I Eat Sushi and Live to Tell About it.

Makes sense to me

Last night I met the girls for dinner at Kiku, a Japanese restaurant in Park Slope. Obviously, I was not involved in choosing the restaurant. The ladies are mad for sushi. Crazy about it. I find it gross and kinda scary. However I had a big lunch and was planning on just popping in for a drink and some edamame (no comment, Alphabets). The ladies spent some considerable time planning their course of attack on the fishy buggers. The conversation sounded like this:

"Okay, so that's one Green Lady, one Spicy Tuna..."

"Wait, did you get any crunchy eel?"

"Yup, got that. Does the Golden Phoenix come with Mango?"

Blah blah blah. I looked at the Vegetarian Rolls section. My main problem with sushi is the raw fish part. That's the main problem. Although, I am also not crazy about the seaweed part. As a child growing up by the ocean I spent most of my formative years running away from slimy, foul-smelling seaweed, so it's a little counterintuitive now for me to shell out thirteen bucks to eat some. I chose the "Peanut Roll" because in my head a peanut roll is made of peanuts and carmel and possibly a nougat filling.

While we were chowing down on edamame, but definitely not biting and chewing laboriously on the edamame pods because that is not how you eat edamame, the girls' Spring Rolls arrived. These are not the familiar spring rolls of your local cheap Chinese joint, you know, where the spring roll consists of 90% something fried and 10% some unrecognizable vegetables. These spring rolls contained tuna (raw), salmon (raw), avacado and some other green stuff rolled into a thin dough wrapped and served with toasted pine nuts and "craisins" as LaHipster called them (I thought "Craisins" only applied when you were eating some kind of Ocean Spray snack product).

It wasn't long before the bitches were goading me into trying some of their sushi.

"Try some," they said.

"No," I said.

"Go on, try it."

"Uh-uh, uh-uh," I said, shaking my head. "Yucky." Then TomatoRed told me, "It tastes just like candy." Now, I've heard the "it tastes just like candy" line many times before and usually I end up disappointed. But one time when I was 16 years old and had never tired fresh pineapple someone said, "Try it, it's sweeter than candy. It's like an all natural Milky Way." And you know what? It was delicious. So I started contemplating trying a piece of sushi.

The first obstacle was the chop sticks. Yes, I am one of those white assholes who cannot use a pair of chopsticks. I will be at a very nice Asian restaurant and when my food is served I will quietly say to the server, "Excuse me, could I trouble you for a fork?" As soon as the f-word leaves my mouth all background noise will cease and every head in the restaurant will swivel to gawk at me. I don't know what the Japanese word for "gringo" is, but I'm certain there is one and I'm certain that is what people are thinking when they disguistedly shake their heads at me.

With some manoeuvering that shows that my fine motor skills leave a lot to be desired, I finally go the piece of sushi between my chop sticks.

"Okay," my friends cheered. "Just put the whole thing in your mouth."

"No, no. I can't do it. I can't do it."

"Ready, 1 ... 2 ... 3 ... Go!" On the word "Go", I lifted the piece of sushi up, bent my face down and ... sniffed it. It didn't smell like old fish. I thought that was a good sign. "No! Come on, one bite! Ready, 1 ... 2 ... 3... Go!" I picked up the sushi and ... licked it. Mm. Okay. One final time they counted down, this time with Alphabets possibly performing a drum roll on the table and 1, 2, 3, I put the whole freaking thing in my mouth.

The first bites were great. "It's good, right?" said LaHipster. "It's a flavor explosion in your mouth." I was experiencing all different textures and very subtle tastes. Then the crunch was gone. There was only one texture left in my mouth and that texture was slimy. There was just now getting around it, I was left with a mouth full of of cold fish.

"I don't want this anymore," I said, talking around the fish.

"Sure you do. Swallow. Swallow it down. Get it done," coached LaHipster. I chewed and chewed. I looked around for a napkin in which to spit it. Finally I surrendered it and swallowed the rest of the fish.

I did it, I had surprised myself and now my ordeal was over. I was satisfied in the way you might be after coming out of the other end of a root canal. But my nerves were shot to hell. Thank God for the plum wine. Meanwhile, the ladies were gearing up for more. Soon the waitress arrived and placed on the tables plates filled with beautiful rolls and sashmi and, just to further push me over the edge, two giant fried prawn heads. Later LaHip cracked one of these heads open and I felt the spring roll coming back up. I stuck with my peanut rolls which did not contain any carmel but were oddly satisfying in their own right.

Now if someone wants to bake a devil's food cupcake, roll it in sticky rice and dunk it in soy sauce, we might be on to something.