Shabu Shabu with Stephen

(Sorry, I’m a little behind in my posting, I’ll be better)

I’ve only had Shabu Shabu once before in my life and really it shouldn’t count because I had no idea what I was doing and was left to my own imagination. It was at a completely empty restaurant on Sawtelle at like 3pm in the afternoon. They brought it out and then just left me there so I threw everything in the pot attempting to make a soup of a sort.

I told my friend and hairdresser Stephen about my little food project and he insisted that we go to his Shabu Shabu place in Little Tokyo. Yippppeee!

Let me just say I’m so glad that I’m here to write this, I’ve never been in the car with Stephen and holy sh*t balls he drives like a maniac. He drives way too close to other cars, blasting Nicki Minaj and on the exit off the 101 he did not feel the need to slow down at all through the hairpin-curled tunnel of doom with complete blind confidence there could be no other cars around each windy bend, I mean why would there be? Obviously he is the king of the road. More like Mr. Toad’s Wild ride at Disneyland.

Shabu Shabu in Little Tokyo normally has a crazy line and super long wait Stephen tells me but on this night we scored with a wait of maybe 15 minutes. They don’t mess around here. In the center of the restaurant you can watch them shaving the beef paper thin.  Stephen prefers the sesame sauce, I typically prefer the ponzu on just about anything but I dipped in both and I also spiced mine up with Ichimi Red Pepper. Stephen taught me to uses my rice bowl as a drip catcher so then your rice turns into a tasty treat of it’s own over the course of the meal.

We got into quite the interesting and random conversation about gender transformation surgeries. “It really is quite miraculous what they can do, make a penis out of a vagina and a vagina out of a penis. “ (Plop goes another thin slice of beef into the boiling water.)

The single greatest story I have to tell is that I have seen close up, I MEAN CLOSE UP, inches away the handy work of a post-op male to female.

The summers of college I stayed with my best friend Erika’s parents in their house off of Mulholland instead of going back to Santa Fe. Her mother was and is like a mother to me, she’s my Mama Luz. THIS WAS MY COLLEGE YEARS and the night before I may or may not have partaken in some MDMA. Okay so yes I was totally doing E all night and was still coming down and couldn’t sleep. While drinking some coffee and trying to get my head on straight, Mama Luz came in the kitchen and told me that someone named “Bunny” was going to come work on the phones in the house. Mama Luz was buzzing with excitement over this and obviously wanted me to ask who “Bunny” was. Head throbbing I obliged, “Who’s Bunny?” Mama Luz was beside herself with information, “Well,” she started with a twinkle in her eye, “Bunny used to be Mike. I called the number for Mike the guy who initially installed the phone system in the house when we moved in and was told there is no longer a Mike there but a Bunny. Mike and his lover had this phone installation business together but now Mike is Bunny!” She repeated it as if I didn’t get it. I got it all right. I just have the worst headache and working on no sleep is all, I can’t really say, “Yes Mama Luz got it, Mike had a sex change but I’m just coming off a gang of Extacy so gimme a minute.”

Before I knew what’s happening the doorbell rings and Mama Luz leaps to get the door, which she never did before. I lift my head up from my coffee cup and presented before me is a Grade A bull dyke. Bunny is sporting some extra pounds around the middle, a white wife beater no bra, a fire red mullet and trucker hat (this was before Von Dutch and Ed Hardy, this trucker hat was NOT worn in irony) she also had rainbow suspenders with two big buttons on them, one said Dykes on Bikes and the other said I’m Not Gay but my Girl Friend Is.

Mama Luz made the introduction of Bunny and myself and then dove in with the questions.

Mama Luz: “Are you and you’re boyfriend still together?”

Bunny: “Yes we did this together, Peter is now Patricia.”

Mama Luz: “So you’re both lesbians now?”

Bunny: “Yes. We spent 20 years together as gay men and now we planning on spending the next twenty as what we really are, lesbian women.”

Mama Luz: “How’d you two meet again?”

Bunny: “We served together in Vietnam, we sucked a lot straight cock back then.

Mama Luz: “Did it hurt?”

Bunny: “Hurt like hell but the doc did an amazing job. Do you wanna see it?”

Mama Luz: “I wanna see it, Lola do you wanna see it?” (Extract thin slice of beef with chopsticks from the boiling water scoop up some rice and into mouth.)

Now I am sitting there frozen trying to keep track of all of this reality that is unfolding before my reality challenged state of mind, meanwhile my head is killing me and now I want to get sick, not from the topic at hand but having coffee in my state was a bad call. 

