On February 11, 1990—in what seemed an utter
impossibility at the time—42 to 1 underdog James “Buster” Douglas vanquished
the then undefeated “Iron” Mike Tyson.
In his previous fight, Tyson had dispatched
Carl “The Truth” Williams in
93 seconds, and we all knew something was wrong with “Iron” Mike when Douglas
made it out of the first round. And the rest is
groping for your mouth guard history…
I remember the fight, or rather my emotional reaction to
the fight, vividly. Like just about everyone else in America at that time, I was
captivated by the spectacle that is Mike Tyson. I knew next to nothing about
the ‘sweet science’ but watched each of his fights with the fervor of a Roman
at the Coliseum. I skipped rope, practiced upper cuts, wasted hours playing
Nintendo’s Punch Out!, mastered an impression of the fighter’s high pitched
lisp, purchased black Reebok high-tops, would’ve had lines carved in my ‘fro
had I had a ‘fro. You name it….
Also,
February 11th happens to be my birthday—I turned fifteen.
But most
importantly, my aunt got married that day in a small ceremony attended by only
the bride and bridegroom, my grandparents, the groom’s brother and
sister-in-law, my parents, my brother, and I. What’s that? Eleven people? I
suppose there must’ve been a rabbi or minister of some sort, but I don’t really
remember: I just wanted to get to the dang reception—which was going to be held
at some fancy French restaurant in Santa Monica called Panache…whatever that meant—so that I could catch Tyson’s inevitable
destruction of Buster Douglas. Oh, and one more thing notable about the
ceremony: my new uncle, one Chander Oberoi, was Indian, as in East Asian
Indian, and my aunt…well, she’s not.
 |
| Watercress soup. Yuck. |
There had been a set menu, which saved us the trouble of
having to order, and my father and I stole off to the bar to catch the fight. I
returned to the table with a bad taste in my mouth to find that the first
course had arrived: watercress soup. The dun fluid inhabited a broad shallow bowl.
Outside of the dash of herb (parsely?) splashed in the middle, the soup looked
like something Oliver Twist would have turned down.
“What
the hell is this?” I asked staring at the bowl.
“Shhhhhhhh!”
Hissed my mother. “It’s watercress soup. Just eat it.”
Man oh
man, this night wasn’t getting any better. I picked up the spoon and took a
sip. Dear God. The soup was cold, and it
had less flavor than it had color. It was like pureed water chestnuts or
something…only with less flavor than water chestnuts. And wasn’t the chief
attraction of the water chestnut it’s crunchy texture?
“It’s
cold!”
“It’s
supposed to be cold. Quit complaining. There’s more food coming.”
“Yeah. Great.
I can’t wait.” Needless to say, the remainder of the food was equally
colorless, tasteless, and without texture. I later came to understand the
restaurant’s moniker with a significant degree of irony.
Ya see,
this was the end of a rather long week for me. I was fifteen and my
grandparents were in from out-of-town and I had been forced to do nothing but
the very thing that any 15 y/o worth their salt avoids at all costs: spending
time with family. Yuck. I mean we’re talking a week straight with the most
boring and embarrassing people on the face of the planet. My only companion in
suffering was my 13 y/o little brother, Brandon, and he was even less equipped
than I to deal with this trauma. His visage had assumed a sort of sublime gaze,
a look not unlike the acceptance with which medieval martyrs must’ve ascended
the gallows. In short, he was no help. To make matters worse, the GM is
sleeping in my bed, the GF is in bro’s, and bro has called dibs on the couch. I’ve
been relegated to some sort of pad thingy (which my mother politely refers to
as a ‘futon’) on the living room floor. Each morning I wake up to find that
I’ve been shoved off said pad by the aging family dog (who’s begun to smell
like only an old dog can smell, btw).
But what’s the point of sleeping anyhow?
Ya see, my grandparents have to wake up at like 4:30 in the AM in order
to get an early start on their arguing. “Where the hell is the
newspaper?!” “Why’d you make the coffee
so strong?!” “Clean up after yourself!”
“Quiet down! Can’t you see people are trying to sleep?!”
Not to
worry, during mealtimes, the grandparents are far more pleasant. Apparently, in my
family, the patriarch feels that his place is founded on randomly informing his
grandchildren that Roosevelt was justified in interning “the Japs” (that’s how
the GF routinely referred to Japanese-Americans). “But, grampa, we didn’t intern
German-American’s.” He dismissed my logic with a chortle and went back to
shoveling potatoes into his mouth.
