Sushi, Wings, Catty Comments and Ruminations on Youth

I had a fun time last night with my friend Jessica. We have a ritual of getting together for dinner once in a while just to catch up and chat about things. She's fun to talk to and listen to -- basically, because she tolerates my neuroses well. I think that happens when you're a psychologist's daughter.

So we met for sushi. Not at our usual sushi place -- we decided we'd try a different place, the subject of rave reviews. I was excited to try it out despite the fact that it was probably going to be a little pricier than our usual. I'm all for good sushi.

We walked through the door and were greeted and seated. I gotta say, there's something a little strange about being greeted at the door of a sushi restaurant by a white guy. I hope that doesn't sound racist. But it's a sushi place! With a white guy as the host! Not that this was enough to make us run, of course. We noted that the sushi chefs were Japanese, then looked over the menu.

The sushi was decent, but not great. Nothing terribly exotic, or overwhelmingly tasty. What's up with labelling something a "crunchy salmon roll" when really what you're doing is taking regular salmon and rolling it up with a piece of radish? I was expecting some exotic preparation of the salmon to make it crunchy; I wasn't expecting the crunch to come from some external vegetable source. By the time we finished our sushi (a reasonably priced $40 or so for the both of us), Jessica and I realized we were still hungry. And yet we were unwilling to order more sushi.

So we wandered off to a neighborhood bar in search of buffalo wings.

Okay, there is definitely something wrong with following a delightful (though not filling) meal of sushi with buffalo wings, but Jessica loves wings, and I could easily have eaten more, so off we went. We made the mistake of hitting a bar on M Street which -- how to put this delicately -- skews a little younger than Jessica and I are.

We took a table and ordered our wings (and some sliders to boot, which the waitress unfortunately took to mean potato skins, although she didn't think to ask me to define "sliders") and some beer. Very near us was a table populated by about ten people who clearly were in their early twenties. And by "clearly in their early twenties," I mean clearly in their early twenties. It was amusing talking about them outside of their earshot. Well, almost everything Jessica and I said was outside their earshot, because, well, they were just so loud.

The table consisted of about seven women and three men. The one male facing out (toward Jessica and me), it soon became obvious, was gay gay gay. Funny gay. I'm so fabulous gay. But then at the same time, not terribly fabulous. "If you're gonna be a gay guy who surrounds himself with women -- that is, the kind of gay guy I'm rapidly becoming -- you owe it to yourself to surround yourself with attractive women at the very least!" I said to Jessica. We busted out laughing.

"Would I be considered part of your group then?" she asked.

"Of course," I told her. I have a lot of female friends. Many times when we go out, I'm the only male in the bunch. And other men get jealous of me, because I'm surrounded by attractive, smart women. I once got a high-five from a waiter in Vegas because I was in the company of 7 hot women -- even though we were all pretty sure the waiter in question was gay, and, truth be told, he was cute enough that I should have hit on him myself.

The only running thought through my head, watching these kids who were either juniors or seniors in college, or fresh out of college in their first semester of graduate study (I would have guessed law school), was "I was never that young." I told Jessica so repeatedly through the night. Every time the kids did something loud, or obnoxious, or embarassing, I would tell Jessica how I had never, ever been that young. Yes, that's right folks, I was born 30 years old. Maybe that's why my mom resents me so much.

The kids did shots, the kids talked obnoxiously, the kids talked loudly. At some point, one Drunk Girl (and by calling her Drunk Girl I do not mean to imply that anyone else in that group was in any way sober) announces, "Yeah, that's right! I'm hot, I'm loaded, I have a killer apartment, and my husband's a fuckin' awesome lover! I got it made!" Jessica couldn't help wondering out loud how this woman -- could not have been older than 23 -- could possibly have ever found herself a man to settle down with. Later, Drunk Girl was observed sitting on a man's lap in the bar. We presumed it was her husband, and I was sorely tempted to tell him that I understood that he was fantastic in the sack. I didn't say anything to him, which is good, because we later found out that the man was in fact not her husband, but just a random friend on whose lap Drunk Girl decided to sit.

As they were getting ready to settle up, someone (I think a woman) suggested they hit the "gentlemen's club" next door. (Aside -- I don't get this. Do women actually enjoy going to clubs featuring naked women? Why? I thought only guys indulged such silly prurient interests.) Fabulous Gay Boy (who actually looked a lot cuter, if a lot shorter than I would have imagined, once he stood up) was trying to talk the group into going to a gay bar in the gay ghetto instead. (That's what every gay boy wants: his gay bar invaded by a slew of straight girls. Okay, I admit, I did this once too, but at least it was my birthday.)

Jessica and I settled up and took off. As I walked Jessica to the metro stop, we crossed paths with The Drunken Posse again. All was not pretty. One girl managed to dart into moving traffic at Dupont Circle right in front of us and her friends. It was so sudden her friends could only manage a scream, not a grab. Thankfully, the car was going slow enough that it could stop. "Are you HIGH?" Fabulous Gay Boy shrieked at her, though he was still laughing as if the contemplation of the near-death experience hadn't quite taken hold yet. The other girlfriends were busy alternating between hysterical giggles and "Oh my god"s. It was quite the spectacle. As for Drunk Girl Who Launched Herself In Front of the Car (yes, the married, loaded, sexually satisfied one), she was definitely doing nothing but laughing, and announcing something or another far too loudly, and doing a strange-looking "dance," now having made it to the other side of the street.

"No, really, Jessica -- I was NEVER that young."