L & S
Left to right! Laney; Richard, Laney's brother-in-law; Lorrie, Laney's sister; Jessica, Laney's daughter; Shobhit; me.
Saturday late afternoon / early evening was the first time ever that Laney's and my "official" monthly Happy Hour outing featured a group of six. We've had a third person plenty of times (sometimes with Shobhit, sometimes with Jessica), sometimes four (once with Shobhit and Jessica; once with Shobhit and Sachin), and at least once there was five (with Hayley and Thayer and Henny). Never before had there been six.
And for a while I really thought there would still be only five this time out -- Shobhit usually works weekends, but for some reason this time he got the weekend off from Total Wine. Laney was also just the slightest little bit nervous about Shobhit being there, and stressed several times over the months that we've had this date planned that any political discussion was absolutely off the table. Laney's brother-in-law, Richard, is conservative, although apparently he's so sickened by President Fuckwit (that's heartening, I suppose) that he's less and less inclined to identify as a Republican. Still, she said she can get into satisfyingly challenging conversations with him, but often even she and he make the mutual decision not to talk politics. This meant that with Shobhit around, politics should absolutely be avoided. So I reminded him of that a couple of times, and honestly it worked out. We had a wonderful time -- so much so that, in contrast to Shobhit's expectation that we would be there for only about an hour, we were all actually there closer to three.
And! Although we agreed that technically we succeeded in avoiding political discussion, as I mentioned to Laney when we talked about it a bit again yesterday morning, many topics of conversation still ended up being "politics-adjacent" -- things like economics, world overpopulation, the specific topic of China's recently-revised One Child Policy, and even climate change. I mentioned yesterday to Laney that some of these things are pretty triggering talking points for a lot of conservatives, and Laney assured me that Richard is still pretty moderate as far as those things go, and he absolutely believes in the validity of climate change. And the thing is, Jessica was the one who brought up that topic, as it came up organically when she spoke about her work on an adventure cruise ship every year that takes people to Alaska, where she sees many of the extremes of climate change consequences right in front of her face. These are not theoretical points we're talking about.
And okay, I suppose a lot of that sounds pretty heavy, and God knows a lot of the stuff about China was heavy (forced abortions and abandoning girl babies in meat markets and all that shit), but by and large, it was a very fun, lively, engaging and delightful hang.
Laney and I usually meet for Happy Hour on weekends, but apparently her sister, Lorrie, had expressed interest in joining us for one of them, and it just worked out best for all of us to meet on a Saturday. I had been the one to suggest to Laney that we do Happy Hour at Maggie Bluffs sometime, after Shobhit and I had brunch there a couple of times and had been struck by the cheap prices on their Happy Hour menu. This place, which is by Elliott Bay Marina in Magnolia, happens to be one of the few to do their Happy Hour every day of the week 4-6 pm, and so scheduling this for 4pm on Saturday worked out well for all of us.
In fact, when we first scheduled it, I thought it would just be Laney and me, Lorrie and Richard. It's always fine when Jessica joins, of course; I just didn't think to expect it. And at first I literally expected that Shobhit would not be coming. But, the six of us was as fate would have it. The weather is finally turning as summer heads to a close and it was slightly chilly, but still dry; several people were sitting outside when Shobhit and I arrived first and asked for an outside table. Once everyone else arrived, taking a cue from people we saw at another table, Lorrie, Richard and Shobhit all asked for blankets to wrap themselves in. Laney, Jessica and I all had either jackets or hoodies on and those left us all perfectly comfortable.
