Yuzu
Quinn squirmed for a few minutes in the maddeningly firm airplane seat, abstractedly scrolling through the podcast lists on Spotify. The bottom of his skull ached and he wondered with petty dread at how he would remain sane for the 13 hour flight. Then he wondered with serious dread how he would remain sane for the ten day trip.
The last few hours kept cycling through his head. Flying out of Houston International, he stopped by a second-rate airport sushi restaurant complete with a waving kitty and two katanas hanging from the wall. He resented the kitty for its inauthenticity, but then he considered the social demands of operating a sushi restaurant in a Texas airport and forgave the cultural concession the managers had made.
Sitting alone at a table of four, he was trying to romanticize his gyoza. The waiter came over and asked if he wanted anything to drink and although it was 11 in the morning and he didn’t usually drink, Quinn felt the numbing circularity of time typical of airports and decided that today was an exception.
He ordered a cocktail with gin and yuzu, neither of which he liked but he felt guilty ordering anything other than a drink that seemed “Japanese.” Maybe the bartender in the back, upon hearing the order, would appreciate his cultural consistency — you know, to contrast the waving kitty.
When the waiter brought over the small, clinking glass filled with translucent yellow, Quinn sipped. However, the moment the drink splashed through his teeth, his throat closed. Denying access past the back of his throat, it kept the saturated yellow resting. Quinn’s eyes widened as he realized what was happening. The taste soaked his tongue, filling his gums with an unbearable nailpolish-y taste, and he clinched his eyes shut, letting a tear slide down his cheek. Then Quinn assembled the energy to give swallowing one more shot. He shut his eyes again and finally his throat yielded, letting the cocktail slide down. He gave a deep exhale, coming up for air. Sugary yuzu lingered.
The waiter asked him if he liked the drink and Quinn emphatically nodded his head. Wanting to sell his pleasure, he took a few more sips in front of him. Every drink struggled down his throat and after five or six more, his chest felt warmer. His muscles relaxed and his emotion seemed more available, facing him. He finished the drink and quickly asked for another. The waiter brought it, and Quinn forgot about his gyoza completely.
The second drink was heavier on the gin and Quinn knew it would challenge his pain tolerance. It was like a project, something he could work towards. He began to sip, enduring the massive chill of the ice cubes resting on his front teeth as the drink slid through. The chill stung. As soon as Quinn could register that pain, however, the gin rattled his uvula, half-activating his gag reflex. He lurched forward then swallowed.
His knee bounced vividly while his face tightened, tears welling in the back of his head. Before he could make a full-physical or verbal reaction, however, his body stuttered. He rested completely still in the ecstatic discomfort of his swallow. Then he laughed a little bit.
He looked at a family of four a few tables down. They had two daughters and the mother was drinking white wine. The middle-aged woman indulged the glass, and Quinn gave it a longing look. He called the waiter over.
“Waiter,” Quinn said.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I didn’t love my drink.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like a different one?”
“No, I’ve already had two of these.”
He finished his yuzu and paid the check, signing with a smiley face and an apology. As he was leaving the restaurant he stared directly at the kitty, smugly waving him goodbye. No matter how much Quinn liked his drink, that kitty would continue to wave with a smile on its face. Nothing would change it. He had lost to it.
The waiter walked up to Quinn and asked if everything was alright.
“Why do you have him?” Quinn asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You don’t need it, you’d do fine without the kitty.”
“It’s actually called a Maneki-Neko.”
“It’s fine. Forget it,” said Quinn.
Then the waiter walked back to the family of four to refill the woman’s glass and Quinn moved his hand in front of the kitty’s to stop it from moving.
“Not so easy now,” he mocked.
He gripped its paw, squeezing the ceramic with all of his force. Then he ripped its arm out of the socket and put it into his pocket, walking out of the restaurant.
—
What the fuck? He felt the paw in his pocket, embarrassed at the hypothetical of having to explain why he owned it. He was flying to Greece for vacation. His first in years, and he was going to meet a friend from college. After trying to wait it out, the ache in his head grew severe, and he knew he had to do something about it. He stood on his seat and faced the woman behind him, looking for a solution.
“Hey,” he asked sweetly, “Where are y’all from?”
“Minnesota,” the woman answered.
Quinn smiled, “like Prince.”
The woman nodded.
“You wouldn’t happen to have any Advil or ibuprofen?” Quinn asked. “My head is killing me.”
“Oh sure, I have some Advil,” The woman dug through her bag.
“You’re a lifesaver.”
