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I can't stop thinking about the fact that I literally spit on Gabriel last night.
It wasn't on purpose! Of course, if I'd had my mask on, which I'm sure he would have preferred—I was outside, okay?—it never would have even reached him. And guess what? One of the first things he told me when I met up with him was that earlier that day one of his students had spit on him. In that case it was on purpose, but it doesn't change the fact that he got spit on twice yesterday, and one of the people who did it was me. At least he had his disinfectant spray right there at the ready. Having that handy is clearly very useful.
I bet anything Gabriel is already picking apart multiple things in the above paragraph, jumping to conclusions about subtext that isn't actually there. And listen, I'm always going to be at the ready with defensiveness about his defensiveness about my supposed defensiveness. Or is it the other way around? Being friends with Gabriel can be so weird. It's like we live in a metaphysical Venn diagram of realities, only a small portion of which overlaps, and somehow we still deeply appreciate each other as friends. Does anyone else do this? He's always so sure about my intentions and motivations and is quite often wrong. Not necessarily wildly off the mark, but often pretty far off the mark. And no matter how much I try to correct or clarify, he doesn't want to believe that I'm not over here just spending all my time judging him. To be fair, I think he thinks this way about most people. I'm not special in this context. God damn it! I want to be special. (Actually, I clearly am special to him, which means a lot to me. Just, you know, not in this particular way. I'm just impossible to satisfy, right?)
All of that aside, I still spit on him. And I feel really bad about that. I'm genuinely embarrassed. I'm not embarrassed that it happened because I was blowing a raspberry to imitate the way Barbara does mid-walk farts, which I'm sure many people would think is something I should be embarrassed about, but it's not. I'm embarrassed about the spit specifically. Nobody wants to be spit on, but Gabriel especially. To his credit, he handled it well. He didn't get mad or even wince, I should hasten to note. He did openly observe that "You just spit on me," and then he just sprayed his hand with disinfectant. "I know," I said. "I did not mean to do that." You know what? I am only realizing right now that I didn't actually say I was sorry. I was embarrassed, I wasn't thinking straight! Me not apologizing is historically on-brand, so surely it came as no surprise. Well, I actually am sorry.
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Seeing Gabriel again so soon after hanging out with him and Lea on Saturday was unexpected. This was only two days later! If you want to talk about "being on brand," though, this is pretty on brand for him: random and/or spontaneous opportunities to hang out, sometimes months apart and sometimes days apart. Gabriel is not naturally programmed for planning.
He happened to be in Seattle yesterday evening, waiting for Lea to finish with something on First Hill, in the end far longer than initially anticipated or predicted. I was on my way home from work, thinking I was just going to make egg quesadillas for dinner with Shobhit, and Gabriel called me when I had just gotten out of the Capitol Hill Station and was walking home from there. I guess he was just hanging out at his car. I told him I would go home and talk with Shobhit, and get back to him about meeting up with him.
It turned out to be too soon to make dinner with Shobhit anyway; it would have to wait until after his Braeburn Condos virtual board meeting, which was to start at 6:00. I still made chai at Shobhit's suggestion, although I had to do it twice, because I somehow fucked up the first batch and burned it. I think maybe I didn't stir it enough and let the sugar sit on the bottom of the pot for too long. It was a very odd experience, because it sort of started
re-boiling after I had taken the pot off the stove. How the fuck does that happen? Gabriel's a science teacher, I should have asked him. In any case, I poured it out and it tasted burnt, so I just started the process over again. I did a
lot of stirring the second time, but also did not wait too long before adding the loose leaf tea. Did that make a difference? I have no idea. Would this be considered chemistry? Goddammit, where is Gabriel when I need him?