Laney did an unusual thing for Happy Hour and did not drink alcohol at all. She ordered a specific concoction that included soda water (not tonic water!), I think maybe lime, and I know she also asked for orange bitters. The waitress later said it sounded so good to her she also made one for herself. Laney didn't even get charged for these drinks, as I recall. Anyway I asked her about it later and she said it was because she figured out it's best to avoid drinking if she's going to be around smokers. Drinking triggers her hankering for cigarettes, and if she's around someone else who smokes, she's just not going to be able to stop herself -- and she's finally getting that she needs to do whatever it takes not to smoke. (Even I have admonished her in the past about having even the occasional cigarette. In her state of health in the several years after her heart attack, it's just not a good idea.) She did tell me she might still drink on Happy Hour occasions when it's just the two of us and she knows I don't smoke, but she also won't ask Jessica not to come, so if Jessica has an interest in joining, Laney just won't have alcohol.
I sure will though. I don't know about Richard but I'm pretty sure Lorrie, Jessica and I all had three cocktails, although mine consisted of the Strawberry Lemonade cocktail from the Happy Hour menu that turned out not to be that great, so I drank most of the Happy Hour "Scratch Margarita" that Shobhit had ordered after he gave me that instead, and then when Lorrie suggested one more round, I ordered one more of the margaritas. The Happy Hour has three small plates that are vegetarian, and Shobhit ordered all of them -- French fries; tater tots; nachos -- but in the end splitting them was not substantive enough and so we ordered the Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup from the regular menu, and that was so good I'd go back there for that dish alone.
Shobhit had had a drink at home before we left, so he had me drive; he was our designated driver coming back home. It was a particularly fun Happy Hour this month.
So then yesterday late-morning, Laney and I met up again, this time just the two of us, to see Hustlers, and we both really liked it a lot.
Now, we had originally scheduled seeing it together on Saturday, right before Happy Hour, but had to reschedule it because Shobhit and I made an 11 am appointment to meet with a AAA travel agent. So I guess I need to digress briefly to talk about that, although there's not a huge amount left to tell: We didn't even know AAA offered this as a service until Sara told us in Denver that they had used AAA to book their family trip to Ireland something like five years ago. And I saw this as an opportunity to get Shobhit and myself in line with finally getting some booking done for our Australia trip early next year, as we otherwise kept talking about how we need to get our flights and lodging booked, but all we would do was mention it and then never get it done. Now, we've sat down with a very nice lady who seemed to be very much on top of things and perfectly organized, and she'll be drawing up some sample itineraries with quotes for us to consider early this week. Whether doing it this way will save us much -- or any -- money remains to be seen, but it feels as though it may save us a lot of time and effort of nothing else and I am certainly down with that.
Anyway! So that was why I had to ask Laney to postpone the movie, and luckily she happened to be available on Sunday also. And this wasn't even our first choice of movie; at first our plan was to see The Goldfinch, because Laney loved the book on which it was based -- but she changed her mind after I emailed her about Hustlers. I didn't even think I would necessarily see Hustlers the first time I saw the trailer, but that was before it made the film festival rounds the past few weeks and the reviews and buzz coming out of that have been pretty stellar. I mentioned this to Laney, at first just saying it was too bad she'll almost certainly not be able to see it with me, and then after she perused reviews to both movies and saw that the reviews for The Goldfinch have basically ranged from poor to mediocre, she changed her mind and suggested we make Hustlers the movie we see together over the weekend instead. And boy were we glad we did ! That movie was great, everybody should see it, and all the Oscar nomination talk about Jennifer Lopez is absolutely justified.
We had met at the Capitol Hill Light Rail Station at 10:30 am; saw the 11:05 movie; and after taking the train back, I walked with her as far as QFC where she needed to do some shopping and then went on to the library where I hoped to pick up a DVD I had on hold but the hold actually expired on Saturday -- no such luck. The DVD was not lingering anywhere; those library employees are on it. So now the double feature Laney and I have planned for next weekend will probably have to be a different set of movies: Terms of Endearment and The Evening Star (both of which I own) rather than the originally planned Steel Magnolias (which I own) and Fried Green Tomatoes (which I do not own and which I missed picking up at the library), which we'll now have to see another time. All these movies are basically the same genre though -- women-focused tear-jerker dramedies -- so it's all good.
