Ketchup and Other Crimes Against Humanity

 Jaime is pretty forgiving of American culture, but like every immigrant, he has his grievances. 

"There's just a lack of an understanding of refinement," he explained as if it were news to me. 

He was talking about our flavor combinations, but he made sure to include plenty of examples outside of the culinary arts. 

I'd just dropped off some gingerbread Trumps at our neighbors', and, like always, I returned with a grocery bag full of food. This bag was heavier than usual because one of their mothers had remembered us and sent some Christmas snacks. 

It was the white chocolate peppermint popcorn that really sent him. 

"Mint's only place is in tea as far as I'm concerned. And chewing gum. Chewing gum is fine, but Americans put it in everything. The only thing that's missing is your precious ketchup!" For the past week, he'd been angrily shaking dark chocolate covered pretzels into a mug of oat milk for his afternoon snack. The bag that came with our latest Imperfect Foods order included little bits of crushed peppermint folded into the chocolate, and he was fucking livid. 

I only recently learned about his aversion to this particular combination after I bought a bag of peppermint bark at Costco. I'd bought them for our mail person, lovingly placed eight pieces in an envelope and clipped it to our box. 

I showed him the bag of the remaining 790 squares and feigned disappointment that we'd have to eat them all. "I'm not eating that. You'll have to do it yourself," was his response, and suddenly, it didn't sound fun anymore. 

Chocolate and peanut butter is another one he can't abide. Really, peanut butter and anything. This isn't unique to him. Even though they have a better name for it, peanut butter (mantequilla de cacahuete) is very hard to find in Spain, and I had to defend peanut butter and jelly to every Spaniard I met. 

It wasn't just that they thought PB&J sounded gross. It sounded so abhorrently sickening to them that they thought we made it up for television shows but didn't actually eat it. 

These and more were brought up during his surprisingly long diatribe, and I think the Colombian Exchange was mentioned at least twice. 

I let him get it out of his system because (1) it was very funny, and (2) a couple hours before, I had to coach him through spitting into a small vial for his Covid test. 

"Tilt your head forward! No, forward not back. Stop blowing bubbles! The bubbles are just air! You're filling the tube with air," are some things I had to say, and you just can't take someone like that seriously no matter how refined his tastes are. 

This is a gingerbread Trump. 

A note from Jaime: His final word on the subject is "snarf". If you don't know what snarf is, it's baked Fritos covered in peanut butter and corn syrup: a Midwestern family's delight and a Valencian's waking nightmare. 

What is Spain? Spain Is Metal.

 Jaime really liked dinner tonight. 

"It reminds me of when we had braised lamb with pepper pellets for school lunch," he said. 

After we figured out he was talking about peppercorns, my mind revisited a topic I think about often: how different our childhoods were. 

"It's not like we got a whole leg or anything. They were fillets, and a lot of kids didn't like it, which was great because they gave their fillets to me." I couldn't remember the other school lunch he loved because other kids hated it and therefore gave him their portions. 

"Fish pudding," he reminded me. 

Ah, yes. Fish pudding. 

I told him that rectangle pizza was pretty popular at my school, and he laughed appropriately. 

Jaime went to an English language school in Spain run by Opus Dei, taught by Filipino teachers and called Edelweiss.  It was his parents' second choice. 

His school day started about the same time as mine, but he wasn't released until almost 6 pm. He'd have dinner with his family at about 9:30 or 10 then go to bed around midnight. Edelweiss was his elementary school. This might sound crazy to those of us who were brought up through socialist American schools, but that schedule is still the norm for kids in Spain today. 

Schoolchildren do have a long break called patio or recreo, which is like recess, during the afternoon siesta time. 

Jaime gets offended when non-Spaniards rib him about siestas. There's almost always an underlying accusation of laziness, so it's understandable he's annoyed. I used to envision the whole country sleeping in their underwear during the hottest part of the day, too, but that was before I saw for myself what really happens during siesta. 

Daily, between 2-4 pm, everyone eats an incredible and reasonably priced lunch and drinks wine or beer before returning to work and doing the bare minimum for the rest of the day until they clock out at 8. Spain is fucking metal, and what makes it metal is that Spaniards work really hard but play harder. 

(Jaime asked me to note his offense taken by the previous paragraph.) 

A couple of weeks ago, Jaime called me into a Zoom meeting he was having with a doctor at KU. Their actual meeting was over, but the man's wife was there because they wanted to tell us about their experience living in Valencia for half a year in the 1980s. 

They had two young children at the time who were attending a Spanish school. 

