Paris - LA : Tradition, Sex and Food

One of my best friends lives and has always lived except for when we were in school in Berkeley, in the LA area. Though during these years he seems to be moving further and further south (Orange county, yuck! and now San Diego, much better) and I fully expect him to someday be over the border in Mexico. Not going to surprise me given his taste in men.
A tradition that has developed throughout the years since I left LA is for him to pick me up at LAX whenever I make my yearly visit from wherever I happen to be living. This is not solely for love for me that he does that. As soon as I landed and through immigration/customs, bags would be secured in the trunk and we would head straight to the adult bookstore near the airport that we have known since we were, euh, a lot younger. The storekeeper is a chain smoking old lady who lets you do whatever you want in the cabins as long as you don’t create troubles. The two of us would cruise there and most of the time we would find our brief but nonetheless memorable happiness with nameless strangers. One Xmas eve, my flight had arrived late and so it was late in the evening when we made it to the bookstore which meant the bookstore was closed (it was open til early evening). So my best friend decided to be a gentleman and walked the two blocks to see if the other bookstore in the hood was open. I got out of the car to smoke a cigarette in the parking lot when a pickup truck arrived, parked and a big black man got out. He walked towards me and asked very politely if I knew where he could get a blowjob. Hello? Am I in heaven? With my best Colgate smile I said Right here and we went in his car. By far this was the best welcome to the United States I ever had….don’t you just love this kind of welcome? Felt such enormous love for the US just then.

Another tradition is that we got to do what I have missed the most during my time away from LA. Once, for some reason, I thought about Denny’s a lot. Maybe remembering college days when we used to hang out there at 3 am drinking cups after cups of coffee (refills were free and free flowing then). I used to also wolf down Grand Slam breakfast at any hour of the day it was a miracle that I did not turn out like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. This time, I wanted that Grand Slam breakfast. Now, my best friend is sort of a refined eater (doing sex in the cabins of adult book store not withstanding), so going to Denny’s to him is like going to Queens for Carrie Bradshaw. But he relented and said that he would go and sit and watch me eat my Grand Slam (actually, the new GS is nothing like the old and is probably better left as a memory not to be relived). He chickened out though when we got to the restaurant and I ended up getting a takeout that I wolfed down while speeding down in southerly direction on the 405 freeway. Our next stops to satisfy my longings: Taco Bell for tacos and the gas station shop to get a couple Reese’s Peanut Butter and I was as good as anyone could ever be (If I wasn’t gay, I am sure I would have patted my tummy and belched loudly right there).

One thing that I would still have to do during my yearly LA stop is a visit to a KFC.
Now I know that there are KFCs in France, but going there in Paris is just not the same as in LA. First, I would have to go alone. None of my French friends ever contemplated going for original recipe or crispy chickens of the Colonel’s. Such is the social pressure that I would have to put on a hat, sunglasses and a big scarf to go to a KFC and hide in the most obscured table to consume my meal (Or I would bundle the box in a plastic bag, hide the whole thing in my backpack and eat it at home). Why is it that my French friends look down on KFC? American junk food, of course, that one poo poos. And I guess eating with your fingers just seem so barbaric to them…the French even eat their hamburgers with knife and fork! (For your information, Carrie Bradshaw and a dude she met did eat KFC chickens in one episode of Sex and the City!) (OK so they were stoned).