This Afternoon

I took myself out to lunch. To a sushi place off San Vicente. When I take myself on a lunch date, it is because I want to be alone. I want to be in my own head. I do not want to talk to anyone else. Also, if there are key opportunities, I want to people-watch. I want to eavesdrop on others' conversations. Across from me are two men. I call them Creepy Producer and Creepy Actor. Creepy Producer is wearing a fuschia silk shirt. He has lots of bling. Creepy Actor refuses to take off his sunglasses, even though we are indoors. I am across from them, but behind a plant. They cannot see me. Or so I think. I eat my salmon. I listen to their conversation.

Creepy Producer: Emil's almost done with the script. I think you're really going to like it.

Creepy Actor: Emil's a pretty talented guy.

Creepy Producer: You'll love the story. It's like, about the Freemasons. So, the Freemasons are actually - get this - vampires. And they founded the country, and the first few Presidents and the people who drafted the Constitution - all vampires.

Creepy Actor: That's great, that's great. I'm liking what I'm hearing.

Creepy Producer: And so, they've kind of become really low-key - they run the world, the stock exchange, everything. So they don't need to be, you know, flashy or out there. They don't have anything to prove anymore.

Creepy Actor: Great, great. I like it.

Creepy Producer: But then, the founder of the Freemasons, the Vampire King, so to speak, he's like 600 years old.

Creepy Actor: Great.

Creepy Producer: And he's about to die. So it's like - who is going to run this show now, you know?

Creepy Actor: I love it.

My lunch break is over, but I kind of want to hear the end of this thing when Creepy Producer leans over the fucking plant and turns to me. Shit.

Creepy Producer: Oh, hi. We met at that party last month.

Me: No, I don't think so.

Creepy Producer: Yeah, yeah, we did. You're June's friend.

Me: No. I'm not.

Creepy Producer: Are you sure? We talked for a while. You're an actress, right?

At this, I don't know whether to scoff or raise an eyebrow.

Me: (emphatically) No. Definitely not.

Creepy Producer: Well, I'm Evan.

Me: Aditi.

Creepy Producer: Are you sure you're not an actress?

I pay my check. I walk out. Un-fucking-belivable.

The moment I get outside I have a hankering for a Diet Coke. I swore that I would not adopt my mother's caffeine addiction, which is placated daily by numerous cups of chai, but something happened when I turned 30. All of a sudden, I need the mild boost that it gives me. Yes, this is called an addiction. Yes, I know it is cancer in a can. I practically coined that term and probably even said it to people years ago. Or maybe I just thought it, I can't imagine being that kind of outwardly righteous. Internally righteous, definitely.

I pick up a can at a corner liquor store called Beverly Hills Liquors. It is run by an Egyptian man. At the counter I realize I have no cash and I don't think I can put 35 cents on my credit card. Why am I always so cash-poor? My father would be disappointed. On the other hand, my father came to this country when people got monthly paychecks and ATMs didn't exist, and there were probably only two banks in all of New York and you had to take four buses to get to one of them and also, he had holes in his shoes.

The Egyptian man tells me to take the Coke. I continue to dig through my purse. I have procured a quarter, a nickel, two pennies. This rifling through my purse makes me feel self-conscious and poor. I saw a homeless man do this at a Rite-Aid in San Francisco. "I have enough money," he kept saying. And the line behind him kept on getting longer and people behind him were sighing loudly. I wanted to smack them. "Be polite!" I wanted to scream. "Didn't your fucking useless parents teach you anything?" And I wanted to give him the money but he seemed prideful and you can sense this characteristic in people and you know they won't like it, accepting help.

"Take the Coke, pay me back next time," the man at Beverly Hills Liquors says. I am embarrassed by how often shop keepers or vendors tell me to just take something, encourage me to abscond without paying. This happens at India Sweets and Spices, at bagel places in Boston. I open up bags at home and find things I never bought. At Epicurean, a man hands me a baguette and a bar of chocolate, "take it," he says. The Palestinian vendor at the Los Feliz Farmers Market forces pickles and labneh and feta on me. I used to think this was just people being nice. That the world was full of nice people. Another thing happened when I turned 30. I became cynical. But this man actually does seem nice. Perhaps this is because he stands as a foil to Creepy Producer. Am I in the midst of a psychological experiment? Is normalcy in regular storekeepers amplified if you encounter them right after an encounter with Creepy Producer? I find the extra three cents. I pay for the Diet Coke. "Thank you, though, I appreciate it," I say to him and walk out.

On the way out, I step on something pink and fleshy, like an internal organ, and it sticks to the heel of my boot. Squirrel organs. Possum intestine. I immediately feel like I am going to vomit. I fight off a wave of nausea. When was the last time I puked? Maybe three years ago, when I got food poisoning from Gingergrass. Yes, you read right. Hipster-fusion Vietnamese food had me vomiting for days. No, it was on the flight back from London. Airplane sickness is the worst. They don't even give you those barf-bags anymore. Where are you supposed to puke if the seat belt sign is on? Into British Airways Quarterly or whatever magazine they give you? Into the safety instruction card?

Puking in a place that is not my own bathroom poses a problem: I only vomit into sinks. I refuse to throw up in a toilet. There is something disconcerting about having your face that close to a place that is the receptacle of so many ass-generated foul gales and foul matter. In college, my roommates found it absurd that I threw up into a sink. So it is.

On the drive back, I think about the vampire movie. Sitting in a theater, we are engaged in a collective dream. How sad that our dream life has atrophied into this: Freemason/Vampires packaged for us by Creepy Producer in a fuschia silk shirt. We are consuming something produced by a man who looks like Color Me Badd, well over the hill.

What will the collective dream be when I am old, when the internet is streamed directly into our brains, like an IV of information and visuals that we never even needed or wanted? There are movements for justice, for peace. Why not a movement for the preservation of imagination or dream? I know it is a long road from movies about Freemason-vampires to the end of imagination, of dream, and to spiritual bankruptcy, but in my car, at this moment, it feels like a distinct and sure path and I am sad about this. And so I return to work, with a stomach full of sushi, a Diet Coke in my hand, fleshy squirrel remnants on my shoe and an abstractly broken heart.