Out in Spartanburg

The Tea Tray

Justin, drinking tea

With Justin. When he was here last night, he left his book at my house, and asked if I would bring it up to him tonight. Well tonight was really my only time to myself this weekend, but I had heard from Lisa today. She told me we were not doing lunch at Mom and Dad's tomorrow, so I thought I would have tomorrow morning to wrap presents anyway, and I was flush with freedom, it being Friday and all. So I went on up there. He had fresh teacakes made, so we had a spot of tea and tried to decide what we would do for dinner.

As usual when in Spartanburg, I wanted to go to the fabulous Thai Taste, but Justin didn't want that. He has caught a strange obsession with soup and sandwiches from James. Now soup and sandwich to me is a stay home meal, and a stay home meal when I can't get motivated to fix something good. To top it off, I know he's been eating that for weeks. But of course I really can't usually deny my friends anything, and he was begging me, so I said "Fine." I was reminding myself that I really don't go to eat with a friend for the food, but for the company. But I'm enough of a gourmond that I really want both. On the way though, we passed a sushi place and Justin said he would do sushi. There is also a really good sushi place up there called Miyko. I have eaten there with Lisa and Carl, but couldn't remember the name of it (have you ever noticed that sushi places seem to all have similar sounding names, all of which are impossible to remember since they all just kind of run together? But anyway.) But I did remember approximately where it was, so we found it without too much trouble.

Miyko is a popular place, and of course on a Friday night this close to the holidays they had most of the tables reserved. So we had to sit in the smoking section. Most of the time I'm fine with that, but I really hate to interfere with the taste of sushi with a bunch of cigarette smoke. Still, it was that or try to find another place to eat. What they didn't tell us was that it was the aggressively smoking section. Someone having a cigarette after a meal really doesn't bother me. But for some reason in sushi places, people are inspired to smoke like the Chinese (which of course makes no sense at all.) They chain smoke until they get their food, then smoke through their ears with their feet as they eat, then have 87 drinks afterwards and talk for hours, smoking the whole time. Going to our table was like moving through a heavy, stinky fog. Then we waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually I went on to the bathroom, because I knew as soon as I did the food would come. That worked.

While we were there, the table beside us changed. When we got there, there was a "grunge" type couple there. Modern day hippies, him with a full beard and retro newsboy hat, and her with a hand crocheted hat she surely bought second-hand. Their hats stayed on at the table. They smoked the whole time (they had finished eating), then smudged the place with sage and lawn trimmings before they left. The next couple that sat down were wanna-be yuppies. He was all in LL Bean, and she was in an outfit that obviously came from The Gap as a set. She had a swept forward bob that was doing no favors to her small flat face. They didn't talk. To each other anyway. They smoked the whole time they were there (even when she went to the restroom, she left one burning in the ashtray), and talked on the phone. They seemed to take turns. If she wasn't on the phone, he was. They both had singularly sour, unhappy faces, and seemed like a matched set of malcontents, whether they interacted or not. There was a large birthday party gathering to our left - a bunch of younger people who were Consciously Hip - kind of like low-rent Friends. The guys all had on skinny-leg jeans, and the girls all had shapeless Jennifer Anniston non-hairdos. As they began to assemble a small Burning Man in the corner, I decided it was so time to go.

After this slide show at dinner, my tongue was all sharpened up. I told Justin I wanted to go some place where we could make fun of people. The Spartanburg Mall, with extended hours for Christmas, was the obvious place to go. We wandered around for a bit, making casual observations and browsing. We found one semi-antique place and looked at the several pieces of old glass they had. We went to Penney's to get a pair of pants for Justin, and Justin said the clerk hit on me. I wasn't sure. But it didn't matter, since I wasn't interested. He kind of looked like Mr. Jane Pittman.

As we were walking back to think about leaving, I stopped to browse at a window, and Justin came running back, all excited. "Steve, you have GOT to get in front of this guy up here and look at him as he comes toward you! I can't describe this, you just have to see it." My curiosity was piqued. In front of us was a rather rubenesque (living in a glass house here) African American person, wearing tight jeans with embroidery on the pockets and a skin tight white t-shirt. He was pushing a stroller, orbited by 4-5 small children running around. He was ba-donk-a-donkin' down the mall, butt-cheeks flying all over the place. I moved to the other side of the aisle, and began to pass. As I pulled abreast, I saw that this person had breasts; and I'm thinking to myself that this has to be a woman. Then I also noticed a vestigial beard of some kind. The jaw outlined seem to point back to this person being a male. I pulled in front, and crossed the leg of the mall, as if I had seen something I wanted to look at. As I turned to face the guy, I could at last see what was printed on the t-shirt -

ASS

the other vagina

Needless to say, at that point, I could no longer maintain any pretense, and just stood there and howled with laughter, to the confusion of the jewelery store person who had stepped forward to help me.

I was dying for a pic of this guy to share with you, gentle readers. Justin and I followed him around for a bit, once again trying to recover some scrap of discretion or couth, but apparently failing miserably. The "Aunt Esther"-esque looks of annoyance we were getting were telling us he was getting pretty impatient with us. Probably justifiably so. But frankly, when you go into the mall in Spartanburg, at Christmas, wearing a t-shirt like that, you have to kind of expect that people are going to notice. But I couldn't think of any way to take a picture with my phone that would get the t-shirt and at the same time be the slightest bit unnoticeable that didn't involve a hastily assembled duck-blind. So we disappointedly let him go, and chuckled back to the car.

We headed back to the apartment. James had called after work, and came over for a visit and more tea. We had a lovely time catching up with him and his latest romantic exploits, and I caught him up on what had been going on with me. Before I knew it, it was after midnight, and I needed to get home. I have a long weekend ahead.