“I also have some of the stronger stuff too if that’s more your speed,” the woman winked.
Quinn’s eyes widened a bit and his vision tunneled around the woman. Something a bit stronger? he thought. Like painkillers? He knew how addictive painkillers were — the opioid epidemic and all that. He had even watched a Netflix documentary about it. That stuff ruined lives.
One time in college he had taken a few painkillers — some Percocet for his hamstring surgery. But that was a perfectly banal drug experience. He didn’t even know if he had gotten high, definitely not addicted. But the woman was offering.
“Oh, well… sure,” Quinn said.
“OK,” said the woman and pulled a small blue tablet out of her coin purse, “This stuff is industrial.”
Quinn laughed and stifled a follow-up question on what the woman meant by ‘industrial.’ He held the blue tablet in his clammy palm for a moment then awkwardly said “Down the hatch!” and put it in his mouth.
While the chalky tablet sat on his tongue, Quinn remembered that he was not very good at swallowing pills without water and quickly understood how uncomfortable the next five minutes was going to be. Don’t panic. He tried to accumulate enough saliva inside of his mouth to wash it down, easy. He swallowed and felt the blue tablet rest in his esophagus. It wasn’t budging. Don’t freak out. Trying again, he swallowed and failed to dislodge. Sweat pimpled on his forehead as the woman asked if he needed any help. You’re fine.
Quinn shook his head and assumed a straight face. He turned around and waltzed to the bathroom. At that moment, the cramped sliding door in the front of the cabin was all that mattered, it was his mecca. While shoving past a flight attendant, he said “Sir you should take your seat,” and Quinn, purple-faced and panting, tried to open his mouth to apologize, but quickly remembered that there was a pill lodged in his throat and that he could not speak. Instead he frowned sympathetically and resumed his pilgrimage.
Once inside, he flipped the slide lock, pressed the water button and shoved his face under the stream like a parched bloodhound. He wished he could put his entire body in the sink and feel the water flood him. Mouth agape, it strewed down his throat and took the small blue benzo with it. Quinn still tasted the yuzu. He inhaled and closed his eyes. Rushing. The door supported his weight.
It was the best thing he had tasted all day, and he savored the seven seconds the automatic sink ran for. Looking upwards, he saw his exhausted face, mouth wet, chestnut brown hair strung across his fatigue. “What are you doing?” he said to the mirror, a crack in his voice. He tidied himself up and returned to his seat.
He was visiting a friend from college. “Friend” is what he calls her now. If Quinn stuck to the cold facts, however, they definitely had gotten with each other a few times. If he strayed from hard facts, the two had something akin to a relationship. When talking about past relationships, however, he never mentioned this one. It was a conscious omission, but he wasn’t sure why. Maybe he was ashamed of how it ended. Maybe it just wasn’t significant. In any case, on the rare occasion an old friend would ask Quinn what ever happened to you and Alex, he told them he didn’t really remember. Things probably fizzled out. It was all so long ago.
Based on her Instagram, he was pretty sure she lived in Greece. Although each post boasted a different location in the mediterranean, Mykonos seemed the most frequent. Location wasn’t very important to her anyway. She was a “creator.” 200,000 Instagram followers, brand deals, and a podcast. It was called Making it work, a podcast that “Calls it how it is” with a host who “Using her experience in the fashion and social media world, brings a fresh take to podcasting.”
Back in his seat, Quinn began to feel the ache in his head dissipate. He buckled his seat belt and felt a lot more dissipating. Then he opened Spotify and decided to listen to the podcast. Maybe it could give them something to talk about. Because in all honesty, Quinn was pretty anxious about what they could talk about. Her Instagram made it look like so much had changed and it probably had. Quinn’s life was so droll in comparison. He had a few photos of his dogs, a trip to Cancun a few years ago.
He did love Cancun. Maybe there was something there — some common ground. He thought about it and couldn’t come up with much, though. They both probably enjoyed the water.
Quinn pressed the most recent episode and let Alex’s familiar voice fill his ears. It had been 15 years since he heard her, and the voice was more familiar than he anticipated. Alex and her guest were discussing vaccination or maybe the merits of manifesting weight loss. It didn’t matter much. Quinn was more curious about what Alex sounded like. Her voice was easily recognizable, the same. The other voice was some mid-thirty-something Yogi with a multi-million dollar self-care empire whose Zen-ness and six pack came across as horny, in a spiritual way.