The thoughts in my head were racing,  “I have but seconds to make a decision here. Will I be able to keep my coffee down to see what Bunny is packing? I by all means do not want to insult her by throwing up all over the place once she drops trou and she won’t know it has nothing to do with her but everything to do with all the E I took last night, by the way, how many did I take last night?  Here’s the hard fact, when will an opportunity ever present itself like this to me again??? That’s right, never.”

Me: “Would it be okay if I saw too?”

Bunny: “Absolutely doll face!” She patted my hand with hers.

We adjourned to the back office where once the door was closed Bunny unzipped her baggy jeans and pulled down her plain white cotton panties. She leaned against the desk spreading her legs and with her right hand parted her shaved vajayjay beef curtains and I have to say it was beautiful. I mean a beautiful as a vajayjay can be. It looked perfect. (Another slice of beef into the boiling water.) The coloring, the fleshy parts, the man in the boat part- it was a full on vajayjay. No scars and no sign that there was ever a penis and balls there. It was INCREDIBLE.  Then Bunny went on to show Mama Luz her tattoos and this dragon that was cut into her back that you can only see if you slap her back. But I wasn’t interested in any of that; I was still amazed at Bunny’s vajayjay…. and that I totally forgot that I wanted to throw up. (Extract beef with some cabbage this time from boiling water, grab some rice and into mouth.)

That’s my Golden Best Story I have to tell. I never expected to share it here or much less while dining upon thinly sliced labia ERRR I mean beef at Shabu Shabu with Stephen but c'est la vie.  I’m so glad that I lived to tell… next time I’m driving Stephen, no really it’s no problem.

A Little Singapore Please

Off to the mysterious land of LA’s Farmer’s Market.for Singapore’s Banana Leaf. Usually when I go to the Farmer’s market it’s to either buy candy, meat or drink wine and eat cheese but this time Singapore here I come! I ponied up and asked what was their most popular dish and I was told it was the Mee Goreng Indo style.  Nothing like Gangnam style this means I get a fried egg on top and two satay sticks. I also at the same time ordered the Chendol, which is really a dessert but I was going sip on it. I have a hard time resisting coconut anything and this was concocted up with Palm Sugar, Coconut, Crushed Ice & Chendol beans. Chendol beans I’m not sure are really beans but they certainly looked like little green worms. I took my seat and dove in. Now here’s a confession. I sorta wolfed it down really really fast. I don’t often treat myself to a plate of noodles, what can I say. All I really remember was it was sweet but with enough salt to balance it and creamy from the egg yolk, crunchy from peanuts and oops it was gone.

Here’s something that did haunt me however. I was seated facing another vendor, a sticker store. An entire store dedicated to and celebrating stickers. First of all do kids really give a crap about stickers these days? I guess so that store is there. I was into stickers as a kid, I was… but that was before the days of internet and texting, it was clearly the dark ages so I was deprived of civilized pastimes.  That simpleton “hobby” of mine involved sticker parties and sticker store visits all to fill my purple “Sticker Book” with as many stickers as I could get my Cheeto-stained fingers on.

Who would’ve ever foreseen the United States takeover by STICKERS? They were so innocent and cute right? Now you can’t buy a piece of fruit with out a sticker. Stickers on delicate peaches, stickers on tomatoes- stickers that rip the skin right off! With every avocado there is a sticker placed exactly on the line in which you want to cut, you don’t believe me look for yourself- but maybe you are one of those people that live without a care and still cut along that line leaving sticker parts on your knife (that you probably put in the dishwasher don’t you? Don’t put your good knives in there!) and sticker parts on you avocado yummy parts. If that’s not bad enough how about anything plastic, anything glass, anything on sale. AUGHHHHH! STICKERS ON EVERYTING.  There’s a permanent sticker on my sun visor in my car reminding me of some safety something or another, I don’t read it because it’s a sticker I can’t remove so it makes me angry. I bet I would cry if I knew how many hours of my life I’ve wasted vigilantly removing stickers with Goo Gone.

At least riddle me this, I know there’s the technology available to make stickers not so sticky, to come off cleanly in one piece, on occasion you run in to those and what a joy they are to remove, WHY CAN’T all sticker be like that? WHYYYYYYYYYYY?

Hey kids out there that are still collecting stickers, come by my place- you can have alllllll the stickers you want.

Oh and the coconut drink was super yummy.