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I offered to bring Gabriel some chai but he said he had just had a large coffee. I poured my own chai in the beloved Yeti mug that keeps liquids hot for an astonishingly long time even with only a clear plastic top lid, and walked up Madison Street to meet up with him. He had sent me his pinned location, making me think he was in a parking lot, but when I found him he was on the phone with Lea, discussing unanticipated delays. She needed to be where she was by 1:00 but still hadn't been able to get started, and now was not expected to be able to leave until 9:00. It was even suggested that Gabriel go home and come back, apparently by people who did not understand how long it takes to drive not just to Federal Way, but to virtually the Puget Sound short of Federal way, on a weekday evening. He opted just to stay in Seattle and wait it out. So, he hung out with me for a couple of hours.
He was hungry and needed to use the bathroom, though, and it occurred to me that the Whole Foods on Madison and Broadway would have a bathroom, and it then occurred to him he could get a slice of pizza there. So we walked there first, he got his pizza, and we sat on a concrete ledge/bench around a small bit of landscaping in front of the store so he could eat, and I could dip some cookies into my chai.
He suggested then that we find a place where we could get a drink but stand outside. I had already passed a new place I was only noticing for the first time on my walk out to meet him, a place called
Barrio Mexican Kitchen & Agave Bar on 12th Avenue between Union and Pike. Wait, I take it back—I had noticed it before, but had never gone in; what was new was their canopied outdoor seating area, which Gabriel was okay going into but without sitting on the chairs. He stood by the table at the far end of the canopy, but I sat down. We both ordered one drink; I got a blood orange margarita rimmed with a kind of salt that was so tart there were moments I thought my lips were going to get sucked down my throat. Well, really I just paid about twelve bucks so I wouldn't be loitering.
We talked about a great many things, but one of them, relatively briefly, was his evident belief that I roll my eyes at his strict covid protocols, which actually isn't true and I totally get what he does and why he does it. Everyone should be validated in doing whatever makes them comfortable regardless (unless it places other people at undue risk, of course, which is the opposite of what Gabriel is doing), but he also has multiple particularly vulnerable family members to keep protected—like, at least three. So, maybe I should stop spitting on him. Also, I often imagine him thinking I live my life being reckless when it comes to covid, so I guess we're even. (I actually was reckless when it came to going to Sherri's birthday party without testing first, something I am still trying to get over, and a mistake I will never make again as long as covid is spreading fast enough to need to be tracked. Our whole family will be staying in the same large house in Leavenworth for three nights in September, and I will test before going to that, the likelihood that no one else will test before going notwithstanding.)
Eventually Shobhit texted me about when I would be back, and asked if I could go to Trader Joe's on my way back and get a couple of bell peppers. Gabriel, clearly still having a lot of time to kill, offered to walk with me to Trader Joe's, stopping short of coming inside, which was nice. We went on another of our many conversational detours just before parting ways, talking about television shows, such as
Moon Knight on Disney+ and a show he apparently thinks I should give a chance called
Winning Time on HBO Max. We'll see.
If Lea was indeed finished by 9:00 (and who the hell knows, after all those earlier delays), I only just realized that left Gabriel only another hour or so after we parted ways. To me, that's not really that long of a wait. He may not feel the same way. I have no idea. At least he got to kill a couple of hours with me, which he seemed to appreciate. Except maybe for the spit part.
I got the bell peppers, and when I got home Shobhit and I finished up what he had already started for preparing quesadillas, with far more filling than I really wanted—I would have liked something simpler with fewer ingredients, like, say, an egg, cheese, and some sauteed mushrooms. Shobhit made a bunch of stuff, onions and bell pepper and some odd beans mix. I told him I didn't want a lot in my quesadilla and then he still piled a ton of food on it. I mean, whatever, it was still tasty. I'm also still going to blame him for when I overeat because of the volume of his cooking. As Shobhit himself would say, "It's my right!"
We then watched the penultimate episode and then the series finale of
Ozark, which I found very satisfying, even though the one single character I really hoped lived in the end wound up biting it. That actually made me give the show more respect for its integrity, even though I do think the very final shot, with the four members of the Byrd family and making a pretty overt statement on the story's effect on the teenage kids, was a little much, very on the nose. Now I need to go find podcast episodes in my feed where people discuss these final seven episodes.
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[posted 12:27 pm]