Everything else about my weekend was mostly about preparing for and then having dinner guests over yesterday.
Now, I'm not going to get at all explicit here, but I am going to get into an area that could make some readers uncomfortable, which is to say, Shobhit's and my open relationship. With that in mind, proceed at your own risk; if you don't want to know about that, don't read further. Although by and large, this is still really nothing more than an account of having guests over for dinner. Nobody hooked up with anybody yesterday, nor was there even any discussion about hookups, save for a couple of pretty vague references in passing.
Still, the fact remains, and this was a little bit of an awkward aspect for it for me -- God knows it was a first: we had guests over for dinner who happen to be semi-regular hookups of Shobhit's.
Laney actually asked about this yesterday: "I thought you guys were going to keep that stuff totally separate?" As in, I think she was getting at, it almost sounded like this was leaning in the direction of polyamory as opposed to just an open relationship. But, no, it's not really like that. Polyamory, the way I see it, would be defined by maintaining multiple romantic relationships. Neither Shobhit nor I engage in anything romantic whatsoever with other people. Oh my god, no. Too much fucking work! (No pun intended.) That sounds exhausting. Seriously, one romantic relationship is more than enough. For us, it's really just about getting certain physical needs met that we can't always get met with each other. It's simple and it works, for us, and it has for going on a decade now. Anyone trying to challenge us on those points now would be morons, because we are walking proof that we can make it work. We're still together and we have been together for fifteen years. If Shobhit and I ever split up, it won't have anything to do with this. It'll have to do with no longer having any tolerance for completely different kinds of disrespectful behavior. But, not to worry! So far our tolerance has held steady. (Also I like to think of vacation planning as "Relationship Insurance." So, in our current position, I don't want to ruin our plan for travel to Australia in February and March, so we have to stay together at least until then! I figure I'll just keep planning trips and using them as a tool for this until we die. Sounds like a plan!)
Anyway. None of that changes the fact that this other, older couple came over and in so doing did blur the lines of our unspoken rules, as they stood thus far, a bit. It's still not a romantic thing; it's more like Shobhit has developed a bit of a friendship with these guys. In fact, the last time he went over to their place, in the end they wound up just talking the whole time, and he then came home without having done anything physical. Also, the previous time he had gone over, he came back and told me they had suggested both of us come over for lunch sometime. I was open to the idea, so it seemed perfectly natural to me to be fine with it when, this last time he went over there -- maybe a week or so ago -- he came back and told me he had invited them over for dinner.
Shobhit and I hosted a series of guests for dinner at home last year -- six times, in fact; Danielle came for two different ones. Rarely has it been only two people; in fact the only time we had guests of only two without even a child with them was when Abhishek and Vinaya came over without their kids, in mid-April of last year. Somehow we fell out of the routine of asking people over regularly through the course of 2019, but it finally happened, and this time it was with these guys.
I was on the phone briefly with Danielle on my way home from the library yesterday and when I told her we were having guests for dinner she immediately said, "How come I wasn't invited!" Um...
In any case, any time we have people over for dinner, Shobhit makes enough food to feed an army. Now, he did mention one thing yesterday that he's never clarified before but which did make a lot of sense: the reason he makes a large quantity of a single dish is because that makes it a lot easier to adjust for any flavor imbalance he might feel it has. He never works from recipes, after all; he just decides when it's done based on taste. Okay, so that argument makes rational sense, but did he really need to make that kind of volume of six different dishes, to feed merely two guests? He made his famous samosas (the best, always); Shahi Paneer (my favorite Indian dish that is not a snack, which is technically what samosas are); eggplant squash; a lentil dish with a both kidney beans and pinto beans mixed in; stuffed bell peppers which for some reason is a favorite thing Shobhit likes to make these days; and a squash dish I didn't even touch because a) did you notice all the other stuff available? and b) yuck.
