I speak minimal spanish (and I'm a vegetarian), so hanging out with my neighbors who all're cooking carcinitas in a big cauldron stacked on cinderblocks over a woodfire on the ground can be awkward. I can barely communicate with them, I try to speaketh the espanol as much as I can, but they offer me boiled pork so generously and I try to say no thank you, I just ate, soy vegetariano (and mispronounce it but they understood). Still they offer so generously. My toddler plays around with the ten other kids, and I watch him play rather than make eye contact with the other adult men with whom I can barely talk. I try to listen to them hablan - and I catch words, phrases, and I start to get hope I'll get a whiff of whatever the fuck they're talking about. They offer me cervezas and I drink them. You like Bud light? I shrug and nod, because I'm not about to tell them about $9 indian pale ale six-packs while I know they all work themselves from dawn to dusk on Saturdays and Sundays too, both members of the household working, living in some landlord's house paying his property taxes that pay for the schools, housing kids and semi-adopting kids that aren't their own, while I strut around 7 days of week, watching Elijah play in the pool in the front yard or pulling out of the driveway to drive him somewhere.
But earlier that day, I read some religious rhetoric about staying out of your comfort zone, so I stayed there, accepting their beers, trying to follow their conversations and have some pathetic ones of my own. More people came, wives manifested, and I was feeling fine and drunk. And then I had to excuse myself to drive off downtown to see a stringed symphony play pop songs and movie tunes in front of that big fancy auditorium where rich people go see ballet. And it was nice underneath the blue sky and the atop the green grass, listening to music, supervising toddler in a children dance party play area, hanging around with a bunch of people I don't know or vaguely recognize from a playground or kids' event somewhere.