"I couldn't get over putting them on a bus in the morning and not seeing them again until late in the evening. I spent a lot of time at the grocery store even though the store didn't have the things I wanted." I could imagine her loneliness. Her husband was working, and the kids made friends and picked up the language easily. 

"One day, our son came home with a big bandage on his head. I asked him what happened, and he said another boy had thrown a rock at him. A teacher took him to the hospital where THEY SUTURED HIS HEAD then put him on the bus home." The school hadn't contacted her. 

Jaime and I laughed, but it was clear she was still pretty traumatized by this event. 

"Well, at least it was all free," I said. Spain really is metal. 

We had another Zoom call with our friend Antonio from the Galicia later that day and recounted the story to him. 

"Can you believe that?" we asked. 

"Yeah, I can." He said. It happened to me three times while I was in school. Metal. 

To this day, the best shit I have ever put into my temple.

Things I Did in an Effort to Distract Myself on Election Day

These are not in order of time or importance. 

1. Used a leaf blower

2. Donated blood 

3. Bled all over the pen and my sock 

4. Talked to a man about a water softener

5. Thought about bringing my neighbor some applesauce but didn't 

6. Talked to my mother (but we talked about the election) 

7. Thanked Jaime for not being Chris Watts

8. Explained to Jaime who Chris Watts is

9. Made stuffing from a box 

10. Took two Nutter Butters and not my usual one from the blood center

11. Wrote a blog post 

12. Put a caftan on, took it off, put it on again

13. Broke a mirror

14. Took two walks 

Oh Savage Day Toilet

I asked Jaime why he smelled like a man, and what I meant by that was why did he smell like any other man but himself. 

He doesn't have a strong BO, but I still pretty regularly shove my face under his arm and take a big whiff of his pit. His smell comforts me, and I like his brand. He doesn't even own deodorant, which made this new smell even more offensive to me. 

His response was that he had a zit on his forehead, so he sprayed cologne on it to dry it out. This sounded reasonable for him, so I went to brush my hair. 

Discovering the open box of Dior Eau Sauvage Eau de Toilette confused me so much, I nearly yanked a matted patch of hair from my scalp. 

Had this stinky bourgeoisie bitch truly sprayed Dior on a pimple?

He had. 

You might be asking why I have such an expensive cologne in my house, and the answer is simple and believable. I didn't buy it. My father-in-law shoved it in our suitcase last time we were in Spain. 

What might be less believable but still true is that I've never bought a perfume much less a parfum in my life. I do have two bottles, though. Elizabeth Arden's Red Door, which my mother put in my stocking one year to remind me of my grandmother's scent and Rihanna's Crush, which my father put in my stocking another year to remind me that I'm a White, lower middle-class Midwesterner. 

Was I fourteen when I got them? Was I twenty-seven? I don't know. It doesn't matter. 

What I do know is that I've never used them because even cheap perfume makes me feel like a fraud. I like to smell like me even though, if Jaime's BO is an "agree," mine is a "strongly disagree" on a Likert scale. 

I would have preferred he'd used either of the ones Santa had given me, but I guess him smelling like Rihanna would have been more confusing. Whereas him smelling like my grandmother would have been inconceivable. 

It doesn't matter, though, because neither of us would have used it otherwise. Jaime, because he doesn't smell, is unfazed by the French and has no concept of reality. Me, because I was raised by hippies, fear the French and am maybe too real. 

Anyway, I'm trying a new skin care regimen tonight. I'll let you know if it works. 

Introducing You Can Call Me Marge

 I've been doing more reading than writing lately. 

And I've been watching more drag queen videos than reading lately because that's just where I am on my education journey. 

Meanwhile, my friend has been working on an incredible project that I will let her introduce to you here: https://youcancallmemarge.com/ .

And she asked me to contribute a story here: https://youcancallmemarge.com/stories/ .

I'm really proud of her, and it felt great to write something again. 

Thank you for it all, Kim. I'm lucky to know you. You can find her here: https://youcancallmemarge.com/about-2/ .

A Love Letter to Some OGs and a Chicken Named Fluffy (Trigger Warning: Dead Animal Photos)

I don't remember who asked what everyone's plans were after the Zoom call, but I do remember who answered, "I am going to kill a chicken."

It was Poppy.

It's pretty brutal making friends in Barcelona. Most foreigners who live there are on a journey (destination: themselves), so they're really fucking annoying, and most Catalans who live there are really fucking annoyed.

