FOR LOVE AND TACOS, the beginning
When my high school boyfriend and first love reappeared in my life after an absence of 33 years and asked if I wanted to reconnect, I had no idea that Paul had developed an obsession while we were apart. Tender readers, do not judge him harshly when I tell you that he loves, of all things, street tacos. Those messy four-inch soft corn tortillas with overloaded heaps of seasoned meat and accompanying toppings, preferably cilantro and onions. Frankly I don’t see the appeal of them because of all of the adjectives I just used. My current strategy for getting through my days is primarily driven by energy conservation, so fighting with food that is inevitably going to get all over me and cause me to burn more energy just to get cleaned up isn’t worth it. But, I love him, and I’ve agreed to do life with him for the long haul so I figured I might as well face this food-thing head on. As such, I told him that I will happily go adventuring with him through every restaurant that tickles his fancy.
On our first foray we had terrible tacos that fell apart when you picked them up, so we agreed that we didn’t ever need to go back to that restaurant. We had much better luck with pretty tasty street tacos from a little shop near my house. Those ventures were in my retirement-community neighborhood and pretty safe. What I didn’t realize is just how much he embraces the odd, hole-in-the-wall, off-the-beaten-path taco shop until we’d been dating about six weeks. Another day as we set off towards his house he asked me to find us tacos. I realized as we drove that there was an implicit caveat. He wasn’t going to park somewhere while I looked. He was just going to drive while I searched. I saw him look at me out of the corner of his eye, “Anything is fair game and the stranger the better.” Not needing any more direction than that I started the hunt.
I found one, but sent him off the wrong freeway exit and had to start the search over again which turned out to be serendipitous. “Ah ha!” The map revealed there was one about seven blocks up on the right. As we approached the former convenience store, I was skeptical. The large sign near the street said “SMOKE SHOP, CHECK CASHING, BEER & WINE, TAQUERIA” so I guessed we were in the right place. Honestly it looked so sketchy that I’m not sure I would have gone in alone. He parked the truck, left it running, and went inside. When he came back out he said, “Yep. This is the place. It’s a convenience store with floor-to-ceiling bongs on one side and a taco shop on the other. An actual *smoke* shop. There’s a lone White guy working the grill behind the counter and tables filled with very mellow Hispanic guys enjoying their food.” We discussed the potential of him getting a contact high but decided the risk was worth the reward and he went back in for food. While I waited I finally found the small sign outside “El Jalepeño Ahumado”. My phone’s browser and translated it “The Smoked Jalapeño”. I laughed. When he returned, he opened the box and it revealed six beautiful, spicy, tiny street tacos. Sitting in his truck, we knew I had limited options for arm support, so he fed me bites from one end and took bites off the other. This suited me just fine, since it took the “messy” out of the equation for me. Our adventure-eating had begun.
When I told my dad about the whole thing he replied, “Paul is your kind of weird.” I don’t know if he meant that as a compliment or not, but I decided to take it as one. “Yes, Dad. He’s exactly my kind of weird.”