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chill & mosquitoes
Tuesday, September 15 2015
I finished reflooring the main guestroom today and then did a little work in the hallway. But the going there was slow due to the complexity of the edges.
This evening Gretchen and I drove across the Hudson to meet up with our friends Jasmin and Mary Ann at the Two Boots near Bard College. When we arrived, Gretchen saw someone she knew from her Bard Prison Initiative days, and she naturally went and had a converation, but afterwards she reported it had been a little off. She was drummed out of the BPI world in two different ways, and I suppose it is natural for those still working for it would have a distorted view of her.
Jasmin and Mary Ann showed up a little late, and Mary Ann was wearing the same hemp-colored dress she got in Italy that she has worn at our two previous restaurant double-dates. Initially we tried sitting inside to avoid the road noise from 9W, but the air conditioning was too strong, so we went outside. Jasmin can't do Daiya cheese, but that was pretty much the only limitation, and it applied only to the medium pizza (we got a large and a medium).
Conversation generally avoided the dull vegan activist banter that so glazes over my eyes in these situations. Instead, it focused on some interesting things about Jasmin & Mary Ann's life. It turns out that for much of their lives, they'd mostly dated men, and Mary Ann didn't begin having relationships with women until after menopause, when she was in her 50s (her age difference with Jasmin is nearly thirty years). Jasmin also talked about what it's been like having, in the past several years, gone from being an overweight person to being someone with a more normal (world-normal, not American-normal) physique. She talked about the little traumas she used to experience as a fat person, like going to a thrift store with friends and having them deluge her with necklaces to try (the unspoken reality being that none of the clothes could possibly fit). She still finds herself thinking like a fat person. For example, at one point in the meal she seemed cold and Gretchen offered her her sweater. For a brief moment, Jasmin admitted later, it flashed through her mind that there was no way the sweater would fit and that accepting it would just lead to humiliation.
After the meal, we went inside and sat at a booth for another round of drinks away from the evening's slight chill and mosquitoes (a pair which, like acne and wrinkles, are generally two problems that are supposed to be experienced on non-overlapping occasions).
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
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