I clung to the few friends I had my first year. They saw me through escaping from a witch's house in El Born, being kicked in the shins by a noseless sex worker, getting pinned up against the subway doors and groped by a bag man and being in a fictional relationship with a professional model and skateboarder who was actually neither.

But they were also with me through some hard times.

The problem was that I was at the particular point in my annoying journey where no one else I knew was.

I arrived to the OG party late because, like I said, I was very busy trying to convince a homeless man that he was my boyfriend...and not a model. And that skateboarding was a hobby if you don't get paid, but once I got there, I never left.

My first party with the OGs. I have to put this here, so you don't 

see a chicken head on Facebook.

The OGs changed everything about Barcelona. The city I'd been fighting so hard to accept me suddenly did. I dug deeper into her neighborhoods, wore the soles out of many pairs of shoes, became a regular, saw a lot of sunrises and looked absolutely ridiculous the whole time. It's weirdly painful to be so happy and in love with a place you can't stay. I think we all had a similar feeling but didn't talk about it even though we spent nearly every day together.

I would not have made it another year and a half without them, but by then the OGs had given me their best gift, and I decided it was time to bring him home to my family.

But who is this chicken named Fluffy?

Now scattered throughout the world, the OGs and I have again found ourselves at a point in our annoying journey where we need each other courtesy of a global pandemic.

Our Zoom meeting was comforting, cathartic, hilarious and over when Poppy told the group made up of many vegetarians that she needed to excuse herself to execute Fluffy who'd broken her leg because she was so fat. She said she'd send pictures.

The next morning I woke up to this:

Poppy, "I did it with so much love. I hugged her and calmed her down, I prayed and thanked her. She was very peaceful, and it was quick. Haven't decided what I'm going to do with the head yet."

I asked her what other people do with chicken heads.

Poppy, "I have a friend who feeds them to her pet flesh eating bugs and keeps the skull, but I don't have any useful pets like that."

If you like the sounds of Poppy, she hosts my favorite radio show from Castelmaine, Australia called Beats Without Borders. You can listen to it here: https://mainfm.net/shows/beats-without-borders/

I hope everyone has some friends to lean into hard during this fucked up time. Find me if you need me.

A more recent party with the OGs. Clockwise starting from us: Kansas, California, England, Australia, Spain, Albania. 

How the Gentiles Live

I accompanied this morning's kiss with a "Shabbat shalom." Jaime responded, "Shalom. Shalom. Mazel tov."

It's not the Sabbath, I've done nothing to be congratulated for and we're not Jewish.

But you already know that as much as you knew that we were not cooking meth and trafficking cocaine when we watched every season of Breaking Bad and Narcos back to back. We also never traveled back and forth through time from 18th Century Scotland to the post WWII years during our Outlander phase.

Maybe it's a consequence of the age of binging and not having to wait a week for the next episode of our favorite show, or maybe we're just dull and delusional people trying to identify with something we're not.

But in our house, that shit feels real.

After blowing through Unorthodox, we started the Israeli show, Shtisel, and now nothing in our home is more important than kissing the mezuzah.

Of course, this is very offensive. Appropriators never feel like they are disrespecting the culture they are fetishizing or failing to represent with little to no or even a negative understanding of that culture, and yet they keep fucking doing it bless them and their mother, Kris Jenner.

But Jaime and I are the descendants of the passive oppressors who invented appropriation.

If transported through the stones of Craigh Na Dun to the 1980s, we would not have been in Pablo Escobar's inner circle nor the terrified citizens of Medellin. We would have been the douchebags vacationing in Miami snorting cocaine off the rattan dresser in our two star motel room.

Our hair would have been the only remarkable thing about us because if two people have hair made just for the 80s, it's these guys.

We probably wouldn't have been the Conquistadors or SS Officers or Slave Masters, but we would have profited off the horror somehow because we're in that comfortable middle who's appalled by the atrocities we consider over and done while blind to the ways in which we still benefit from their legacies. It's only fun to imagine you're part of a marginalized group when there's no danger to yourself in it.

So, we will continue to revel in how badass Hasidic men look when they're smoking cigarettes and stress about how often their tzitzit tassels must fall into the toilet. We'll feel sorry for women who are pregnant and don't want to be and wonder how on Earth they sleep in pantyhose.

We'll react to the actors until Jaime finally notices that I've stopped reading the subtitles to him because I'm sound asleep and turns off the computer.

But while we're sleeping, people in other homes in other parts of the world are really praying, really loving and really remembering things we can only dream about.

I just wish someone would make a show that reflected me and my life. You know?