Oh! And I had a Cute Little GirlFriend at
the time, whom I’d had the opportunity to have over for precisely one (1)
family dinner; she was the daughter of a well-off family headed by a judge, an
African-American judge. Now at that point I was so utterly excited that a girl
deigned to speak to me much less serve as the CLGF, that I could pretty much do
nothing except think about her. “So, gramma, did you like, Rachel?” I should’ve
known better. She informed me that she didn’t believe in the mixing of races.
“But you’re Jewish!” She still didn’t believe in the mixing of races. “But
you’re Jewish and grampa isn’t!”
“…”
“And,
and, and, when you got married in like the 40s, the Nazi were off killing
people…coz they were Jewish!” She was
shocked that I could compare dating “that Black girl” (that’s how she referred
to my CLGF) to the horror that her people suffered in the holocaust. “Oh,
brother.”
 |
| My brother and I circa 1990. |
Of
course, the GPs’ issue(s) with me was not the real issue, for I, their grandson, was merely dating someone who wasn’t white whereas their daughter was marrying an East
Asian Indian. In short, my
grandparents approached this whole matrimonial process more like a normal and
sane person would approach a funeral…and they were losing their fucking marbles…and
driving the rest of us crazy in the process. My brother shuffled around like a
mental patient on Thorazine, my mother exemplified a textbook case of the
Stockholm syndrome, and my father had taken to heavy self-medication courtesy
of Dr. Jack Daniels. So, as I finished off my cardboard tart at Panache, I’d decided that I’d had it. I
was made as hell and I wasn’t going to take it anymore. Besides, the
grandparents were going home in just two more days. I pushed the plate away,
uttering, “Thank God this ordeal is about done with.”
“Yup,”
said my mother. “Just the rehearsal dinner tomorrow and we can go back to our
normal lives.”
“The
what?”
“The
rehearsal dinner?”
“I know
I’m no expert when it comes to mating rituals,” I belted forth in a frenetic
whine, “but don’t those normally come before the wedding?!”
“Yeah, well,
we’ve got to recognize Chander’s family too. Finish your pie.”
* * *
* *
So, the
following afternoon, a Sunday, we’re all packed into my father’s Chevy Astrovan which is stuck in traffic along US Interstate-5
en route to some place inland from Compton and Long Beach called
Artesia. Nice place. Turns out there’s a ‘Little India’ there, and that’s where
Chander’s brother and sister-in-law have a starter-home. The GM, sitting
shotgun, keeps harping on my father to slow down; rather than inform her that
he’s
in stop-and-go traffic and, therefore,
not really moving much less
driving fast, he just keeps one hand on the wheel and both eyes on the
road. The bro and I place an over-under on how long it’ll be before he’ll snap.
I take the under. In the van’s middle row, my mother nods at the GF's pontifications
as he surveys East L.A. in much the same attitude that W. flew over the Gulf
Coast post-Katrina. My brother is no longer capable of audible speech: at this
point
he mostly just drools.
Eventually
we make it into Artesia, and we’re not in the barrio any more, Toto. It’s not
like the upper-castes are ridding around on elephants or adolescent boys are
hauling rickshaws or anything. But we are clearly in a realm that the GF cannot
believe exists in these United States of America. A number of the shops have
the word “market” on their deity-spangled signs—as in Taj Mahal Bengali Market
or Sanjay’s Madras Market. The storefronts
are adorned with colorful saris and statuettes and hookah-looking-thingies. You
can smell the curry spice in the air as the distant notes of sitars float over
the hum of automobiles. The heat and dustiness of inland California make
Artesia a plausible Hollywood substitute for New Delhi or Bombay…
And it’s
becoming readily apparent that the grandparents had thought the worst was over,
had thought that the wedding ceremony would prove the nadir of the trip, had
thought that nothing could frighten them more than giving their daughter away
to a man of another race, but they now find themselves right in the middle of
the Other and are suffering full-scale anxiety attacks. My grandfather looks
like he’s been drugged and awoken in a strange time and place; he’s Gulliver
tethered to the Lilliputian beachhead. My grandmother can no longer even muster
the energy to criticize my father’s driving. This is great.
That’s
right. I’ve suffered. I’ve slept on the floor next to the elderly, foul-smelling
cocker spaniel. I’ve awoken to daybreak arguments about such crucial topics as drinking the last of the grapefruit juice, burning the toast, and stealing the
crossword puzzle. I’ve endured my grandfather’s unthinking racist claptrap.
