Sushi

I have absolutely nothing interesting to write right now. It's 100 degrees out, and there are forest & field fires from the heat & lack of rain so the sky has been a lovely shade of Apocalypse Brown from days now. The air quality is so bad that being outdoors for any extended period of time is like smoking two packs of cigarettes in an hour. So my eyes hurt. My lungs ache. It's pretty miserable right now.

I don't want to not (look at that double negative in action) write anything for 5 or 6 days, so I'm going to fall back on something I wrote a while ago for another website. I meant to submit it before the deadline but never did. I probably got distracted by something shiny or an episode of Toddlers in Tiaras. So here it is.



I’ve been decidedly single for nearly three years now. That’s apparently an eternity according to most people, so the question I get asked a lot is, “Why don’t you date?”
I’ve come up with a few replies, but the one that most accurately describes my feelings towards dating is this: my dating life is like sushi. No, really stick with me on this one.

The best analogy for my longest relationship was that dating my ex was very much like getting sushi at your standard take-out sushi bar. You know that place. It’s the one that has the sushi right there in the window, and every time you walk by you always wonder about the quality of the sushi they show in the window. There are dozens of them in any city. That sushi is standard, no thrills, cheap and you know exactly what you’re getting. It doesn’t exactly impress you, but it’s there, you don’t actively dislike that sushi and every once in a while the chef tosses in a surprise like extra ginger or a free bowl of miso soup. When you tell people you get your sushi from that place, the response is always a surprised, “Really? Hmm. I always thought you’d go for something better.” It’s certainly not the sushi they serve at Morimoto’s or the kind that Anthony Bourdain gets all weepy over, but you’ve only got $6.00 and you’re too lazy to search out something new that could potentially be worse.

And then one day this standard sushi makes you violently ill. You’ve chanced it one too many times, and have learned for certain that the window sushi is definitely not up to health inspector standards. It’s horrific to you, and you feel so awful that you’re pretty sure that no one has ever felt this awful on the face of the earth ever. It can’t just be a standard case of food poisoning, you’ve had food poisoning before, and it’s never felt this bad ever. It’s got to be a combination of ebola and monkey pox.

Eventually the really awful feeling ends, but then you go through that phase where you’re not sure you want to chance sushi again which is pretty much standard practice after a case of bad food poisoning. You still like the idea of sushi, and you haven’t moved on to another food group (no worries there, mom, I promise) Everyone seems to be talking about how awesome sushi is, and even though you miss it in the most general of ways, the memories of that dreaded food poisoning are still there. Every once in a while you spot a new sushi place, and you think “Maybe. Maybe I could go for a California roll or a spicy tuna roll,” and there have definitely been a few sushi bars that have caught your eye, but then you think about all the effort that would require. Getting sushi involves putting on some pants, leaving the house and having to try new things when actually you really sort of enjoy sitting around pants-free on the couch watching House. (I was going to make a comment here about it’s easier to just cook for myself but that was definitely not the image I’m going for).

So that’s where I am right now. Happily sushi-free. And pant-less.