Underbelly
“We encourage you to slurp.”
My boyfriend immediately ignored this advice and sipped the broth of his ramen out of a spoon. We also ignored the server’s advice regarding the habanero sauce, which he said would hurt a lot more from the broth than the noodles. We piled it on and burned our faces off. Luckily, we weren’t the only ones sitting around the bar blowing our noses, exhaling steam out of our mouths.
The one man who seemed unaffected? A gentleman in his sixties or seventies, drinking a beer by himself, who poured a bit of the sauce on his finger and sucked it off, made a little frowning “Not bad” face and carried on. He has my highest regards.
I’m miserable with chopsticks, but I’m not even offered a fork. Boyfriend has shown me at least a dozen times how to hold them: the bottom one like a pen, which stays in place, the top on moving to hold the food and bring it to my mouth. I miss several times and splash a lot of broth on my shirt. I still don’t ask for a fork; at this point, it’s a matter of pride.
There are stormtrooper helmets on the taps at the bar. As far as I can tell, there aren’t any names actually listed beside the beers or wines, but the bartenders seem to know them without hesitation. They periodically take moments to toast each other with sample glasses. One bartender wears reflective sunglasses to bar the setting sun. Her face is very serious. I’m a little in love with her. Another has a Mickey Mouse pocket sewn onto her shorts. She’s wearing a backwards baseball cap, and I sort of want to ask her to start a roller derby team with me.
Someone down the bar loudly announces that “All businesses are only about short-term investments now! They never think about the next quarter!” It seems like weirdly inappropriate conversation for a ramen bar, where everyone is slurping noodles through their lips like kids with spaghetti. Boyfriend and I are talking about bird migration. Did you know we know nothing about it? Animal behaviorists don’t really either, so we don’t feel that bad. We eventually turn the conversation to comic books and Nazism. It’s a pretty wide range of topics. Drinking beer allows that.
Boyfriend finishes his food; I don’t. It’s a struggle with chopsticks. It takes so much longer to eat. The bottom of his bowl says “GOOD LUCK.” It makes me nervous. What are we in for? Have we walked into a cursed place? The whole bar looks like it’s covered in scales, with jagged staggered wood paneling — maybe we’re inside a fish or a whale. Maybe we’re going to be blown out of a blowhole any second now. Maybe we’re the ones with blowholes; the steam is clearly coming from somewhere.
“Would you like a box?” Oh, man, the sympathy in the bartender’s voice. She sounds so pitying; I am clearly not the first weakling unable to finish my bowl of noodles and veggies. I won’t be the last.
We leave the restaurant as the fires light on the tables and at the bars; like Pinocchio inside of Monstro, maybe we’re smoking our way out of the beast.
