunately no one notices me when my phone rings. I turn it off and slip out the door.

Is it okay to vomit in a restaurant? Yes. As long as no one sees you do it.