And all that doesn't even include the side dish of seasoned cut cucumbers, or side the dish of yogurt mixed with a certain type of crunchy garbanzo snack puffs, the rice, or -- by far most importantly -- the scratch-made parathas (Indian flat bread) meant to be eaten with the soupier dishes and, at least in my case, rice mixed in with those dishes.
At least for now, I won't say these guys' names, for pretty obvious reasons. Let's just call them L and S. They are quite a bit older, as in either close to in age or older than my parents. I don't recall the exact age difference but I believe L is in his sixties and S is in his seventies. Far, far too old for me to view them sexually in any way at all; I guess Shobhit is different in that regard. Which is fine, honestly. Whatever. To me they were just perfectly sweet, older gay guys. Shobhit came home from their place once with mixed nuts in a plastic bag because apparently he had been eating them at their place and they gave him some to go. I told Laney about that and she said "That's adorable."
When they were about to get ready to go, L said to me, "We would be honored to have you over sometime. If you're comfortable." I kind of stared at him as maybe two beats of silence went by and then I said, in the most friendly tone I could use, "Maybe." This was certainly a unique circumstance under which to ponder questions of social etiquette. It didn't really seem like the right time to say, "Yeah . . . I'm not into it." Also, it's interesting to me how that last bit changed the clear meaning of what he was getting at: "If you're comfortable." If he hadn't added that part, I might have thought he meant something more platonic, like just being over for lunch with no expectation of anything more. But, no, I'm not comfortable with the idea, at least not right now. Shobhit and I have never played with other people together, which I have always felt -- and still feel now -- is for the best. Shobhit is totally fine with me playing with other people so long as it's not in front of him, but when we're together, he can get weirdly jealous (he has in the past when he's merely seen a guy at the grocery store checking me out, although in his defense he hasn't reacted that way in a long time and now it seems to amuse him). In the past he has even gotten kind of possessive, as when we were once, many years ago, at a nude beach together and a guy tried to make a pass at me. Shobhit got rid of that guy real quick.
So with these guys, I wouldn't want to run the risk of getting the kind of attention from them that is best given to Shobhit. Of course, it's also particularly relevant that I'm not physically attracted to these guys. S, the older one, is one I can imagine finding attractive once I am closer to his actual age. L has a peculiar look that I could not quite put my finger on, as I kept thinking he looks not like an actor specifically, but like a bit character from a sketch show actor, something like that. The best I can come up with right now is he kind of looks like Mad Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman as an older man. But only vaguely like him. He has a larger than average nose and a slightly goofy grin.
L also really likes to talk. He even warned me of this early on, and I kind of dismissed it in a friendly way, like, don't worry about it. As the evening wore on, though, there did come several moments where he would talk about something, often providing far more detail about a given thing than was at all necessary (yes, just like how I write blog posts, I KNOW), and my eyes would kind of glaze over. One thing I found interesting was how much more L would talk than S did. S would interject when he felt necessary, so he was not curiously quiet or anything. It was just, L was the talker. Also, any time I asked a question that could easily be directed at both of them (such as when I asked about whether they grew up religious), L would basically assume I was just talking to him and then run with the answer. To be fair, with that particular religion question, S did eventually offer his own, far more succinct, answer.
It became pretty clear, pretty early on, that neither of them was especially used to Indian food. L definitely did not have any concept of the way Indian people typically eat, although that's not something I'm really judging or blaming him for. He would put one of the foods that he put on his plate inside a paratha wrapped halfway around and basically eat it like a taco. And that, honestly, makes logical sense if you're an American with very little exposure to ethnic food beyond Mexican food (and in the U.S. "Mexican food" hardly even qualifies as "ethnic"), and a paratha essentially looks like a different sort of tortilla. I probably did that myself the first few times I had them, although with me Shobhit really went out of his way to teach me how they tear pieces of the bread off and then use the bread to scoop up the food. And to this day I still don't quite do it that way either -- I still prefer the use of spoons and forks, which I find to have a lot more efficiency and utility than fingers, so I tend to take alternate bites of a paratha and then of the food/rice mix with a fork.
