I’m sitting in the cafe at the library, having finished my muffin and iced coffee (lunch). There are two girls sitting at a table in front of me and one of them has been trying to eat sushi since I sat down. Keep in mind that this is the same cafe that messes up BAGELS. How anyone could bring themselves to eat sushi coming from this place is beyond me. The cafe is so bad I won’t eat anything here except for muffins–I’ve tried every sandwich, the bagels, the salads. It’s crap.
Sushi Girl has red hair and is dressed entirely in blue. She has been struggling with the chopsticks, obviously not really sure how to hold them, grasping at them and straining to get the sushi dipped into some soy sauce. Her friend is wearing a bright green sweatshirt, and I can only see the back of her–the fading blonde highlights in her mousy brown hair, the blue jeans, and always that sweatshirt.
Sweatshirt is now trying the sushi. She’s not using the chopsticks, but is pinching a lump of rice between her thumb and forefinger. Sushi Girl is trying to convince her to eat it. “Just stick it in your mouth and chew,” she says. Oh, oh, here she goes: Sweatshirt has finally tried the sushi. She seems to like it, in that way you do when you don’t hate something but you want to look cool so you end up liking it.
Sushi Girl is trying with the chopsticks again. She gets a piece in her mouth, chews. Takes a swig of Sun Drop and does that little “aahh” thing, that self-satisfied ahh thing we all love doing when we know we are more experienced and more sophisticated than the person we are with. She is telling Sweatshirt how much she likes the sushi, but she hasn’t yet finished the whole tray.
I want to make fun of this girl; I want to laugh at her and point out how inexperienced she is, how naive and young and pompous. But I envy her, sitting there with her friend, trying sushi for the first time. I envy that freedom, that first time, that discovery. I envy that friend, that green sweatshirt, and that feeling of youth with a complete disregard for youth. Being young and feeling old. And I suppose I’m still there, but I feel that life is progressing in a way that will make it impossible for me to revel in youth for much longer. A mortgage, a job, a career path or lack thereof, bills and paying them with my checkbook, with our paychecks, taxes.
And maybe because it is sushi–maybe I envy her because it is sushi and I remember trying sushi for the first time with my own friend, though I was the one in the green sweatshirt: I was the one who was inexperienced. With Marianne, sushi from Publix, letting the rice soak in the soy sauce, rolling the sliced ginger on my tongue, tasting the wasabi–not too much–and that thrill of sophistication and adventure. Because I remember the sushi Marianne and I ate in Japan (Screaming Sushi!) and I remember how it felt to be abroad and young but just as grown up as I thought I could ever be, and I remember that piece of salmon, that clear taste, like it was nothing, even while it filled my mouth, the bite that was a bit too big, and I wonder if I will ever have an experience like that one again. With Marianne across the country and us both tied to our responsibilities and Japan being so far and so much money away and everywhere I can’t drive being so much money away.
Sushi Girl put the lid on her plastic tray, the uneaten sushi abandoned there with the empty soy sauce packet and the untouched ginger and wasabi. She and Sweatshirt are talking, nodding at each other, arm from table to chin, backpacks lying ignored next to their chairs. And I’m typing here alone, empty muffin wrapper, empty coffee cup.
