Dining with Strangers

It's nice meeting new folks. I'm a friendly guy, and I've never really had trouble walking up and talking to people, even if I don't know them. But I've kind of gotten out of the habit. There's something tonight, mostly people I already know. But maybe some new in there, too. Wednesday, June 06, 2007

"Oh, we know who you are," the woman said as I approached the table, introducing myself. We were in a Mexican restaurant, mariachis blaring, and I quipped something about them singing songs about me in my absence, and the musicians compliently (if coincidentally) blasted out a fanfare just as I said it. It turned a lame ice-breaker into a gut-buster.

I didn't know who they were, for the most part. Not by name, anyway. That's sort of the logic behind introducing yourself when you get to a group, then everyone says their own names, and some funster will josh "there'll be a quiz later," and we laugh politely. But the truth is, I try to remember the names, and generally can. Not that night. Noisy, and they all had met one another before I got there. I'd spent a good hour after the screening talking with Bob Pollard (a riverboat pilot friend I see too rarely) and Ray Santisteban, four of whose short films we'd just seen, and who has been working on a bullfighting documentary he wanted to tell me all about.

We were meeting after the screening of Alan Govnar's "The Devil's Swing," a doc Erik brought to town as part of NALIP's ominously titled "Meet the Maker" series. It's about life along the border, where nationality is somewhat more fluid than it is even here (probably the most "Mexican" of major US cities). Erik had brought his friend Enrique Madrid up from that area to speak -- he didn't make the movie, but was there for all of it, and served as translator and facilitator and... I won't say "Juan of all trades," because I doubt he actually was recruited into the production itself, running lights or camera or slinging a boom pole, but he clearly was involved. Kind of a loose interpretation of "Meet the Maker," but it was about seeing the movie, really, and it was good. Despite committing the cardinal sin of misspelling one of its titles. But hell, I'm no longer sure "villain" is spelled that way anymore... has "villian" become the accepted spelling in an age of "teh" and other sanctioned Internet typos? If it has, well, that's not a world I want to live in, sir.

Erik took the insiders afterwards to a meeting at Mi Tierra, a sprawling tourist trap restaurant with an hour's wait before even getting to a table, and most of one after that. Food wasn't bad, overpriced of course, but Erik paid (at the behest of NALIP, one hopes), and the conversation was great.

I sat next to Enrique, which was good because he was the one person there whose name I knew. Erik's known him for fifteen years, and I've been hearing about him for almost as long, so it was good to finally meet him. He has a professorial mien, and likewise a tendency to teach. It was loud enough that one could really only hear the person directly next to you, so it was good that we are both people who find it easy to talk.

We got into a lively political discussion (he has that trust in liberal political parties ingrained in his generation, believing the future is safe in Hillary's hands, whereas I've long held that what this country needs is not a third political party, but a second). He sketched out for me on a napkin a scientific formula for creating tortillas, into which he also somehow tied the Big Bang, Einstein's theory of relativity, and some curious misconceptions about the malleability of the minds of children. (Seriously, man, my kid is stubborn as the lid of a pickle jar.) Conversation with Enrique is challenging and ego-fueling, in that it requires effort to keep up with his mind, and allows one to believe one's own mind might be on par. He's obviously smart and well-read, but also clever, with an appreciation for and skill with words, and is even a deft pun-smith, a quality unfairly maligned today. I felt like my brain had worked up a good sweat by the end of the meal, the sort of workout I don't get as much as I'd like these days.

For some years, basically since I've been in San Antonio, I've been one of if not the oldest person in my circle. I'd sort of forgotten how invigorating it can be to spend time with people ten or twenty years older, with minds that make you work. (I'm sure my younger friends feel the same of me... you know, when I'm not picking my nose and flicking boogers at them...)

Wish I'd figured out who most of them are. Might've been fun to hang with them again.