Haitian Meatloaf
Some things are better the second time around.
You have to be careful about developing themes—I have to be careful developing them. They become all-encompassing things, metaphors to live by, omens, signs from God, proof of his existence. Scaffolding to fall from. Temples to dismantle.
Last night was sandwich and Sapporo night. You could consider bread the scaffolding of any sandwich, but it’s worth considering how the previous night’s meatloaf, which took three hours to make stoned, is the real coat hanger, the real hero.
The first sip of my first Sapporo tasted like the first few sips of beer ever, a quality of a drink had in celebration. I’d just gotten back from California where I was ending some serious shit, closing the back door of a chapter filled with drafts. That’s all I care to say about it, except that I left with a car and came back with the money for it, and the days since have felt all new and my feelings for my lover all fresh.
I’ve been half-joking that Susanna and I are now back in sync, which means the detour lasted nearly nine months—long enough to gestate on a tempting offer and marinate on the cure for taking it. It was only right that I made the sandwiches, even though I had been expecting her to (good car money spent on a pair of Friday steaks—the promise of a second cooked meal despite her absence from the first—wasn’t enough to persuade her that my expectation was the more just).
She let me play my ‘little game’ so long as I knew she was getting hungry. Her mood and mine were light enough for more passionate kissing than usual, the kind where the other’s mouth feels pleasantly strange and the motions of the lips take longer to execute and lead to further motions. Annoyed by upsetting mail, she’d almost soured on me earlier—she’s allowed to be upset. So long as you come back before long, we’re both allowed.
We were on our third and last bottles of beer as we sat down—sandwich setting is without candles and cutlery, an effort at having a sit-down without the effort of making it an effort. As big as they were, the sandwiches didn’t take long to get through. I made my usual frenetic remarks about how I might improve on the recipe, what I’d leave out, what I’d add in, what I wouldn’t change at all.
Only a couple bites of my sandwich remained when Greta arrived—we still had her Christmas gift, a vinyl record late in the ordering. But she had good gossip and sat with us to spill as much of it as discretion allowed. “We’re out of beer,” said Susanna, and I offered bourbon and set out three squat glasses and a bowl of ice. Greta’s laughter at the results of her online sleuthing filled the dining room to the ceiling. Good impromptu company is one of human life’s greatest delights, especially when it comes on a latter weeknight.
I poured more whiskey, mostly into my own glass—Susanna drank more of what was being dished, her eyes as enjoyably hysterical as Greta’s peppery laugh. We ate thin slices of Asian pear, I took too many hits of our guest’s pineapple-flavored vape, and we dripped the melted ice into the bottoms of our almost empty glasses.
“Well, I’m about to take an edible, so you have to leave,” Susanna declared, laughing, then explaining.
The thought to write about the meal occurred during conversation, but I put it off with the following note typed into my phone:
I don’t trust myself to write. To get it all down—the right way, anyhow—to remember all the good details, the best phrasing. And so I won’t write about the fried Haitian meatloaf sandwiches tonight. And it will still have happened.
Buddhist monk sand-artists must be aware that people take photos of their work, photos that ‘sit in’ phones for an eternity never to be viewed again by people who never actually looked at the thing they were taking a picture of, never really regarded it, never really will. Scaffolding to fall from, memory made a facsimile of memory, like a ghost belonging to a person who never lived.
That is enough to make you suspicious of whether you lived anything you now have a picture to prove. I have a picture of a table crowded with the colors of a friendly conversation—I was there for most of it. I have another of a fried Haitian meatloaf sandwich on toasted milk bread with spicy, herbaceous epis mayo and big tears of iceberg lettuce. I ate it all.
