A Girl...

Full Moon*

Two Sundays ago found Simon and I once more in bandanas and saggy jeans and back-support belts as we did the bulk of Project Getting the Apartment in Order and Suitable for Public Viewing. What started out at a maze of boxes and random piles became by day's end a real working home, with a coffee table and votive candles and a record player and a full bar and an office and a library and 5.1 stereo surround sound. Holy cow this guy has a lot of stuff. Before:

Come eight o'clock, he had just finished wiring most of the speakers, I had just finished watching him wire most of the speakers, and we were both starved for dinner. Frozen pizza? Baked tofu? Tortillas with salsa and fresh avacado? Cookies? While scrounging for sustenance, from the kitchen we saw the neighbors out on their back porch, so we gave them a friendly wave through the window and wished them a good night.

Come over, the neighbor lady motioned to us. Simon stuck his head out the window of the breakfast nook. "Come over. Have dinner. Join us," she said. He looked at me. I looked at him. "Should we?" said the girl who is afraid of strangers and strange food, especially when the former don't speak English so well ("What if we have problems communicating and there's a full minute of silence?!") and when the latter is ethnic ("Chicken feet! Good god, they're eating the feet of a chicken!"). But Simon, dear Simon, he makes me brave in the face of culinary challenges and always keeps the conversation real and alive and comfortable for everyone involved, so I figured hell, it might be awkward and/or yucky, but it will be an adventure. This is how he makes me better.

So we go out the back door, down the steps, through the gate, past their dog (who I have just now named Iban, which stands for Incessantly Barking at Nothing), and up onto their patio, which is set with a table spread of bowls and plates and pots of totally scary Chinese food. There's a little altar set up with sticks of red incense and there's a little pot of tea and little tiny tea cups. And did I mention the totally scary Chinese food? Fried balls of something, husked produce that looked like it might have to be peeled with a chainsaw, white and gray slabs of opaque gelatinous stuff with green and black flecks and sesame seeds and a mysterious aroma de fish. The moon cakes I recognized; "I've seen those on tv," I proudly declared.

Simon asked the Chinese American kids what all this stuff was, but they hardly knew it themselves. "I think this is taro root. I think those are lotus leaves stuffed with something. I don't know what that is but my mom made it this morning. I don't know if this is rice or something else, but it's sweet. That purple thing is nasty." Yikes yikes double yikes.

Turns out we were celebrating our first Chinese Moon Festival, hence the moon cakes and the full moon peeking at us under the porch awning. It's an annual celebration held in honor of "some lady who did something important and must have been connected to the moon somehow," according to neighbor boy Ben. "Where's Google when you need it?" said I.

Long story a little shorter, I was hungry, I wanted to be brave and mature, and I was at a freaking Chinese Moon Festival with a family who had come to California directly from China, so I ignored my gastrointestinal timidity and I ate. And ate and ate. The soup had huge chicken bones in it and everything tasted a little bit like shellfish, but it was pretty darn good. There were red grapes and fresh peanuts (for some reason a little gray and a little wet inside) and roasted waterchestnuts and itty bitty bananas called "Emperor" or "King Bananas" and tons of weird gelatinous substances in all colors and shapes--buns, slabs, molds, and freeform. For dessert we had some kind of miniature dough cakes (like mochi skin ("It's made of people!" PEEEEEEople!")) with a melted brown-sugar middle, served on the end of a toothpick. What a lovely evening. What a lovely surprise. What exceptional company.

[The family owns the house Simon's apartment is in, so we'd met and chatted with them a few times before that night. Every time we've been to their place, the mom has forced upon us peanuts or tea or, my favorite, Chinese cookies from a Chinese cookie tin. I'm sure they're not really called "Chinese cookies" (they look a little like Piroulines and may be a thicker form of Pocky), but that doesn't stop me from referring to her as Chinese Cookie Lady, or CCL to Simon, who has a habit of turning every phrase into an acronym (remember little Gaby Hoffman in Sleepless in Seattle?). Anyway, I love Chinese Cookie Lady for her cookies, but I also love her for sending her daughter over with an extra set of keys to Simon's apartment ALL FOR ME! When he went over to sign the lease a few weeks ago, they said they'd debated whether to put me on the lease too because we're clearly so in el-oh-vee-ee LOVE. In conclusion, I now also love Chinese Cookie Lady because she invited us to our first Chinese Moon Festival. Gan bei!]

And then we went back to Simon's place and treated ourselves to cocktails in the new lounge. After:

I wish I could have you all over for the evening to enjoy the place as we enjoy it.

*I'm sorry. I can't help myself.