Alex, however, had a commanding voice. Like everything she said could be supported by immense citation. Quinn listened to her ramble on and on about topics he knew nothing about and could recall nothing about. He half-listened, partially distracted by the interactive map of the airplane on the screen in front of him. In his reverie, listening to the Yogi talk about an ecstasy bender in Prague, Quinn did not have a single thought crawl through his head. He talked about meditation. He told her that he was working on practicing wabi-sabi, and that he found a lot of comfort in destruction. Quinn rested his hand in his pocket, fingering for the ceramic paw. This is what meditation must be like, Quinn imagined. He shut his eyes and left his physic. The podcast droned.
Have you ever scrolled mindlessly for hours? Just photo after photo, sentiments swimming among each other in the same water. All drops, ripples, dissipating into the same pond. I love the game we play with our attention spans. I mean with every new app, development in the entertainment economy, it gets harder to please. I wonder what it does for pleasure. You can see it everywhere. Romance is instant. We scroll on partners, new sentiments. Like a pack of gum at the corner store. A sentiment in law school, a sentiment who likes to hike, sugar free, watermelon. When my attention span gets shorter, it will all just be real life. I will be fully present in the sentiments.
He heard wind blowing around him, a few birds chirping a distant song. The wind chill cracked at Quinn’s cheek and he held his wool glove to his face, fuzz soothing the sting.
“Why did we choose today to walk?” Alex asked. “This wind is awful. Plus, I should be in class right now.”
They walked along a trail in central park. A few pigeons scattered from branch to branch, no leaves to blanket them.
“This was the only day I was free,” Quinn said. His hand was still on his cheek.
“Right,” she said.
They walked along for a few minutes.
“Do you remember that bench?” he asked.
“Which one?”
“That one,” he pointed at a worn oak bench sitting in the snow.
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“Why would I remember that?”
“It’s stupid, don’t worry about it,” he said.
“I’m not worried, but now you have to tell me.”
“It was April. We had just started dating. It was the first day above 50 in months. We sat on that bench and listened to some guitarist playing for tips. He was actually pretty good.”
“Something,” she said.
“Something?”
“By The Beatles, that was the song.”
“Yeah, it was.”
“I wish it felt like that,” she said.
“Well, it’s February.”
“I know.”
She looked at a naked tree looming over the bench. One pigeon sat on an extended branch. Then it flew away, breaking the branch below it.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said.
Quinn opened his eyes and saw the flight tracker in front of him, the digital plane completely surrounded by a pixelated ocean. Alex’s voice still filled his earbuds. He couldn’t close his eyes again, he couldn’t see her.
“What ever happened to us?” Alex asked.
“Us?” whispered Quinn, careful not to disturb those sleeping next to him.
“There was something there. You have to feel a little bit guilty about it, no?”
Quinn began bouncing his leg, “I didn’t know you were still thinking about that.”
“Oh don’t be like that. You think about it all the time. Why can’t I? I shouldn’t even have to guilt trip you. You do it for yourself.”
“That’s not fair.”
“What you did wasn’t fair.”
“Stop,” Quinn said.
“I know. I’m sorry. But you must be sick of it all, aren’t you?” said Alex.
Quinn felt a string tying in a neat bow around his chest, hands pulling tighter and tighter. It grew harder to breathe.
“I sort of feel bad for you,” said Alex. “You don’t even know whether you can defend yourself. That’s the sad part. I mean it’s a little unfair to me, honestly. I want to think you’re a piece of shit, but I can’t even do that. You hate yourself more than I do.”
“I don’t,” said Quinn.
“Why are you flying to see me?”
The string around his torso pulled tighter, and Quinn started pounding his fist against his knee like that would free up some space in his lungs. The woman to his right had woken up and removed her hot pink neck pillow. Quinn smiled like he wasn’t being wrung. The podcast kept playing. How long is this episode?
He looked to his left and noticed the family from the restaurant sitting a few rows behind him. Had they been here the whole time? They probably know about the paw. That’s why she’s looking at me. His stomach felt like it was turning in on itself, shrinking smaller and smaller. Thousands of minnows thrashed behind his skull. He heard the voice of the woman sitting behind him — the one who gave him the pill. Quinn knew she was talking about him. That she knew he was making a scene, or that he was too high. Am I high? I think I’m just sleeping.
His arms pulsed like little pistols fired rounds into his veins, and he built up the nerve to face the woman behind him. Fire. Quinn opened his mouth to barrate her for her judgment and began yelling at an empty seat. She wasn’t there. Jaw hung, Quinn faced the woman’s son, barefoot and wide-eyed.
