Cucumbers And Tomatoes

Or tomatoes, however you say it.

Thanks to April, last night I went out for the first time in weeks. I went to the city in my nice blazer, with my hoodie in my bag in case it gets cold. My blazer has many buttons because of a certain feature, and so when I got on the train, a lady going to the footy smiled and said to me, “if I ever need buttons, I’ll come to you.”

On the tram from Flinders Station to QV, I had many many people stare at me. I later said to April, “either I’m ri-DI-kulusly good-looking (said in the same way as Zoolander), or each and every one of them was trying to figure out if I am a girl or a guy.” April agreed it was probably the latter. I mentioned that it happens every morning on the tram, too, to the point where I get paranoid and start sneakily wiping my face to check if there’s anything on it.

We sat on the fake grass area of QV, April, Si, Simon’s 2nd April (i.e. his newly bought PS3) and I. It got very very windy and cold, so I went for that cool hipster look where you wear a hoodie inside a blazer, and passersby think “woah, bro, that’s a sharp shoulder line because of the blazer, but a nice and cushy neck-line because of the hoodie. Righteous!”

A small girl began running circles around us, airplane style, so I screamed “WHEEEEEEEEE” which scared her off.

Soph, April’s little sister, showed up and we went to meet April’s childhood friend Tom on Swanston St. Tom is in the army, and has finally started having weekends off. He is training to drive tanks – the ones with 8-wheels and they’re fast so they’re not very good under fire but they’re FAST – and to handle weaponry, obviously. He has many stories of rough training sessions and wilderness camps.

Tom hasn’t been in the city very often, and if he was honest, he’d never had Chinese food at a Chinese restaurant before. So April decided Chinatown would be a good idea, until I reminded her that there is a chance Tom a) might not like the food and b) can’t use chopsticks (when I mentioned this, Tom sort of said, “chopsticks?”).

In the end we decided to hell with that, and went to Lygon St for Italian. Ironically, we met up with one of Soph’s friends called Pasta (nickname, obviously). We were waiting for Pasta next to an Asian busker playing Guang Liang songs on his keyboard.

Walked to Lygon St via Russel St, and it took a lot less time than I thought it would. We ended up going to/being pulled into this small restaurant near Grattan St. The manager who pulled us in was very friendly and incredibly heavily-accented. Fresh home-made pasta, she boasted. Better than the restaurant next door. Simon found an online review of the place, and the review mentioned that the manager would persuade and repeat about the freshness of their pasta. We supposed that we’ve just been had by a nightly routine.

Tom was served Coronas with a wedge of lemon inside the neck of the bottle. He says it tastes interesting, so I think I will try that next time.

After a while, Soph’s boyfriend Erh- arrived (now, I am more than certain I mentioned Erh-. In the post about Hamwu’s birthday last April, when I talked about a guy who walked around in a Scream mask scaring and shadowing everyone, that guy was Erh-) with his friend Anvo. I can’t remember Anvo’s name properly so I will say Anvo but it probably isn’t Anvo. Anvo and Erh- are Turkish and Pasta is Iranian. I have not really hung out with non-Asian guys much so yesterday was an eye-opener, in a good way.

Anvo was a fun character, he would be talking to me one moment, and a girl would walk past and I would just have to wait a few minutes for him to turn back around to me. The dinner table conversation got a bit MA rated when they started evaluating April’s true vegetarianism, seeing as she’s dating Si and everything. (Go on, draw the dirtiest conclusions from that.)

Erh- asked April if there is a vegetarian way of eating meat. April replied, “lick it.”

Laughter.

Soph said, “well, what about cucumbers and tomatoes?”

Laughter.

Erh-: “Cucumbers never go soft though.”

Soph: “What about when they get old?”

Laughter. A passing waiter gave us the eye.

Then, the conversation moved onto whether there is a Halal way of eating meat (still thinking dirty here, folks). Then ensued a demonstration of praying before “killing”, and at that point Tom was looking horrified, I was looking confused (being at the far end of the table, I get parts of the jokes only) and Si was just laughing.

After the meal, we said bye to Erh- and Anvo, and then bye to Soph, Pasta and Tom at Melb Central. Took the train home without too much problem, despite there being a slightly strange girl trying to play some sort of hand game with herself loudly.

I apologize if any readers were offended by what I wrote. I don’t think it’s excuse enough to say “but the jokes were made by people of the religion” but there it is…

Alex.