"This is crap, really."

"Well YOU made it, didn't you? Why don't you stop eating it, then?" James was not much help.

"Right." That was the problem with Mongolian barbecue. In the end you had nobody to blame for your bad meal but yourself. This was my second time at such a place, and both times the outcome was the same: shit. The feeling I had wasn't so much one of anger or disappointment as it was of embarrassment. How could something so promising go so horribly wrong?

"I'm not quite up to this bold task," I said, and took a furious drink from my water with lemon. Other happy, contented individuals, who were 'in the know,' were using their chopsticks to deliver what appeared to be perfectly well mixed ingrediants to their mouths. Damn these people. Brad, our server, had gone off somewhere to smoke a joint or something. I needed a fresh bowl of rice.

This was the state of things: my dish, the dish I had prepared, was salty. I don't mean salty as in, 'Oh you put a little too much salt on that, honey.' I mean the kind of salty that blinds your taste for anything else, that kind of acrid wholey unpleasant burning salty that leaves you wincing and smacking your tounge against the roof of your mouth. I needed rice because rice made it tolerable, you see. It brought the level of disgust down a notch from bad to tolerable.

"Perhaps the combination of calamari, crab, shrimp, and scallops, mixed with teriyaki, soy, and sesame sauces was not the best idea," I said, licking my lips. I had also thrown in a couple of spoonfuls of garlic and chili powders along with some fresh cracked black pepper, for good measure. Mmmm. . . this will be nice and spicy, I thought, and I like spicy.

"Which bold task is that? Eating Mongolian?" James munched contentedly on his chicken and noodles.

I drank more water. I would be thirsty all afternoon. Some stubborn impulse had made me eat most of my detestable dish, regardless of the briny, entirely indecent taste. "Eating. Preparing. The whole thing. They should put a warning label on this shit," I said. "Or instructions."

"They have instructions."

"Right."

Brad was still not back from his smoke break and I had no more water. This was lovely. Behind me more smiling people brought their bowls to the men who grilled and chopped. James laughed.

"Right," I said.

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