I like to think of what we tap into during meditation as more like a constant rain than a body of water. If you feel like you’re drowning, you’re doing it wrong. That explains the empty space. Even when we feel like everything is in its right place, there’s space, hesitation somewhere. It’s millions of brilliant droplets splashing you loyally. Milliseconds of pause in between. Whenever we become privy to them, that is all there is.
“You know I haven’t forgotten. I know who you are,” Alex said through Quinn’s earbuds.
“Why are they all looking at me?” asked Quinn.
“Because they all care tremendously about how good of a person you are.”
“How do they know that?”
“Because I know that. And because you think they do.”
Suddenly, a light illuminated the cabin. Quinn heard a soft ding of the seatbelt sign above him and took out his ear buds.
Flight attendants prepare for landing.
—
“I mean I just don’t love it.”
“You don’t love it?”
“Yeah, I’ve never found myself gravitating towards it.”
“It’s psychedelic, it’s pop, it’s grounded in such tenderness. I mean imagine if someone with similar fame released an album so progressive today? It would be historic. How can you not like Pet Sounds?” Quinn asked Alex.
Quinn had arrived in Mykonos a few hours ago. Him and Alex sat on the sun stained blue-and-white tile of the hotel terrace. It was late. They overlooked the Mediterranean with two glasses of rosé that Alex ordered for both of them.
She was still pretty. He had known that, though — he’d seen her social media. But deep down he hoped that maybe that was a misrepresentation of how she looked. She couldn’t still look like that, right? She did. And that bothered him.
This woman was a cultural figure. People looked to her as a model of taste and refinement and whenever she told Quinn that she didn’t like the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, he was dumbfounded.
“It’s never an album that appealed to me,” Alex said.
“Maybe you haven’t listened to it enough,” he said.
Beyond that, what did it say about his potency — his self reliance — if he couldn’t even defend his favorite album? Quinn grew despondent. Yes, she was still pretty and yes, anything she says will have more authority than yours. You can’t compete with an audience.
But Quinn also remembered. He read the articles about the album in college. His professors lauded it. He recalled the album being a cultural staple. The cultural figure in front of Quinn, however, did not care for it.
What did this mean for him? Do the masses disagree with him? After all, if she didn’t like the album then what would the pathetic people who consume her show every single week think about it? No, this couldn’t be good. It was all too much for him. He asked that they pay the check.
Alex seemed offended by the notion. “Already?” she asked.
“You know, Jet lag and all that,” said Quinn.
“C’mon, you aren’t still that home-body from college are you?”
“What? I wasn’t a home bod–”
“I was joking!” said Alex, “Let’s pay the check. It’s fine.” She called the waiter over, and they paid. Defeated, Quinn clutched the paw the entire walk back to the room.
It wasn’t totally a lie. Quinn really was jet lagged. He woke up at four in the morning that night. He tried falling back asleep and after failing for half an hour, he went onto the terrace. The air was silent save for a few morning birds. Quinn paced back and forth, willing something to happen to him and nothing did. He could not go back to sleep. He just looked around, sitting in a stalemate of self control.
He checked the digital clock inside and read that it was five. The sun began to rise, softly illuminating the endless Mediterranean. The ache in his head was back. It had followed him across the globe, slow and nagging, biting at him. He decided to take a shower. Maybe that would help.
In the bathroom, sunlight permeated through the shower’s massive glass wall. He overlooked a few concrete villas on the hill below. Their roofs were populated with dense green foliage, their life countering the harsh modernism of the buildings they inhabited. The shower was a little too cold, but that was as hot as the dial got. Goosebumps all over, he thought maybe this was the temperature they were accustomed to in Greece.
Through the glass, across the green-topped villas, was a glinting morning sea where one silhouette moved throughout the blue expanse. It was a passive figure, moving steadily. In a moment of petty alarm, Quinn remembered the glass wall and became self conscious, looking at his body. There was no cover hiding him from the silhouette.
He reached to turn the shower off but stopped. Further analyzing the figure, he noticed small appendages propelling themselves through the water; it was a man. The only man swimming within sight, a completely inconsequential figure among the mild temper of the morning water.
Quinn kept his eyes on him while he scrubbed himself, admiring his solitude. He didn’t know if the man could see him but that stopped being concerning. If he could, Quinn thought he deserved to. He imagined the figure must feel the same way. If he did, Quinn posed like he imagined the silhouette would want him to look. He made himself statuesque for the figure whose features he could not define; he did not need to. It was their agreement. He finished the shower that way, humming the chorus of God Only Knows by the Beach Boys.
