In my mid-twenties, I moved back to Moses Lake, Washington to start a dot-com during the dot-boom. The situation was supposed to be temporary until my new business partner and I could move the company back to Seattle, but one month in, the dot-bust happened. We never raised any capital, never got the company off the ground, and I ended up stranded in “Moses Hole” for two years.
It wasn’t all bad. I ran into an old acquaintance at a Boys & Girls Club charity auction who had also just moved back to MoHo to start a regional A&E magazine called The Venue. Josh had heard I liked to write, and wanted to get together to talk about the possibility of writing for his mag. We met to discuss it over beer, and not only became instant lifelong friends, but also launched my entry into the world of writing beyond all the black notebooks I was filling up with melancholy-laced drivel like I was the next goddamn Arthur Rimbaud.
I had a blast writing for The Venue, producing features each month. It was fun doing interviews, it was fun crafting articles, it was fun seeing my writing in print, and I got my very first piece of hate mail for a little editorial I wrote about coffee. The whole experience was great, but it came to an end after a couple of years when I returned to Seattle. I couldn’t very well write about local issues from two hundred miles away. Eventually, Josh moved back to Seattle, too; and while he was still involved with the magazine for a few more years, he largely handed over the reigns to his partner Melea and an integral staffer named Brent.
Eventually, Melea floated the idea of bringing me back on to write a monthly column. Since I couldn’t write about local goings-on, she thought I might be able to just freestyle about more universal topics. I loved the idea of having carte blanche to print whatever I was thinking about (kind of like I’m doing here). There was one caveat. Moses Lake is a pretty conservative community, and Melea and Brent were understandably concerned that if I was given complete editorial freedom, a lefty like me could quickly alienate their entire readership. (Who, me?)
Josh called me up to tell me that Melea and Brent were going to be in Seattle, and wanted to get together for dinner and to discuss my potential column. Sure, cool, no problem.
“You’re going to be meeting Brent, and he has a lot of influence in the magazine,” Josh told me, “He’s a conservative Republican, so if you want to make a good impression, just don’t talk about politics.”
“Josh. Buddy. This is me we’re talking about,” I told him dismissively.
“That’s exactly why we’re having this conversation, Doug. I’m warning you, don’t open your big mouth and ruin everything. Just don’t talk about politics!”
I like to think I’m really good with people. I like to think that I can make polite dinner conversation, that I can schmooze, that I can make small talk. I really, really like to think those things.
They decided we should do dinner at the Wasabi Bistro on 2nd Avenue. When we sat down, I told Melea it was good to see her again, I was introduced to Brent, and we all ordered glasses of wine. Things were off to a good start. The small talk was so small it didn’t leave any footprints. I asked them how their visit to Seattle had been so far, and they started filling me in on how they’d spent their day: Pike Place Market, the Seattle Art Museum and the new Seattle Public Library.
You might think that it’s weird for an out-of-towner to visit the library during a visit to the city, but it made perfect sense. Seattle had just opened the shiny new library downtown that had been years in the making. I myself had visited the library just days after it had opened to see the spectacle, and so I naturally thought this conversation should be pursued a little. There’s nothing controversial about a library, for Christ’s sake.
“It’s a fucking monstrosity!” I told them. “It’s not a library, it’s a glass-and-steel ego trip. It would be a great building if it wasn’t a library, and it would be a great library if it wasn’t in that building. Books are sacred and need to be treated accordingly. The books in this library are not at home there, they’re imprisoned there. It’s like they didn’t even consider the books when they built this place. The spacing is all weird between the sections of book shelves so they could create a ‘community area?’ Who goes to the library to hang out with the community? You go there to be quiet and get books! The shelves themselves look like they came straight out of Circuit City–they’re built for CDs and DVDs, not books. The audacity of putting Shakespeare, Poe, Emerson and even Bukowski on frosted plexiglass. The beginning of the ‘Discovery Path’ is like walking down a goddamn esophagus, and what the hell is a ‘Discovery Path’ anyway? It’s like some kid fresh out of college was offered the opportunity to prove he was the next Frank Gehry, and totally forgot that he was building a library. It was built for the digital age, but filled with books, and those books deserve better.”
Look, there’s a reason that people tell you not to discuss religion and politics. It’s because people have really strong opinions on these topics. So, by extension, if you have a really strong opinion about any topic at all, it’s probably best not to voice it over dinner during a job interview.
