I Have a Friend!

by Rebecca Schoenkopf

Justine came for dinner last night; I fed her wine and ice cream and tiny chickens. The tiny chickens were still frozen when I got them home, so I cooked the shit out of them so as not to feed Justine salmonella. Instead, I fed her dried-out chicken. I was okay with this.

My mother has had a lifelong tendency to turn into a terrible cook just as soon as she has friends for dinner, and in this as in many things I have followed her example. You’re coming for dinner? I promise, it will be awful. Just sit back and drink.

Justine is an intellectual, and beautiful, and she is 23, which means I am friends with her parents and have known her since she was a little girl, but I am obviously considerably younger than her parents so there has been a time or two when I have been enlisted as the cool younger friend when her parents wanted some particular point made and figured Justine would not listen to them because of how they are old. Once, Justine’s mom, Betty, asked me to tell her to take First Class on the train through the Chunnel when she was going to be traveling in Europe. I was very happy to tell Justine this. I am very happy to tell you this too. IF YOU ARE TAKING THE TRAIN THROUGH THE CHUNNEL, PLEASE BE SURE TO TAKE FIRST CLASS. Okay, good! But once, when Justine went off to study philosophy in Canada, Justine’s mom, Betty, told me Justine had to send her Excel spreadsheets on how she was spending her allowance, and in that case, I yelled at Justine’s mom, Betty, that Justine had to learn to do it on her own, and if she were to spend all her spending money, she would just have to learn how to steal. It is an important part of growing up! I am very happy to be the cool younger friend.

not the way it turned out

Justine knows many Mexican curse words, which she generously shared with us. She has sexy burns all over her hands, which freaks people out because they think she is a cutter. Justine is not a cutter. She is a line cook! She will dice you 12 pounds of onions, if you need 12 pounds of onions. She is sad now, though, because cooking used to be her way to relax, and now it is her job, so it is not relaxing at all. Justine told me that Ilan, the weaselly Top Chef winner of season whatever, is opening his restaurant in the bottom floor of her building, the Alexandria Hotel, and when he sees her going to work in her whites, with her cool knife bag slung coolly over her hip, he attempts, in his weaselly Ilan way, to flirt with her. We laughed and laughed. Gross! Ilan is terrible! Also, his restaurant is called Gorbal’s, and it is Scottish Jewish food, and Justine swears gefilte-fish-and-chips is on the menu.

We talk about Downtown, where I was dying to move, and Justine agrees that it is like a tiny, manageable New York, but the gentrifiers walking their little dogs, and buying doggie daycare for their little dogs, annoy her as they do me. We are not gentrifiers, no sir, we are not, and Justine talks about the slumlords who’ve taken over so many old beautiful buildings and slapped down granite countertops even though their buildings are gross and have bedbugs. There was a murder in her building, which was a welfare hotel and is still pretty Section 8, despite the building trying to spiff it up into “microlofts,” but “It was on the fifth floor. And you know, ‘the fifth floor’s pretty rough.’” Nothing to see here, folks! Her flatmate invited Ilan to dinner and said, “And Justine will cook!” But it never happened. If it had, she should have made, like, grilled cheese, and said, “Here’s your grilled cheese, Ilan, fuck you!” That’s exactly what she should have done.

I had been having an awfully terrible week, where I burst into tears at the very nice West L.A. farmers market (Sundays, 9 am - 2 pm, at Santa Monica and Corinth) and couldn’t stop crying, in public, and I was ashamed. And then Justine came to dinner, and I had a friend. And after I drove her home (I don’t like women walking alone in L.A. at night, because apparently I am a grandma now and I worry about things like that), I came home down Olympic, through what is surely the world’s biggest Koreatown—right?—and I remembered being 23, and working 60 hours a week and still being poor, and crying in the middle of the grocery store, just snot running down my face, face naked and crying, and it was hard and we got through it and things got better. And they will again. I like to think that in case of alien attacks or 2012 I would be stalwart and hardy and clever and a survivor, and I have not been doing that. But here was Justine at my house, working her 60 hours a week and still being poor and everything is going to be fabulous for her, because she is fabulous, and I remembered that feeling and I can do it again. Also, after I tore my mom’s bumper off her little Honda Accord when I was 16 but didn’t yet have my license and I told her I was at the high school watching a play but had really gone to Ventura to see, like, the nighttime DJ at the classic rock station, I rewired that bumper back on myself, with coat hangers, and installed the headlights and fixed all the fuses. So I should be able to do that shit now too, instead of being all, “Whoops, I’m a lady, and utterly useless and helpless too!” It is time to step it back up and be 23 again, and that is exactly what I am going to do, but maybe a little slower and fatter, and that’s fine too.

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