Sophisticated living

Installment deux of an infrequent chronicle.

Few things are more sophisticated than leafy greens and gravy, and after the lady-lawyer polished off a plate of elite cheese fries, nothing remained but a large leaf of lettuce, soaked in grease and dusted with flakes of batter.

"I'll give you five dollars if you eat that," I said to Flop, my highly prestigious co-blogger.

And so he did. He folded the large leaf of greasy lettuce, savoring it in a single helping. I placed a five-dollar bill on the table.

There was still the matter of the accompanying sauces -- gravy, curry sauce and blue cheese. We were seated at an al fresco establishment on Second Avenue. A tornado passed by.

"Excuse me m'am," said our gentleman co-adventurer to the waitress, "but is there a tornado going on?"

"No," said the waitress, oblivious to the tornado. "The women inside are just loud."

The lady lawyer was more interested in the sauces than the tornado. She promised Flop that if he combined the gravy, curry sauce and blue cheese, and drank it like a shot, she would pay him five dollars. I said that her idea was elite and sophisticated, so I placed more money on the table.

Flop, an ambitious capitalist and entrepreneur, considered this a good investment. He poured the gravy into the blue cheese, and then the curry sauce, and mixed. He lifted the cup to his mouth and consumed the mixture.

"You just took a month off your life," the lady lawyer told Flop.

"It was worth it," Flop said.

The lady lawyer turned to our co-adventurer, a gentleman. "[Name redacted] once drank his own urine," she told the gentleman.

"I don't believe that," said the gentleman.

"Flop," I said, "how much money would be required for you to drink your own urine?"

"We're talking four figures," Flop said.

"Perhaps I should organize a fundraiser," I said. "It would only be a teacup's worth. All beverages are civilized when there's a teacup involved. Plus," I added helpfully, "urine is an antiseptic."

"Hey Flop," said the gentleman co-adventurer, "how much money to drink a teacup of ejaculate?"

"That would be in the six figures," Flop replied shrewdly.

The brain trust engaged in sophisticated speculation about urine and ejaculate. The gentleman co-adventurer asserted that he drinks his own ejaculate "all the time."

"I fingerbanged your girlfriend," the lady lawyer told the gentleman. "I made out with girls in college."

Elites love waltzing and anal sex, but for the truly sophisticated, the fingerbang is without substitute. As I stepped away from the table to smoke a cigarette in the tornado, I heard the brain trust engage in an animated discussion about acts of fingerbang. I paused to quietly reflect on the rich rewards of sophisticated living.

"You couldn't pay me enough money to smoke a cigarette," Flop said when I returned.

"I ran ten miles today," I countered. "I'm much healthier than you. I can smoke if I want."

An arm-wrestling tournament followed: gentleman co-adventurer defeated Flop, I defeated the lady-lawyer, and the gentleman co-adventurer defeated me. Beer spilled. The waitress walked out into the tornado.

For awhile we exchanged ideas Old English, French, Italian and Chinese: "Hit rǣd swīþlic feortan be wind," Flop said.

"On peut jamais avoir assez de coup de doigt dans le vent," said the lady lawyer.

"Vorrei avere sesso con quella ragazza sottile nel tiara," said the gentleman co-adventurer.

"对手指轰隆将居住," I observed.

Sophisticated living

It all starts with the blowjob behind the dumpster, because when you're an attractive young lady and you arrive to the birthday party of a minor acquaintance -- a minor acquaintance who vomits shortly thereafter, vomits all night, vomits to the point where it's like The Amityville Horror and blood comes from the walls -- and you make eye contact across the crowded bar with a handsome young man, your jowls yearn. And to the dumpster you must go.*

But you're a young lady in your 20s, and you make the worst choice of your life and find yourself with another gentleman, a gentleman who horrifies your roommates when, after being sexed up, walks to the bathroom in boxer-briefs. This faux pas is second to that of the lover of your most hated roommate, whose boyfriend's porn-star boner stuns the household in a moment of indiscretion. A roommate's Cuban mother catches a glimpse, and impropriety ensues.

Yet conversation shifts when the main courses arrive. "Are you going to eat that wasabi?" a gentleman asks a well-known pussy. "I'll give you $20 if you eat that entire block of wasabi, right now."

The pussy demurs. He won't eat that wasabi unless offered $100 or more.

Conversation changes again, about the differences between eating whales and dolphins and toxic fish. Still, that pussy refuses to eat the wasabi.

Dinner ends. The group narrows from seven to three, and moves to a sake bar, and to another bar after that.

"You don't have to scuba dive to realize that finding a U-boat is some bad-ass shit," a well-known pussy observes. "My point in all this is, are submarines ever not cool?"

With no disagreement, the conversation turns cosmopolitan, to experiences in Prague and Amsterdam and Copenhagen, and the duties of royalty.

"What I think would be awesome," observes the pussy, "would be to fucking go out with people when they discover something under the ocean."

Exhausted -- either by the sophisticated conversation or by a bout weeknight drinking that began at 5 p.m. and is approaching its seventh hour -- one of the remaining three departs. She is bereft that she has tickled no one.

The author glances up to see young girls in the window outside. They are 20, 21 -- 23 at most. In the 90-degree night, they are dropping ice cubes in each others' shirts. They lift their shirts to reveal thin stomachs, ice channeling down through their breasts, dropping down to their bellies, sliding down and falling to the sidewalk below. For a moment, their navels are ice machines.

*This paragraph is 90% fictional. The rest of this post is accurate.