frayleich

• I found a Carvel just a few miles down the road from our new place, and I began drooling like Pavlov’s dog. I used to go to Carvel all the time as a kid, until they closed down, and my favorite was always vanilla soft serve with rainbow sprinkles, so that’s what I ordered. I sat at the counter, and my thighs stuck to the faux leather seat, and as I ate, licking the spoon like I would a lover, I watched the people scurrying outside in the heat and thought, This is true happiness.
  
  
• G and I saw Land of the Dead, which had its moments, but could easily have been called Land of the Meh in my opinion.
  
  
• G’s fortune at the Chinese restaurant where we feasted on lemon chicken and vegetable fried rice: “Study metaphysics to be truly happy.”
  
  
• He asked if I would be willing to help him shop for groceries, as it’s a bit difficult for him to do so with his broken foot, and I readily agreed. It was like playing house as I steered the cart through the aisles and he told me what to grab. “You like Mug root beer, right?” I asked, and he said yes.
  
  
• We played Haunting Ground, a new survival horror game for the PS2, and I shrieked as my shapely character, Fiona, tried to evade the demented giant chasing her through the corridors. “Whoa, look how much detail they put into her bouncing boobs,” G commented, and I aimed a sideways kick at his (uninjured) shin.
  
  
• The best public access show ever: “Dinah Sings Jesus!” As G talked to his mother in the other room, I stared with mingled shock and glee as elderly Dinah sang praises to Jesus against a musical background that sounded like brain-damaged monkeys pounding on a Casio keyboard. “Goodbye cocaine! Goodbye pain! Jesus came and washed it away like holy rain!” she howled, and the second I heard G hang up the phone, I raced to the kitchen and forcibly dragged him back to the couch. “You need to see this immediately, if not sooner,” I commanded.
  
  
• After I carried G’s dinner out to the couch for him, I returned to the kitchen and got my own. When I returned, he stared at the carton of Ben & Jerry’s, package of string cheese, and bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade I had set out before me. “What is that?” he asked.
  
  “That’s my dinner,” I said cheerfully.
  
  He thrust a finger at the kitchen. “Get back in there and get some real food!”
  
  When I came back, I brought a can of Coke and a TV dinner consisting of a corn dog, vanilla pudding with cotton candy sprinkles, corn, and French fries. He looked at it and said, “I think you might have been better off with that other shit.”
  
  
• On Monday morning, we stood on his doorstep embracing, and I whispered, “Let’s just call in sick and go to Disneyland.”
  
  “In September,” he said, rubbing my lower back, “when my cast is off and the kids are in school. Maybe I’ll take you in September.”