The Memory Hole

awkward meal number 1.

Throughout my entire life, especially my college career, pretty much every social event is punctuated by something awkward, especially meals.  Maybe it’s just because I’m a fat bastard, but I know despite usually being an inherently social event, I always feel like I am going to mess up somehow while eating—get food all over the place, spit food in other people’s faces, and fart.

But that’s just every meal for me.  Sometimes there are things that make them especially awkward.  For me, the first time in college came literally on the first day of classes of my first semester in university.  So that dates this story to lunchtime on a Monday in the Fall of 2004.

Awkward factor #1: I was meeting a girl from the internet.

Perhaps a little backstory is in order.  By now, it should be clear to anyone that knows me that I don’t have any aversion to meeting strangers from the internet, since I clearly lack the skills to meet people in any other way.  I’m a huge nerd.  And arguably, I was an even bigger nerd back in the high school days.  Such a nerd, in fact, that I belonged to a mailing list whose subject was the video game Final Fantasy.  To make things worse, occasionally groups of us from this Final Fantasy Mailing List would meet up at Anime Expos, hang out, and share hotel rooms.  So I had met a bunch of people from the internet, and even shared sleeping quarters with them, since I was like fourteen.

I can’t believe I just wrote those last couple of sentences, and that they’re completely true and non-fictional.  This is the stuff of my nightmares, the fact that those statements are actually true.

Anyway, on this Final Fantasy Mailing List, there was a girl my age who was also from Hawaii.  And surprise, surprise, she was entering UH at the same time I was.  I had never seen her before or even spoken to her outside of emails and IM conversations, but for some reason we decided that we should totally hang out once school started.  I’m not sure why.  I guess we had talked to each other on AIM for two years, and now we’d be going to the same school at the same time, so it just made sense.

It was stupid for me.  I’m such an antisocial person, and already, college was this new overwhelming thing, it was crazy—living in a dorm, going to classes at random times, et cetera.  It was the first day, and here I was planning to put myself into a stressful (to me—I know, I’m insane) situation of meeting a new person whom I had talked to online a bunch.

Usually I will just find a way to weasel out of any situation I’m uncomfortable with (i.e. most situations) but maybe my whole avoidance system was overloaded by the newness of university life, or maybe I really thought that college was just going to be meeting new people 24/7, so I thought I’d have to deal with it anyway.

I remember her calling me a bit before noon, saying she was on her way down to the dorm cafeteria.  I had big knots in my stomach.  I should say it had nothing to do with it being a girl or anything, it was mostly like “oh man I dunno what this person is gonna be like, and I’ve spoken to them for a while and what if I’m really different in person and they hate me, this is so weird why am I even doing this?”

Okay, a small part of it probably had to do with my lunch partner being a girl.  But I wasn’t thinking of this as a date or something that might even lead to that, she was just a random internet friend that I now happened to go to school with.

But enter awkward factor #2: Chino.

Chino is a really good guy.  He’d been one of my closest friends in high school since we had a lot of the same classes, and he almost always was positive and upbeat.  Chino is still a good friend of mine, so I really hope he doesn’t take this the wrong way.

But for Chino, especially at this time, stuff was always about “the chicks.”  I think he really had crazy expectations for college, when we were going in, that our lives were gonna go crazy and we were gonna be banging chicks left and right and there’d be girls everywhere.

So when I told him about meeting A GIRL for lunch, on the very first day of school, he made it out like this girl was probably going to be my first college conquest.  He was making it sound like I had “picked up” this girl and it was totally a date, or more.  Of course, having him talk like this just made it more awkward for me.  What did I know?  Was he right?  Should I be treating this as something more?

Of course not.  But when you’re an awkward teenager in a really weird situation, you can quite easily doubt yourself, especially when someone as confident and powerful as Chino is interjecting alternate suggestions in your ear the whole time.

Fuck, I was way more nervous now.

I met her, for the first time in real life (as the saying goes), outside my dorm.  Meeting people from the internet, it can be a really weird thing.  I don’t think humans are quite fully adapted to it yet, to have simultaneously this background and friendship and at the same time be overwhelmed by this feeling of “I don’t know this person.”

This one wasn’t any weirder than any other, but it wasn’t any smoother, either.  I remember going to the cafe, echoes of Chino’s comments started to ring in my ears.  I had a meal plan, since I lived in the dorms, but she didn’t.  She started to pay, and I was thinking nervous thoughts to myself, “Shit, is this a date? Should I be paying?!”

At that time, I was definitely my fattest, and with a meal plan to the all you can eat dorm cafeteria, well, let’s just say typically I was ingesting a lot of food at any given meal.  I remember, though, I was so nervous, I just followed her lead.  She got one slice of pizza.  So I got one slice of pizza.  That’s all I ate for that entire meal.

Me?  At the dorm cafe, eating just one slice of pizza?  You now have proof that I was an awkward, nervous wreck during that meal.