I’ve suffered my grandmother’s denigration of my Cute Little GirlFriend. And I
have not been permitted to see the CLGF in days, days I say! Any protests on my
part have been dismissed with no more than a wave of the hand. They’ve driven
my brother and my parents insane, which only leads to further suffering on my
part. And then I spent my birthday—my fifteenth birthday!—at a ceremony—a long
and boring ceremony!—followed by a hoity-toity meal devoid of all taste and
texture. To top it all off my hero—my heretofore undefeatable hero!—lost to a
man named “Buster”! Did you hear that?
Buster! So, suffer! Suffer I say. It’s all I have left. I can no longer
find joy in anything but the suffering of others. Why stop at Artesia? On to
Bombay!
So, we
meet up with Chander’s fam at a restaurant called something like Artesia Curry
Palace. All I know is I’m three courses
away from being done with these people, after which I can get back to my
happenin’ 15 y/o life. We’re seated in the way back and the mood at the long,
banquet table is chilly to say the least. But I’ve checked out. I’m a short
timer. And once I turn 16 and get my car I’m barely going to see anyone I’m
related to ever again so help me god. So bring out the watercress soup or
whatever it is you people are going to make me suffer through because in a few
short hours you won’t have Aaron Proctor to kick around anymore. I’m at rock
bottom and I’ve got nuthin’ to lose. Do your worst! Because I know, Grampa: I
know that no matter how much I hate this food, you will hate it more.
I’m at
one extreme end of the table and Chander and his brother are huddled with a
soft-spoken server at the other extreme end.
I’m certain that the meal they’re ordering is meant as a form of
cultural revenge upon the Proctor clan, and I’ve been warned by my mother that
I am--under pain of death--required to, not only eat whatever they order, but
actually pretend that I like it. Soon after
the conclusion of the confab, we are swarmed by servers dropping successive
waves of small dishes, none resembling any food I’ve laid eyes upon heretofore.
Well,
that’s not exactly true: the first dish, which Chander calls
poppadums,
resemble a sheet of tortilla chips that someone forgot to cut up prior to
frying. These poppadums are accompanied by
bowls of sauces called chutneys. Even those these chutneys don’t look like any
salsa from Tacos Jalisco, the parents set to, comforting themselves verbally
with “just like chips and salsa.” Of
course, the grandparents take little comfort in the supposed familiarity of
Mexican food. And
those chutneys are wonderful. There are mango chutneys and pickled chutneys,
and citrus chutneys and spicy chutneys and sweet chutneys. Some are smooth and
some are chunky. Some are red and others
are yellow or green. And they all smell of the spice gardens of the world.
And
before I’ve time to come up for air I’m eating fried bits of chicken and cheese
and vegetables, but they’re not just fried: they’ve got this infusion of spices
which are all subtly different in both taste and smell. And then there are beds
of rices, long-grain odoriferous basmati rices which breathe saffron and
jasmine. Baskets of bread arrive, naan bread, a clay oven baked flat
bread. They’re covered with butter and
garlic and tandoori and have chicken or cheese or vegetables in them. And I’m ladling gravies—coconut curries,
tikka masalas, mahknis, rogan joshes, madras curries, vindaloos, and even a
fahl—each spicier than the last, all of which surround more chicken and lamb
and cheese and shrimp and nuts and potatoes and peas and lentils. My mouth is
on fire, a sublime fire, a fire of ecstasy. And, as I shovel it in like only a
15 y/o boy can shovel it in (and after a week of subsistence on a GP-friendly
diet), I suddenly realize that everyone is looking at me.
My
mother has a small mound (mostly white rice) in the middle of her plate which
she’s been pushing back and forth. My
father and brother have been making faces at their larger heaps. My grandfather has a single bit of pompadum
on his plate and my grandmother has—like Gandhi—refused to eat anything, has
thrown all concern for decorum to the wind, has in fact sent her plate away so
that her resolve on this issue may not be questioned. And they’re all looking at me, even the
members of East Asian Indian delegation, with uniform blank stares of
astonishment. In retrospect, it seems
likely Chander’s family was merely shocked at the sheer amount of food I had ingested whereas my family was coming to grips
with the fact that I actually liked this
food, this James “Buster” Douglas of world cuisine. I set my fork down and
wiped my mouth with a linen napkin.
“Hey, it
beats the hell out of watercress soup.”
“…”
“Seriously?
You don’t like this?”
“He’s a
weird kid,” my grandfather proclaimed.
“Whatever.
More for me.” And I dug back in….
