Circular Actions / Black Ketchup / The Shakes

3 fictions.

Circular Actions

So, listen. I took this girl to an Asian restaurant once, on a date. A first date. We sit down. We order. We talk. It’s a nice place. We’re having a good time. Our food comes out and we start eating. We keep talking some while we eat, but the food is delicious, so mostly we’re just eating. Then she slurps up this big, extra-slimy chunk of cooked vegetable and suddenly she gets this funny look on her face and she shudders and she makes this loud, wet hiccuping sound and suddenly pukes, just throws up this lumpy, watery half-digested slurry onto her plate and all over what’s left of her food. Immediately she gets all embarrassed and she says
“No, no, no, don’t worry, it’s actually really good.”
and before I can even react she’s already bent down over the plate and she’s scooping the puke she just dribbled out back into her mouth with her hands and with her mouth half full of it she’s saying to me
“Really, it’s okay. It’s fine. It’s totally fine.”
and the other people there at the restaurant are all staring at us and the waitress was on her way over but now she’s kind of stopped a few tables away just standing there because obviously she doesn’t know what to do, what’s the protocol, is she supposed to intervene in a situation like this or not, and I don’t know what to do either so I just give the waitress a look like
“I don’t know.”
and shrug my shoulders, just a little so that hopefully this girl, my date, won’t notice, which she doesn’t, she’s way too busy eating, she’s hunched over her plate just piling the puke-drenched food into her mouth, her hair is falling into it and stuff, I can see dirt under her fingernails, her cuticles look kind of fucked up, finally she finishes, she practically licks the plate clean, she sits back and I look her in the eyes and I say to her
“That was one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen.”
and she looks right back at me, and she says
“Thank you.”
with a big, warm smile like she was really touched by what I said. Anyway, we dated for a few months after that but eventually I decided I had to break it off because I just couldn’t imagine having kids with her, and I’m not getting any younger.