And Those Jacket Potatoes…

(On the patio, in the evening sun, baking our potatoes on the barbecue, and in an emotionally dark place.)

Beast:  Can you stop calling them jacket potatoes?

Foodie:  Why?  That’s what they are.

Beast:  They’re baked potatoes.

Foodie:  They’re jacket po-ta-toes–from the UK.  Everybody knows that.

Beast:  I’ve never heard of it until tonight.

Foodie:  Well most worldly people know what they are.

Beast:  That’s a low blow, especially considering how depressed I am right now.

Foodie:  You’re depressed?  We can’t both be depressed at the same time.  There’s only room for one emotionally fragile individual in this relationship.

Beast:  Should I flip the potatoes yet?

Foodie:  No, just leave the barbecue lid down and forget about it for a bit.  Have you thought about what you want to have for dinner with Nick Edwards tomorrow night?

Beast:  Oh great.  You invite him over and look like a hero and I’ll come across looking like a failure becuase I can’t make decisions about dinner.   I’m a fucking failure.

Foodie:  Don’t you dare say that!

Beast:  It’s true.  No wait: I’m not a failure because you have to at least try at something in order to fail.  How does it feel to be dating such a loser?

Foodie:  You are not a loser!  Where are you going?

Beast:  I have to start making posters.

Foodie: For what?

Beast:  ”Cocktail Pianist for Hire.”

Foodie:  Where are you really going?

Beast:  I’m going to do my push-ups.

Foodie:  Pardon me?

Beast:  MY PUSH-UPS!

Foodie: Can I watch?

Beast:  Yes.

But before the Beast could do his “work-out” he had to pick out some music to play. He chose a little number by Glen Campbell.  Then, he proceeded to do a total of four and a half push-ups before collapsing in exhaustion.  It was the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.  Then he started to do a series of joke push-ups, like a one-armed push-up while he rested on his knees and push-ups from a jack-knife position where he didn’t push up his arms at all:  instead, he just jerked his knees in and out really quickly. Did you see the Harmony Korine movie, Gummo?  When that kid is tap-dancing in the basement?  The Beast’s joker push-ups reminded me of that.  

Beast:  Okay, I’m done my work-out.

Foodie:  I’ll get the toppings reading for the jacket potatoes.

Beast:  Do we have cheese?

Foodie:  Yes.

Beast:  Do we have bacon bits?

Foodie (pause):  Yes.

Beast:  I’ll help get the toppings ready.

We had left-over coleslaw and baked beans, plus the Beast’s cheese and bacon bits, and also some green onion for garnish. We each prepared our jacket potatoes in a way that reflected our emotional states.

I towered mine real tall, which made it slightly fragile, almost like it was crying on the inside.  I started with butter, then sea salt, then the beans and finally the coleslaw and the green onion: it was sophisticated, logical, and a little bit sassy on the outside.  

The Beast topped his with every imaginable ingredient that filled his attention-deficit-disordered head.  His resulting dinner looked like it was assembled by a four year old, one-armed kid, whose parents left him alone at the 1988 Ponderosa baked potato bar.

Foodie:  How’s your potato?

Beast:  It’s okay.

Foodie:  Just okay?  Mine’s delicious!

Beast:  I just wish there was some, oh, I don’t know.

Foodie:  Some meat?

Beast:  Yes, some meat.  We should have bought some sausage and taken the meat out of the casing and fried it up.

Foodie:  We don’t have to have meat with every meal.  The beans will give you all the protein you need.

Beast:  I notice you didn’t put pancetta in the baked beans.

Foodie (silence).

Beast:  We need to get out of this funk.  Let’s go rent a black and white romantic comedy after dinner.

Foodie:  How about Iron Man?

Beast:  I was thinking more along the lines of Adam’s Rib, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

Foodie:  Oh.  How about you do more push-ups after dinner?  I bet that would be funnier than Adam’s Rib.

Beast:  Stop belittling me.  

Foodie:  Want my second potato?

Beast:  You bet your ass I do.

And just like that, we both felt a little better.

Foodie:  ***

Beast: **