Shobhit also used slightly higher spice levels than usual, apparently having been told they like food with "a kick" -- but then the samosas had enough spice that L, at least, had to take them kind of slowly; and yet pretty much all the rest of the dishes did not seem especially spicy even to me. Except maybe the Shahi Paneer, usually my favorite dish, which was slightly spicier than I prefer but I still liked it. It was also not quite a smooth as usual (I think perhaps it could have used more milk and one or two more rounds of blending), and yet! It was still the one dish I went out of my way to pack three separate lunches for taking to work this week.
And as always, we have a shit ton of leftovers -- even after L and S packed themselves a whole bunch to go. They had not come with anything, which was exactly as requested: L did text Shobhit to ask if they should bring something and Shobhit replied "just your appetites." There was no need even for them to bring wine: we've got enough wine to last us a year or more. What they did bring, as Shobhit suggested they do, was containers for taking leftovers home. They took quite a bit, too. And even after that, our fridge is cram packed with our own containers of all this food. Between lunches and dinners, we're definitely good without having to cook anything new for at least the next full week, I'm certain. I'm just realizing Shobhit made even more than usual this time, even for only having two guests -- I suddenly remembered when we once had Laney and Jessica over, in January 2017, and although he still made too much, Shobhit still did not make quite as much that time.
When Laney and I parted ways after the movie yesterday, she told me to try to get a photo of these guys, as she's so curious as to what they look like. I didn’t think it was quite the time to ask for a picture with them, and although I did consider trying to sneak one from the kitchen at one point, not to post anywhere but just to text to Laney, I decided not even to do that -- I could not get a good angle and I didn't want to be sneaky.
Oh right. Shobhit also made a dessert! He made "halwa," which is basically a sweetened cream of wheat dish which I find abhorrent. L & S both politely accepted some and even complimented it. L expressed guilt more than once about not finishing all the food he'd put on his plate, and I was just like, why? If you're full, you're full! He mentioned being conditioned when he was younger to be grateful for what starving kids around the world could not have. I pointed out, "Your finishing your plate doesn't make those kids starve any less." Therefore you should not feel any obligation to.
But that's not all! At Shobhit's request, I made chai. Making Indian chai is a lot more involved than just heating up a typical American tea bag, and I have now done it so much -- far more than Shobhit ever does anymore; it's basically become one of my jobs -- that I have kind of perfected it. You heat a small amount of water to which you add fresh chopped ginger, fresh mint, cardamom, sugar, and of course the tea; once that's boiling you add milk, in a volume about four or five times that of the water. Once that starts to boil you then pour the finished product through a strainer into cups -- last night doing so in the smaller ceramic serving cups Shobhit often likes to use for guests, which he brought back from one of his trips to India. L didn't like his very much, and gave it to S to finish. Too sweet for him, apparently. We talked about how chai in restaurants it typically two or three times as sweet.
Overall, I'm perfectly happy we had them over for dinner; I'm glad we did it; I'm also glad it's over. It was kind of a long evening for me, after an otherwise pretty busy weekend. Shobhit did far more work preparing the food, of course, than I did, but I did do a lot of helping, such as vegetable chopping or helping with deep frying as is typical, in the off times between other things I was doing over the weekend.
Shobhit and I did not get a lot of TV watching in. He tried to watch Real Time with Bill Maher last night but he kept falling asleep so I pretty easily convinced him to go to bed early. So I watched Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on Netflix while I got ready for bed.
And so goes another weekend, and a uniquely eventful one at that. Not unique in that it was eventful, but that it was full of unique events. I'm happy to spend the rest of the week doing more typical things, including catching up on TV shows and seeing movies. Shobhit's even going to see Downton Abbey with me on Wednesday evening, as I got advanced free screening passes to that.
[posted 12:37 pm]