denis is here from friday till monday, generally aiding and abetting and receiving a generous dose of same in return from me.

we went to baraka for dinner. on the way, somewhere near central square, two people stopped us and said, are there any good restaurants around here? i said we're going to one right now you could come with us. what is it they asked. a tunisian place. they said no and went off. moments after we'd been seated however, the two came in. they must have turned around and tailed us all the way to pearl street.

dinner was good of course, but a tad damper than was usual. and when the creme brulee came at the end denis had to deal energetic whacks with a spoon to crack the over-caramelised top.

me: why are you attacking that poor creme brulee like that?
denis: well it's french. it hates our freedom.

conversations

(on a bulgarian girl with a shockingly impressive resume who had corresponded with him but eventually chose harvard.)

denis: so we looked at her resume and thought, my god, she can't come to yale. then she'll be THE eastern european intellectual and run us out of business.

(on finding out that said girl was out of town this weekend.)

me: well why don't you just write her a note and i'll put it in her departmental mailbox for you...
denis: shall i make it outrageous?
me: of course...but don't mention me. she'll probably hate me, and i can't afford having any more enemies on a grad student's stipend.

Q&A:

denis: do you like being a grad student?
me: free library access and they pay me to skip class. what's not to like about that?
denis: exactly!

(about my pat spacks cat-sitting interview:)

me: "i mean, come on. i'm a grad student in english of all things, right? and i'm a nice asian girl, right? and this has got to be the clincher - i went to uva, right? you'd think the job was practically in the bag. "how can i resist a uva grad!" she gushed at me. "have you any previous experience with cats?" which shows that honesty never pays, because the interview was essentially over from that point.
denis: how can you not have got the job?
me: she wrote me a tactful email saying she preferred someone with actual cat-sitting experience.
denis: *shrewdly* did you tell her you had read her book?


denis: so i read this guy's paper. he asks me what i think. and i think. erm, he'll tell me when he is ready. and he did. "i've something to tell you. i'm a structuralist." all these people i know come out of the closet and tell me they're structuralists.
me: *cheerfully* oh i'm a structuralist.
denis: yes i know. i'm surrounded by structuralists.
me: *consoling* oh i'm only one structuralist.


on japanese tourists who stop over in singapore to buy lana cake from greenwood avenue:

denis: *talking about some movie* so these alien hot chicks come to earth...
me:...to take away nasi lemak?
denis: only in a singaporean movie.
me: but if japanese tourists can come to singapore for lana cake i don't see why aliens can't come for nasi lemak.
denis: right. and the japanese are the closest earth has got to aliens?

on getting lost in boston:

denis: where are we going? are you taking me somewhere to sell my kidneys?
me: you don't have to start worrying until we get to chinatown and i start speaking chinese.

denis: ask someone for directions.
me: but i'm being a man today!
denis: fine, i'll sacrifice my manhood and ask. first my kidneys then my manhood. what else have i got?
me: how about your liver! livers regenerate themselves.
denis: so you'll harvest me?

and so i tell him about pierre png's liver and how according to colin cheong livers have become the gold standard for love.

denis: matching livers. how touching. why don't you write a book about it? you can call it my love is measured in liver.

denis on regional dialects: the thing i hate about the north is people saying "you guys." you guys is just wrong. i love y'all. there are two things i love about southern english. there's y'all. and yonder. there were some scientist friends of mine who were trying to establish the exact distance that would be considered "yonder" and how much beyond that would be "over yonder."