The Price of Adulthood

Last night, Liz and I rode the yellow bikes to a restaurant in Germantown called City House. I had visited the establishment on three other occasions with mixed results, and this occasion was no different: for every five things the restaurant gets right, there is one element that seems slightly off, just enough to tweak a particular synapse that may or may not affect the vibrational frequency of everything else. Which means nothing at all, really, and, since most things don't, I will continue with the pride and determination of a little band you may or may not have heard of: Fognode.

The occasion was a festively grim one: our friend and confidant Peter Bradley Adams was, and still is, moving to Brooklyn, of all places. As a send-off dinner, it was a fairly disappointing experience, as there was exactly one toast to the guest of honor and almost no storytelling or 'This Is Your Life' kind of moments, of which the ensuing embarrassment is one of my favorite elements of a proper 'send-off' dinner. However, as a dinner honoring Peter Bradley Adams, it was a complete success, as Peter Bradley Adams had apparently expressed no previous desire to be properly 'sent-off.' In fact, he will be leaving most of his belongings in Nashville, taking only a suitcase and his now infamous collection of shrunken Doberman heads. Theories abound that the entire migration is merely a method by which he might construct an appropriately bizarre and disappointing set of circumstances that would propel him straight back to the Music City for the recording of an award-winning album.

Ah, Peter Bradley Adams. P-Bra, to his friends. Two glasses of Chablis into the dinner, he acquired a particularly giddy air, seemingly befuddled by the flood of non-attention being paid to him at his last Nashville hurrah. Someone had seated him smack in the middle of the table, the unwilling bifurcation of two incongruous sets of friends who, as the evening unfolded, seemed to express no interest whatsoever in getting to know one another. Firmly planted at the non-alcoholic end of the table, Liz and I were unable to follow the thread of his slightly-impaired logic, the cut of his jib. At a loss, we continued making fart sounds with our armpits until the pasta course arrived.

The heartburn and gas had begun to set in, so we said our goodbyes and hit the road on the yellow bikes. We navigated a slightly different route home, one that took us over the Demonbreun Street Viaduct just as mighty freight train was passing underneath it. "Look Liz," I pointed, "two paths intersecting, like strangers in the night."

"What?" She was too far behind to hear me.

"That broccoli was divecting, this gas like a knife," I shouted as she pulled up closer behind me.

"Just let it go, Honey. Let it go."

Peter Bradley Adams, this one's for you. Ahh, that's better.