Well, it’s time to rip of the band-aid and get started. Enough fiddling with details. I accept this is going to suck until it doesn’t. The only thing that will fix it is time. And content. Time will happen on it’s own, always does. Content not so much. So I’ll be starting with tacos.
I’m not making them for you, I’m sure that will come later, but tacos as a metaphor.
It starts with my daily quest for tacos. I work from home so part of my morning routine is to slip out and go get tacos. I think it’s a mental remnant of my morning commute. Wake up. Do some work. Make and consume coffee. Experience what coffee has to offer. Shower. Tacos. Work more. It’s a ritual that will need to come to an end soon. But for now, tacos.
My taco choices are very pretentious in their lack of pretense, which I’m not a fan of. I despise pretense, particularly when it comes to food. Food should about continuing one’s existence, first and foremost and, having achieved that end, about pleasure, the purpose which is to give the first meaning. As you get to know me, you’ll figure out that I’m a Hedonist, so I’m just going to go ahead and throw that out there. This post is about ripping off band-aids, afterall. So. Taco choices.
With the exception of Jack-in-the-Box tacos, (stoner or hangover tacos), I eschew what I call “White People Tacos”. Ya’ll know the ones. Either the kind loaded with pretense you find at places that rhyme with “Smorchy’s” or “Schmelvet”, those are technically tacos, and they might even be tasty, but they come across as contrived, almost desperate to appeal to people who eat for appearances. Also not a huge fan of Taco Schmell for tacos, unless I’m in an ironic mood. Inevitably the people working at the window are usually recent Hispanic imports. I always feel badly for them and unless they are truly happy, I hope their time at the Bell is just a stepping stone on the way to bigger and better things.
For me, the perfect taco must contain two things at a minimum: handmade corn tortillas and a reasonable amount of risk. The tortilla is not negotiable. The kind of risk is. So I spend a lot of time, driving around looking for the sort of mobile establishment or hole in the wall that would scare the shit out of my wife. That’s usually a good start. I then look at the people in line. Do they look like me or do they look like the people I pay to do things I’m too lazy or inept to do. If the later, we have another potential winner. The most important thing I look at is the lady making the tacos. Not the one taking the order, sometimes they are merely decorative, but the one doing the work. I’m going to need her to be older. At least my age or up and I need to see the expression on her face when she first sees me. Is it friendly? Is it pensive? Is it open? Is it disinterested? It’s important because she’s probably going to be seeing a lot of me.
The tacos stand I’ve been hitting lately is stashed in the back of a gas station. It always makes me giggle as the building is surrounded by the now ubiquitous food trucks I’m not likely to give a sniff to. The sort I seriously thought about opening 20 years ago serving not-tacos. Again, a little too desperate, but in a completely different way. I really should give them a try because like me, they are probably just trying to break free. Luckily for my soul, they are usually closed when I go a’ taco-roaming.
My “go to” tacos are lengua, barbacoa, or chorizo con papas, none of which are hard to make, but really easy to fuck up, particularly the potatoes. To make a good potato, you really have to care. We’ll talk potatoes later. Probably more than anyone should outside of Ireland, I suppose.
I think that’s enough backstory.
Why am I starting this with tacos I didn’t make? Because Friday morning, I’m there at my current taco stand and there is a yard crew making their order between me and this scrawny, nervous looking white kid. He approaches me as I’m monitoring the time (I have to get back to my desk – no mouse jiggler.), waiting for my order.
He points at a picture of the Asado de Puerco. “Do you know what that is?” he asks.
I smile and reply. “It’s pork stew.”
“No. Do you know what part of the pig?” he asks.
“Oh, that. It’s probably shoulder.” was my respondes. He looked very relieved. It triggered me. Yes, GenX gets triggered, but in the pre-woke meaning of the word and I’m screaming inside my head, “But it might be the face! It might be the face! Wait. Don’t say it until after he’s ordered. It’s funnier that way.” Which is why I’m starting this with tacos.
They say the first step is the most important one and yes, you can’t take the second one without that first, but it’s that second one that really starts the ball rolling. It is a commitment to the first, a statement that screams, “Fuck it! I’m doing this!”
That guy took his first step into a new world and was terrified to take the second, but still he took it. And so must I, despite my trepidations.
Here we go. Fuck it. I’m doing this.