We sat down, and the conversation proceeded.  Like I said, it’s weird.  We had chatted so much in the past on computers, but now in person, it just turned to the typical “I just met you” smalltalk.  ”So, how was your first class today?  Are you liking school here so far?”  That kind of thing.

The conversation and the conservative eating of just one slice of pizza, slowly (to not look like a fat pig, of course), was awkward enough.  But then Chino made a reappearance.

I’m not sure if he was just there to keep tabs on how my lunch was going or if it was just a coincidence, but I think it was a little of both.  He was perfectly seated behind her so that I could see him just fine, but she would have no idea.  And the whole time, whenever I made eye contact with him, he was giving me the biggest shit-eating grin.

At one point, during a moment of prolonged eye contact, he nodded at the girl and seriously gave me a huge thumbs up, as if to say, “Yeah, she’s hot dude, way to go.”  It was really creepy, especially since obviously that was not where this meal was headed at all.

That’s about it.  The meal ended uneventfully, she went back to class and I went back to my room.  As far as I can recall, I never actually hung out with her socially again, although we definitely bumped into each other a few times and we were still friendly.

It wasn’t a terribly bad meal, or anything special in terms of awkwardness.  I just find it amazing that, going into my college career, I stumbled (fell?) out the gate with a pretty awkward encounter, no wonder my entire career would be cursed.  I didn’t even get one good, non-weird lunch under my belt before shit started to go all strange.

But really, the one thing I’ll never forget about that lunch was Chino’s damn smile and thumbs up.  That’s really what all these words were for.

vegetarian dinner.

I’ve written a lot about freshman year, I guess that’s when things were at their newest and the most happening-est.  I’ve also already written about eating, and the dorm cafeteria, and girls, and well, my point is, this post is going to be a combination of all these things.

It was definitely freshman year, probably Spring semester, so that’d put this in the Spring of 2005.  It involves myself, John, and our mutual female acquaintance Iris.  I had met her originally through my scholarship thing, since all of us who got the scholarship were forced to do a summer orientation together (note to self: that’d be a good one to post about later, too).

I’m not sure how John got into this social group, but the dude has an uncanny ability to ingratiate himself with any group that includes women so I guess it makes sense.

Anyway, it’s not like I was super close friends with Iris.  Or maybe I was, I don’t really remember that clearly—I think we would often IM each other.  Oftentimes we’d go eat at the dormitory cafeteria together, too, but it wasn’t like a daily ritual—maybe once a week or so, if I’d have to guess.

For John, I’d imagine it was pretty much the same, he would often be part of the group that would eat at the cafeteria.  Now, I can’t recall whether Iris was a complete vegetarian or just espoused a more veggie-filled lifestyle, but if I’d have to guess, I’d say she was a full-blown vegetarian.  Which probably didn’t leave her a lot of options at that cafeteria.

That shitty Sodexho (or Sodexo now, I agree, that “h” was totally superfluous) cafeteria.  All my other friends and I weren’t even vegetarians and we still loved to bag on how bad the food was.  I mean, all of it was bad for you in the health sense.  Greasy, mass-produced with low-quality ingredients, all-you-can eat to encourage binging, et cetera.  But a lot of the time, the dishes were just, well, uninspired as well.  I mean, sure, they always had burgers and plain cheese pizza as safe bets, but anything with any variety tended to be on the side of suck.

So one day, while we were probably talking about how crappy the food was at the cafeteria, Iris starts to tell us about these microwaveable vegetarian meals she eats.  ”They’re great!” she said energetically.  John and I were something more skeptical.  First of all, vegetarian meals of any kind were not conjuring up images of deliciousness to us two carnivores.  Go meat or go home.

But even if we could stomach going vegetarian for one meal, something that came pre-packed in a microwaveable container that was ready to be eaten after a few minutes of zapping didn’t sound too good either.  Heck, I wasn’t health-minded, but it didn’t even sound healthy. I know all those pre-made meals are typically loaded with sodium and preservatives and other shit that is almost certainly going to give us cancer in a few years.  Why would I subject myself to vegetables if they weren’t even good for you?

A tepid, microwaved meal that also happened to be vegetarian.  I wasn’t seeing a lot of upsides to that, I’ve gotta say.

She promised it would be great, and that someday she would have us try one.  We acquiesced, figuring that “someday” was a nebulous enough term that we might not ever actually have to eat one of these vegetarian microwaved meals.

And thus time wore on.  At some point, I had discovered that you could access a schedule for what the cafeteria would be cooking every night.  I made sure to go when I knew they’d be having a dish I really liked.  Like I said, there weren’t many that I liked, but there were two “specials” that were my favorites.

The first one was chicken nuggets.  Now, I know that sounds pretty lame, but what can I say, I’m a fat guy and I love chicken nuggets.  I remember they’d serve them in those little red baskets from the “grill” area of the cafeteria (the one that usually had cheeseburgers, grilled cheese and french fries).  May god strike me down if I am lying when I say that I consumed roughly 5,000 chicken nuggets on any night when they were serving them.  Okay, god’s probably gonna strike me down in the form of grotesque obesity even if that statement is true, but anyway.

