Cheap Eats

By L.E. Leone
 

The Crying Game

I, LADY Exister, have skydived, high-dived, ultralighted, hydroplaned (in a car), swimmed (in a swimming pool) less than an hour after eating, golfed through a tornado, and rode my bike down Market Street without a helmet, but never have I come closer to nonexistence than last Friday, in an airplane over Canada. Something about the landing gear. Probably everything was going to be just peachy, the pilot informed us, shortly before they started repositioning any onboard firefighters and police and military personnel near the emergency exits and removing anything flammable, such as vomit bags, from the seat pockets. 

Next came yoga classes, with a particular emphasis on the so-called crash position posture, which we had plenty of time to practice while circling the friendly skies of Montreal, burning off fuel both to lose weight and to reduce the likelihood of airline liability, should any of us, in the unlikely event of a belly-flop landing, potentially inhale possibly harmful gas vapors and 10 years down the road – hey, who knows? – develop cancer. 

But the worst omen of all was when, as we finally descended toward the emergency vehicle-lined runway (and, quite possibly, imminent exposure to harmful fumes) the stewardess-cum-yogi turned aerobics instructor started screaming, "Get down! Bend over! Get down! Bend over!" in French and English, and she was crying. I don't know why, but this little detail, the crying, unnerved me even more than her somewhat cavalier usage of the familiar rather than formal command form of the French verb bendouvre (to bend over). Not to mention the obvious sexual innuendo: Get down? Bend over?? I mean, come on. 

Now, Crawdad and I had already promised each other not to scream unless we were actually dismembered before burning to death – and even then to try to keep things to a whimper. Since we would not be able to hug each other or even hold hands while in the "crash position" posture, it was further decided by us that we would go down singing, and the choice of songs was easy, since there was only one that we both knew the words to that carried any sort of pseudo-spiritual weight whatsoever, and that was "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, 99 Bottles of Beer." No matter how loudly we crooned it, however, we couldn't drown out the bilingually sob-screaming stewardess. 

Get down! Ninety-eight bottles of beer ... Bend over! Take one down, pass it around. Get down! Ninety-seven bottles of beer on the wall. Bend over! 

Well, we touched ground at about 95 bottles of beer and lived to tell about it – unless I'm pulling another one of my patented "fast ones" on you ... I'm not! The landing gear held! Crawdad's alive! I still exist! And, what's more, I didn't find religion or make any promises to any gods or goblins or anything. Which isn't to say that I wasn't changed in any way by the experience. How can you not be? 

I'll never fly again, for one thing, unless I get to sit up front with the pilots. Turns out the whole fiasco was precipitated by a lousy indicator light, which was indicating that the landing gear was fucked. Any dope with a high school diploma and a roll of duct tape, myself included, knows what to do in a situation like that, and it has nothing to do with emergency exits and yoga classes. You put some tape over the light and forget about it, for crying out loud. 

But that's too obvious. The most profound way in which the experience has changed me is that I use even more butter now than I used to, and not just on bread and pancakes and steamed vegetables, either. Since last Friday, friends, I've been buttering my sandwiches and French fries and cookies. Oh, when I think of the fragility of life, and all those comestible surfaces that routinely go unbuttered. Why? You can die tomorrow. I can die tomorrow. I dodged one bullet, but the next one, I know, is already in the chamber, hammer back. ("Get down! Bend over!") From now on, friends, I butter both sides of my bread, and I don't stop there. I butter my burgers. I butter my steaks and chickens. (I haven't decided yet on pork chops, but I'll keep you posted.) 

Oh, and another thing. This is embarrassing to admit, but I now love everyone – even yuppies, Yankee fans, and landlords. I can't help it. There were 49 people on that plane. Some of them were yuppies, some were landlords, some were me and Crawdad, and for all I know there was a Yankee fan on board. The point is that we were all in it together, and all on one another's side. Whether at the moment of truth we were saying our prayers, worrying about our assets, or asses, or knocking bottles of beer off the wall, we were all in it tofuckingether, and you know what? We all still are. All of us. You too. I love you. I love butter. I love your dumb-ass basket of French fries ($2.75). 
 

BAYSIDE BAR AND GRILL. 1784 Union, S.F. (415) 673-1565. Mon.-Fri., 4 p.m.-midnight; Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-midnight. Takeout available. American Express, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible.

L.E. Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).
 

June 28, 2000