Some things never change.
There stood Cheryl in the canteen, trying to figure out whether she should upgrade from her regular chicken burrito to the super burrito. “You see, they’re only about a dollar apart in price, which means I’d be getting a lot of extra burrito,” she broke it down for me. “But then, I most likely won’t be able to finish it, and then I’ll take it home and put it in the fridge, and probably wont’ touch it for days, and eventually I’ll have to throw it out. Which means I basically will have spent the extra money for nothing. Shit.”
As she seemed bound to leap into the boiling cauldron of indecision, I stepped up to the plate and hit the fastballs she gave me out of the park for a grand slam: “Cheryl, get the super burrito and I’ll eat whatever you can’t finish, on top of my own super burrito.”
It had been 417 days since my last real burrito (those funny wraps at Taco Popo late at night on Maoming Road don’t count), and this was my first day in San Francisco, 2 hours fresh off the plane, about to devour Mexican succulence with two of my best friends, Joe and Cheryl. I hate to admit this, but one time in late ‘04 I mistook a pair of Mike’s balled-up socks for a chimichanga and crammed them into my mouth.
417 days, and I was back in heaven. At least, on Mission street in a hole-in-the wall Mexican restaurant. 417 days, and there was no were better to be.
My return to California, and the States in general, was marked with a combination of warm familiarity and strange, unwelcome anxiety. I felt out of my body, observing things as if the distance between Shanghai and the US had not been bridged, even though I had physically gotten on a plan and flown the 13 hours to get back here. So strange to see all my beloved friends, slightly different in one degree or another, but overall just as I had left them: upwardly mobile, inclusively anecdotal, and committed to delivering a good time for everyone else. They were like my Mt. Rushmore, a collection of permanence that was much needed after so many burrito-less days, with burritos here as the metaphor for all that was so wonderfully dependable when I was living in Cali. However, I felt I had changed myself, and some part of me was struggling to reconcile the gap that seemed to grow contrasted with all the sameness!
My visit would be marked with the detached introspection and the blind comfort that I felt that first day meeting everyone again. Sushi, drinking, partying, poker, Super-bowl, chili, great conversations, and lots and lots of burritos…those few days I was back were precious and far too swift, but will be cherished nevertheless.
I realize from this trip that all my buddies back home, including the memories that we share and the way that we interact, is really like that burrito I sunk my teeth into that first day I was back. Taco Popo burritos are good, especially at 2 am in the morning, but they just aren’t the same: no rice (NO RICE!), cucumbers, ketchup instead of salsa, etc.. I guess the time I’m having in Shanghai just cannot be compared with the little carnitas I call my darling friends, no matter how grand it is.
Which may explain why I gorged myself on burritos and gained 10 lbs in a span of two weeks. It’s simply because I love my friends so much. Know what I mean?
Carne Asada is Spanish for “friends,” right?