The other dish I liked was a little more inspired.  It was buffalo chicken pizza.  This is something that actually seemed pretty unique, especially when most of their pizzas there sucked.  It was a pizza with big, hearty chunks of chicken all over it, drenched in buffalo chicken sauce.  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that inspired, but it was tasty and another thing I’d load up on if they were serving it.

So, as it just so happens, one particular week, I happened to peek at the schedule, and I could not believe my eyes when I saw what was slated for Friday night dinner.  I almost wept tears of pure joy as I saw the combination: “Chicken Nuggets/Buffalo Chicken Pizza.”

…No words… They—they should have sent a poet…

It was beautiful.  Most college freshmen probably looked forward to going out and getting wasted, laid, or some combination thereof on a Friday night.  I looked forward to chicken nuggets and pizza.  Does it surprise anyone that I am overweight?

I looked forward to Friday all week.  Finally, Friday afternoon.  Just a few more hours.  As I sat in my dorm room it was almost as if I could smell the salivation-inducing odors emanating from the kitchens in the cafeteria.  That’s when the worst thing happened.

A message popped up on my computer screen.  It read something like this:

Iris: Hey!  I bought you guys those vegetarian dinners I talked about!  Let’s have them tonight, okay?

Fuck.  This could not be happening.  I immediately consulted with John about what to do.  While I doubt he was anywhere nearly as passionate about the shitty, greasy cafeteria food as I was, he wasn’t too excited at the prospect of having to forego eating real food in order to try these meals that Iris had purchased for us.

There was some reason that this suffering couldn’t be delayed.  I think maybe the meals were only good for a certain amount of time, or she was going home for the weekend, or something like that.  Either way, dinner had to be that night, and she wasn’t letting us escape easily.

Time ticked on and the day rolled into night, and she had cajoled us into at least saying we were coming to eat.  Neither of us had the heart to tell her straight up that we truly did not want to eat the food, but the situation was getting increasingly dire.  I remember riding the elevator in our building up to the tenth floor, where she lived.

That was a little weird in itself, since in our building the floors were divided by gender, and thus she lived on an all-girl’s floor.  It felt a little bit like I was in a place I shouldn’t be, like I was just waiting for the RA to pop out from behind a corner and scream, “MEN?!  ON MY FLOOR?!!!” and then throw us down the garbage chute or something.

Well, actually, our dorm buildings didn’t have corners, but she sure as hell would have popped out from somewhere.

John and I ended up in Iris’ room, where the meals were already spinning in the microwave.  We pleaded with her, “Iris, you don’t understand, these are the best dishes the cafeteria serves, if we don’t go to dinner tonight we miss out.”  She was a nice girl, but she was also showing a rather unrelenting side.

She seemed confused, like it truly baffled her that we didn’t want to eat these delicious vegetarian microwaved meals.  ”I picked out each meal for you guys individually,” she said.  She showed us the boxes, and I don’t know exactly how John felt, but I knew she wasn’t winning me over.  Mine was like some mushroom thing, that’s all I remember.  Mushrooms.  I didn’t really like mushrooms at all back then, and even now, I wouldn’t really make a meal of them.

I remember she started to get just a tiny bit annoyed at our reluctance to eat them.  Truth be told, I don’t know why we didn’t think to eat them and then still go to dinner afterwards.  I guess there would have been less room for the delicious nuggets and pizza if our stomachs were all crammed up with stupid vegetarian food.

Honestly, even if it wasn’t chicken nugget and buffalo chicken pizza night, the meals didn’t look appealing at all.  I’ve since gotten over most of my food squeamishness, but at that time I was still way more on the picky end of things, and I wasn’t even sure if I could eat it.

Eventually, I guess my hunger pains got the best of me.  I think it was when she started to show a bit of anger at us for not wanting to eat it.  I responded in kind.  I yelled, quite loudly, “IRIS!  IT’S FUCKING CHICKEN NUGGETS AND BUFFALO CHICKEN PIZZA NIGHT!  IT’S THE BEST FOOD, AND I’M NOT GOING TO MISS IT FOR THIS VEGETARIAN BULLSHIT!” Or something along those lines.

I was joking—well, maybe not completely—but I still did raise my voice and I actually remember thinking, “oh no, I’m on the girl’s floor, they’re gonna think there’s some assault going on here or something.”  I think she got the point though.

And so John and I left.  We didn’t eat the food.  I’m not sure if she made us take them with us, so that we could eat them later, or if we just left her with all those crappy vegetarian meals to deal with herself.  I felt bad, especially about the yelling, even if it was in jest.  But you can only humor a person so far.  There’s a difference between someone being nice and someone hoisting their niceness onto you where it becomes contrary to what you actually want to do.

We went to the cafeteria.  The food was glorious.  I regret nothing.