The table got quiet. Really quiet. Brent finally made some solid points about libraries being a social necessity, their need to remain relevant in a changing society, and the increase in digital services offered by public libraries–libraries are information centers, not just book museums. I fired back about how libraries aren’t merely utilitarian, they’re holy. This went on for a few more minutes, and tension continued to build. I heard later that Brent wasn’t only an artist and designer, but had some history in architecture, and may or may not have known some of the people who worked on the new library, so my little diatribe was far from welcome.
He made fun of my unibrow (I’d didn’t learn zen and the art of eyebrow maintenance until a sexy hairstylist later gave me a subtle hint by tweezing me during a haircut). I made fun of his tiny, gray-haired ponytail. We spent the next half hour figuratively kicking each other in the balls. We reached a point, though, where things could either get really nasty, or we could laugh it off. We laughed it off, and had a new respect for each other. I shut my big fat mouth, and the dinner proceeded.
It was time to order, and I looked over the menu. I’m not really a fan of seafood; but I’d never had sushi, and I’ll try anything twice. I’d also never had wasabi, so I decided to order the Wasabi Roll, and bang out two new experiences in one fell swoop.
Our food arrived, and we had a high-level discussion about my involvement with the magazine, though we didn’t get into specifics, nor did we really discuss the guidelines for editorial content or their concerns. After the row between Brent and me, it was probably better to kick that can down the road a little. So, we just made polite dinner conversation, and I adopted the speak-when-spoken-to rule. I just wanted to play it cool and get through the rest of the evening.
Josh asked me how I’d liked my Wasabi Roll. I had to admit, it was pretty decent, even though I don’t typically like fish. And I was surprised that it wasn’t nearly as spicy as I’d expected, what with wasabi and everything. It was good.
I finished my meal, and sipped my wine, and I felt like I was making a good impression at last. I asked questions to keep the conversation going, and kept my opinion to myself. I could pull this off.
Mmm-avocado! I grabbed it with my chopsticks, and popped that dollop into my mouth.
If you already see what’s happening here, you’re much smarter than I was then. The green stuff was not avocado, it was the wasabi that made my roll a Wasabi Roll–the wasabi was served on the side, and this is why my dinner hadn’t been as spicy as I’d expected. Not only had I never tried wasabi, I’d never seen it before either. And now, I had a button of wasabi the size of a half-dollar in my mouth.
My nostrils flared. My eyes began to water. My mouth burned with the intensity of a smelting furnace. I felt my face flush, and I gripped the edge of the table in pain. I almost fell out of my chair. I wanted to run around the restaurant like my clothes had caught fire, but I just kept thinking, “Be cool, Doug. Be cool, Doug.” I didn’t want to make another scene, and somehow that translated into the notion that I couldn’t let anyone know I was dying a wasabi death.
I calmly mashed up the wasabi in my mouth, quietly swallowed, and took a small sip of my water. The water made it even worse, and now my esophagus and all my innards were in flames. I stared straight ahead, and feigned interest in the conversation. I grabbed my napkin, and every few seconds, made the natural motion to wipe my lips, but also furtively dabbed the tears out of my eyes and the sweat off my face. I kept taking small sips of water. I thought I was going to die. I kept smiling.
The check eventually came, and we closed out. We said our goodbyes, and left the restaurant. My mouth still burned, but now it was tolerable. As Josh and I walked in the same direction toward our cars, he gave me an earful about my idiocy in the library conversation, a scolding I deserved. But how was I supposed to know that an artist from Soap Lake (near Moses Lake) had a connection with the big, fancy new library in downtown Seattle? Seriously, what are the odds?
I told him what had happened with the wasabi.
“Holy shit, dude! Are you serious?! I couldn’t tell! Nobody could tell!” Josh laughed. I started laughing, too. If something like that was going to happen, of course it was going to happen to me.
“Why didn’t you just spit it out into your napkin?” he asked. I didn’t have a good answer. It never occurred to me. I only had the one thought going through my mind, “Be cool, Doug.” Dumb-ass.
Epilogue
I did end up submitting a story to be used in my new column. It was about President Ronald Reagan, who had just died. I tried to take a politically neutral position, but after pointing out how Reagan had referred to “Cadillac Welfare Queens,” and how he tried to get ketchup classified as a vegetable in school lunches, it was decided that it couldn’t be printed in The Venue, and in fact, that a column wasn’t such a good idea.
Also, I haven’t had wasabi again to date.
