Apocrypha, and other Greek

There are, perhaps, two stories that I wish to tell from the con. I say perhaps, because I told myself that the next time I blogged I should tell these two stories, but now I've forgotten one of them. I'm hoping it will come to me as I type.

First of all, I want to tell you about the theoretical Whole Foods. Understand that the hotel was in the middle of a strip mall, a truly haute strip mall with matching white brick walkways and glossy tile facades and all that. Strip mall for the new rich, I suppose, when you can't afford actual luxury, but can afford the pre-manufactured, unoriginal knock off. Anyway. There was a Whole Foods in this complex. In fact, I believe it was the ur-Whole Foods. I know of its existence because I was told. I even saw evidence of it, in the form of purchased tangerine juice and some sort of pepper salad. And now I have remembered the second story, which I shall get to in a moment.

So, the first night I'm sitting outside with Deva and Tim, of Orbit. Important people, and very kind. Tim is from London. His London-ness rolls off him in waves, sort of the way my fundamentalist youth drips from my eyes like a foggy aura. Good guy. I don't know how we got on the subject, but we ended up discussing the difference in carry laws in our respective regions. I made a point of hunting him down (wrong word choice) the next day and trying to convince him that I was not, in fact, a gun-toting sociopath. He frisked me.

The point, while we were talking and drinking and I was explaining why everyone I knew as a child carried a knife (I have trouble explaining that, actually. Why did everyone I knew wear pants? Because they did. Nurr.) the point is that Joshua Bilmes was there, and he was eating the aforementioned pepper salad, and drinking the tangerine juice, and explaining that he only ever drank tangerine at the beginning and end of the season, because he looked forward to its arrival, and then mourned its departure. And these things were from Whole Foods. Okay? So, then I drank too much. There are bits of the evening I don't really remember, in fact. I know I got back to my room, and I closed the door. My room had two beds, and I lay down in the one farthest from the bathroom. I woke up in the other bed. And I had rearranged a good deal of the furniture, and made a pile of books on one of the chairs. So forth. I don't remember any of that. The point is that I was very drunk, and the next morning I was very unwell.

I decided I wanted to go to whole foods. I wanted to purchase a bread deal of bread, and eat it very slowly. Joshua had made it sound as if the place was just a block or two away, and I figured the walk would do me good. So I got dressed and went downstairs. Joshua was there, talking to someone. I asked him for directions, and he gave me directions. I thought I understood them. I did not. In retrospect, I crossed one street too far to the north. I think. Anyway. I walked for quite a while, ended up at a Borders which was not yet open, then walked back to the hotel and purchased an overpriced croissant and some coffee. Really, the walk did me a lot of good, and I was fine for the rest of the day. But I didn't make it to the Whole Foods.

The next day, I decided I was going to have lunch there. I had been eating on a strange schedule, and any of you who know me (I'm kidding. None of you know me, any better than you can know someone by reading their blog. It's a great and painful irony in my life that the people I'm closest to are people I never see, and the people I see are people I don't even talk to. Ahem.) know that my metabolism is a cruel bitch. So I was hungry. I had new directions from Joshua, and I set out. I didn't make it, obviously. I was maybe halfway there when I spotted a sandwich shop. Thunderhead sandwiches, I think. I looked inside, and it was chock-full of hipster emo music geeks, with ironic tattoos and tired, tired eyes. I was too hungry to *not* eat there. So I did, and it was good, and I ate there for lunch the next day, too. I would eat lunch there today, if the drive wasn't so long.

The point is that I never, despite several attempts, made it to the ur-Whole Foods. I was even present when things were purchased there, without actually being in the store. While we were waiting for our table Saturday night, Joshua apparently popped over to the theoretical market and purchased a bottle of water and some apple juice. So. There you have it. Theoretical hippie-minded food market, where are ye?

The second story I was going to tell was actually the Tim-guns-frisk story. I seem to have already told it. Enjoy.