Dinner

At our women's dinner last night, no one took pictures -- for a change. All seven women were dressed up and looked beautiful. We all look beautiful "for our age." Our ages varied 41-66 (or so), adjusting for the possibility that one of us is altering our statistics. Let's say, not. We grew up together, most of us. Our goal was to eat a terrific meal in a restaurant and to light up cigarettes afterward. Soon, we won't be able to do that, and already, we have had to drive to the neighboring county to do that. Our hostess, whom I call Lana at this weblog, visits Florida to see her snowbird parents and believes the smoking ban is our Prohibition. She has been watching old Bogart movies and realizing the end of an era. I wore my Mizrahi evening dress that I got at Target for $6. The truth is, we hardly ever understand what is going on. If you consider that it is legal to boot-lock my car in a Minneapolis parking lot for $119.75 but not to smoke in a restaurant, are we not in our rights to ask what rights are, what ours are and what they were? I ordered, of all things, beef liver. What a strange decision, to eat liver at a restaurant. All the women asked to taste it, as if it were an exotic appetizer. I gave them all bites. For liver, it tasted very good, but for food, it tasted like liver. The thought of it, while I ate it, was causing a ruckus in my esophagus, and twice I went to the women's room to burp violently near the sink. I ate it in the hopes that it will help my liver, which is holding up all right after all these years of taking medications and a past of too much drinking. So, we were all healthy but suffering financially, not equally so, and the tendency to suffer financially was caused by our men. We took a quiz in moral values, phrased as a party game for women. After the story-quiz, it came clear that I place my values in the following order: Security (the old male friend), Love (the girl), Sex (the lover), Morals (the girl's female friend), Money (the old man). There was every possible combination in the group. I'm keeping this vague, because it's more important to get out and enjoy company and a meal once in a while than it is to report on it in a detailed format; you see how it makes for paler writing. I do.