There's a game we used to play called "How Much Would You Pay?" I am not really sure how it got started or who played it first but it is now a part of the vocabulary. How Much Would You Pay? is ironic in that it is an inherently fake game, played to try and put a price on impossible things. Perhaps the most telling example of How Much Would You Pay? took place on my first trip to Israel in the summer of 2004, with Rebecca. She had been to Israel, many times, and had lived there for the year not long before but I had never been there and did not know quite what to expect. Some things were exactly as I'd imagined, and some things were completely different.
One thing that there had been no way to predict is the fact that in Israel, there is no Mexican food. None. Not like, kind of here and there but it's hard to find and definitely not kosher....not like, you have to take the bus to Tel Aviv and get it there on Sheinkin Street where the hipsterim hang out. None, like, yeah. None at all.
Living as I was in San Francisco, where the burrito is an inexpensive and readily-available staple food, I was floored. I do love Mexican food, but suddenly my love had turned to obsession. Eating a burrito was all I could possibly think about. I am an adventurous traveler, and that includes trying new foods as well, but in moments of 115-degree-Fahrenheit weakness when we had been on the bus all day and the drama of my trans-Atlantic personal life became too much to bear I was not in the mood to try yet another Middle Eastern combination of dates, lentils, skinny cucumbers, and fermented cheese. I wanted the rice-and-beans predictability of the goodness that comes wrapped, bolster-shaped, in foil with chips on the side for $6.49.
So we began to play. At the beginning of the three-week trip I declared I'd pay, you know, the standard price: seven bucks, or whatever, for a vegetarian burrito. By the time we were queued up to board the El Al flight back to JFK my price had gone up to 450 shekels (US$75) and Rebecca was SICK of hearing about it. You can easily guess what I had for my first dinner back in the States upon my arrival at SFO 24 hours later. El Balazo, aw yeah...
What does any of this have to do with the present day? Perhaps you recall my post from a few days ago about things I refuse to wear over vacation. I have stuck by the promise I made myself not to wear my watch, and mostly it is very good for me. It is not the logistical matter of elapsed time that I seek to avoid, because clocks of course are everywhere. Rather, it is the sense of being physically cuffed with a constant reminder of the truth that time is passing and the related response that I personally experience, which is an overwhelming sense of never being able to get everything finished. So yes, can I walk into the other room to view the clock on the wall or can I look on my cell phone and see the time? Yes, but that is not important. Being free of constantly checking my watch in an attempt to faux-determine how behind I've fallen is my goal.
Unfortunately this has had the negative side effect of making it a bit unusual to be around me, since my discomfort about not knowing what time it is definitely affects others. Example: last night we were waiting for the performance to start, and as cool as I'd been playing it I suddenly lost my marbles, consumed with an urgent and undeniable need to know what time it was. I leaned over and murmured into her ear: "I'll pay you five dollars if you tell me what time it is..." And just like that, How Much Would You Pay? was on. I hadn't planned to play it, but that impossible need to acquire something just beyond reach had struck without much warning and I reverted to the game I haven't played in years now.
Do you think she told me? Nope. "Seven?" I offered hopefully. "Do you really want to know?" she asked. I stopped to consider. "Not for seven dollars, I guess," I replied, sinking back into my own seat. Come on, you could buy a burrito with those seven bucks. A girl's got to be thrifty, these days.
Wow, this is eerily familiar. It turns out there is no Mexican food in Paris either. Maybe not quite in the way that there is none in Israel, but practically speaking it's non-existent (the few Mexican menus we read did not contain the proper Mexican ingredients: meat, beans, rice, cheese, salsa, guac, perhaps sour cream -- how hard is it not to put a cream sauce in a burrito?).
ReplyDeleteSo my game in Paris became: what would I do to get a burrito? Luckily we had an American friend in Paris who happens to be an amazing chef and actually made us burritos (as a direct result of my constant whining), with homemade tortillas and everything, though recreating salsa in a country without jalapeno peppers is not easy. The low point was when I actually made Sage's mom buy me a burrito from El Ojo de Agua II (you know where it is -- Oakland, CA), wrap it in many layers of foil and ziploc bags, freeze it, and bring it with her on her overnight flight to Paris (checked baggage), and I then devoured it immediately upon its arrival, after a half-hearted attempt to re-heat it. I did have a stomach-ache for the next 24 hours, but it did not dampen my joy.