Wednesday, March 5, 2014

THE BATTLE OF SHANGHAI

     It’s largely bewildering to consider the possibility that some people have no friends, but the behavior of some of the Internet’s surliest assholes makes a compelling case for its veracity. But most of us do have friends, and some of us are lucky enough to have forged a friendship with someone that defies any ontological sense. Dancing on kismet’s strings you crossed paths with the one soul capable of navigating your profoundly twisted psyche’s Kafkaesque engineering. You share an understanding of and even an appreciation for one another’s neuroses and baroque addlepations. It’s a plush bubble of camaraderie in a torrential mosh of rolling eyes and curled lips, one you often shape and reinforce with your fraternal sense of humor. You share your jokes and where others hear the guttural imbecilities of barbarians, you two sing the language of dryads and laugh yourselves intoxicated. This is what led Brian and I to have the following exchange via text:
               Me: Having Chinese. I plan on asking them which
                       dynasty is their favorite, and then debating
                       them on whichever they choose.
               Brian: Ask if they can make peanut butter and
                       jelly sandwich.
               Me: Before or after the dynasty debate?
               Brian: During.
               Me: Will do.
     I arrived at the battlefield, my regular Chinese place, [name redacted, because you don’t need to know where I get my Chinese food]. Joe was behind the counter per usual. We shook hands and exchanged our pre-battle pleasantries. Only Joe had no idea I was planning to attack. I was coming to him as his regular customer who had always greeted him with a smile and a handshake. I’d given no indication that I was planning a Teutoburg massacre.
     “Here you are,” he said. “$[price redacted, because you don’t need to know how much I spend on my Chinese food].”
     I paid, grabbed the bag, and then launched my opening salvo. “Hey, let me ask you something. What’s your favorite imperial dynasty?”
     Joe stopped, his mouth stuck between a nonplussed gape and a grin tickled awkward. “My favorite dynasty?” he asked. “Of China?”
     I locked my face into the cast steel of a humorless cataphract. “Yes.”
     Joe’s mouth bent decidedly into a smile wide as Xiang Yu’s at Julu. “Okay,” he said. “The Xia.”
     “The Xia?” I sputtered with exaggerated apoplexy. “They were mythical.”
     Joe’s eyes widened and he exploded in surprised guffaws. “No they weren’t.”
     “Yeah, they were. Xia Yu the Great is as mythical as Romulus and Remus or King Arthur.”
     “Or George Washington’s wooden teeth,” Joe added.
     I smiled, realizing I had an opponent who understood the rules of engagement. “C’mon,” I said. “You gotta go with someone real.”
     “You asked what my favorite Chinese dynasty was. You didn’t say they had to be a real dynasty.”
     “Well, then you might as well say the Carringtons were your favorite dynasty.”
     “They were my mother’s favorite.”
     Wow. What a competitor. Time to break out the Greek fire.
     “Hey,” I said. “Could you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”
     Joe bowed his head in silent snickers, which should be a “healthy” variation of the famous candy bar. He raised his head and said, “Of course.”
     I beamed. “Can I have one?”
     “No. We don’t serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.”
     “You just said you could make me one,” and before I had loosed the words from my mouth, I knew I’d fallen into his trap.
     “I know how to make peanut butter and jelly. That’s doesn’t mean I’m going to put it on the menu.”
     Holy shit, he left his flank open. I targeted his pride and livelihood and fired. “All good restaurants let you order something not on the menu.” 
     “Not Chinese restaurants. We’re very anal that way.”
     Damn, this guy was good. He had countered by opening a brand new front I couldn’t defend. If I, the white demon, pushed back on the racial front, I ran the risk of escalating the battle out of the realm of the playful. Joe knew I wouldn’t do this. I had to redirect my initial charge. “I bet the Xia would.”
     “They weren’t real.”
     Son. Of. A. Bitch. Joe had me. I was Cao Cao at Red Cliffs. There was nothing left for me to do but spill my king and concede, which I did. I bowed my head and for the first time during the entire exchange laughed my ass off. Joe did the same. “See you later,” I said, and I walked out smiling. I had gone in there to entertain what I had believed was an insulated whimsy, and come out to find the wind carrying that whimsy over the mosh pit. My rational thirty-five-year old mind had known it was absurd to think that my sense of humor matched only one other on a planet of over seven billion. But to find another only five minutes from my house gave me optimistic pause. Maybe the pit was plusher than I’d thought.

No comments:

Post a Comment