Later, Part 3: Heights, Lights, and Nights

While we were downtown, we of course stopped in at the Sedona Fudge Company. I got her hooked on this place the last time we visited – best fudge EVER. J got some peanut butter chocolate and some vanilla sour cream, which we agreed was pretty meh. I got some triple chocolate and some penuche. Ahh, sweet fudgey goodness.

Dinnertime was upon us, and we were both hungry. I was excited to try Elote Cafe, since I’d heard such great things about it. As we studied the menu before heading in, a local man passed us and recommended it very highly. He said there was usually a wait, but it was well worth it.

Right on both counts. We waited about half an hour for a table and had fun watching others enjoy their drinks and popcorn. (Have to try that popcorn next time.) And then we had possibly the very best meal of our lives. It was so good it may have ruined us for less excellent fare.

Merry-go-round at Los Abrigados

I ordered the elote starter, which is this delicious concotion made from fire-roasted corn, mayo, lime, cotija cheese, and spices. It was just absolutely amazing. J doesn’t like corn, but she loved the elote. For dinner I had the mole poblano, and J had the smoked chicken enchiladas. We were both amazed with every bite – so fresh and flavorful, prepared to complete perfection. And the slice of chocolate pie we split for dessert just made it all that much better. C&C, thanks for an awesome recommendation (not that I ever had any doubt).

Hippie Christmas (peace sign made of soda cans)

After this we decided to check out the lights across the creek at Los Abrigados. It’s a resort that decorated each of its buildings for the holidays with a different theme, then let people wander through to vote on which ones they liked best. My favorite was the Matisse – hard to fault Henri for the holidays.

Henri for the Holidays (including J)

I think J liked the hippie one best. The M&Ms one was also very cool. We had a great time checking it all out. It was cold, but not too cold. There were friendly people enjoying the holiday spirit, and cute kids having a great time. There was even a hayride.

After covering the whole route, we set out looking for the car. This was more of a challenge than we expected, since neither of us had paid particular attention to where we parked. And the whole Los Abrigados-Tlaquepaque complex is a little mazelike even in daylight. We ended up walking right past the car a couple of times, which we later found hilarious. On the plus side, we also got to see some amazing artwork we wished we could afford. Gorgeous, vivid colors in oil on metal. Something to look for when we get significantly less poor.

Now here’s where things get a little wild. It was still pretty early, so we decided to get a couple of drinks before we called it a night. J wisely suggested finding someplace within walking distance of the hotel. That pretty much narrowed our options down to a place called Relics, which was right across the street from the Land of Excellent Mattresses. Their web site said they were a restaurant/night club with the biggest wooden dance floor in northern Arizona. So we bundled ourselves up and set out across the street.

Our hotel is located near the western edge of town. The street separating it from the nightclub is actually a highway, and at that point it’s not especially well lit. We were both wearing dark clothes, so it made sense to make haste across. J didn’t count on a curb on the other side and stubbed her toes pretty badly – there was blood, and I was a little worried, but she decided to soldier on. There was a nightclub! Drinks! A dance floor!

And only the two of us to enjoy it. They were thinking of closing up early until we walked in and sat down at the bar. It was J, the bartender, the manager, and me. A little anticlimactic after the drama that brought us there. They were both very cool. Justin (the bartender) made a mean appletini with olives for J, and a good White Russian for me. This was followed over the next hour or so by a couple of other exotic cocktails for J and three different whiskeys for me. The owner even threw in a glass of some really excellent small-batch rye whiskey for me – liked it so much I had to buy a bottle when I got home.

Justin was a great bartender. Very friendly and companionable without being pushy. He made us laugh and told us some great stories. He found it a little hard to believe we were just friends (“but with benefits, right?” “no!”), which also made us laugh – we’re used to people making those assumptions about us. But he got it. He’s had close female friends, too. If you’re in Sedona, look him up at Relics and tip him well.

After this we limped back across the street to the hotel, where we decided on a little TV before bed. We watched the end of  “Charlie’s Angels” because it’s awesome and because there really wasn’t anything else on. And then it was time to get rested for another day of adventure.

Later, Part 2: Arts and Entertainment with Extra Towels

We left more or less as planned the next morning. There was some fun getting J’s GPS set up and plugged in, along with some banking excitement. But before long we were on our way into the north, blasting a variety of CDs and having a great road-trippy time.

We decided this time to visit Jerome. Neither of us had been there yet, and we’d heard good things. So we decided to stop there, then head to Sedona to check into our hotel. Jerome is perched right on the side of a steep hill, as you can see here, and it’s about the size of a postage stamp.

J for Jerome

It was fun. We had lunch at a bar under a B&B. We walked around the town looking at the shops and galleries. One of the galleries actually had their main artist there working on a new painting right in the middle of the gallery. He was very good – gorgeous plein air landscapes. We also stopped in on Puscifer‘s store, unfortunately interrupting their employee in the middle of her cocaine break. We stopped in out of curiosity, and we left out of courtesy.

J wanted to check out the local adult boutique next door to Puscifer.

A little context here: J is a very pretty young woman in her mid-twenties. I had a little crush on her when we first met about three years ago. Partly this was because of the pretty, and partly this was because she was the first person I met at Dish Network that actually seemed like a professional. Right about that time I started realizing that I shouldn’t be pursuing women literally young enough to be my daughters. Plus we worked together. Oh, and she mostly prefers girls. So I never did anything with that little crush, and now we’re good friends.

Anyway, lately she’d been a little more flirtatious than usual. When I booked our hotel room last month, she did a pretty convincing job of acting disappointed that I’d picked a room with two queens instead of one king. I actually had to ask her if there was maybe something she wanted to tell me. We had a good laugh.

So when the female friend I was sharing a hotel room with suggested visiting the adult boutique, I admit I was a little confused. I said “sure” and mentally went over everything to make sure I hadn’t got my wires crossed or missed a signal somewhere. I’m a little obtuse sometimes, especially when it comes to women. I couldn’t see where I’d missed something, so I went with the assumption that I was reading the wrong thing into this.

I started looking around the front part of the store, which was mostly smoking paraphernalia. She pretty much made a beeline to the back where the fun stuff was. I figured we would both be more comfortable if I gave her a little space, so I stayed a few feet away. (Also, to be perfectly honest, that kind of thing tends to make me uncomfortable. Call it some residual prudery from my fundamentalist upbringing.) She didn’t stay long, and we moved on to the rest of Jerome.

We now skip forward in the narrative to much later that same evening.

J was a little disappointed I hadn’t followed her back into the adult section. This puzzled me a little.

“Well, I was trying to respect your boundaries,” I said.

“And I appreciate that,” she said. “But it made it awkward when you didn’t come back there with me. I thought we could laugh at some of the stuff back there. You know, like ‘I can’t believe all the crazy stuff people like.’ It just surprised me, especially considering how we are.”

“I didn’t think of it that way,” I said. “I wasn’t sure why you wanted to go in there – I thought maybe there was something you needed there, and I didn’t want to be intrusive or whatever. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to make it awkward for you.”

“It’s okay,” she said.

So I did read the signals wrong, mostly by looking for the wrong thing. Lesson learned and no harm done.

After an hour or two exploring Jerome, which is a charming little town, we headed on into Sedona. Disappointment #1: the hotel is an entirely non-smoking property. No smoking in the rooms, no smoking on the patios or balconies, no smoking in the parking lot. I felt bad for J, who’s a smoker – if I’d known that, I’d have booked us someplace else. On the plus side, the beds were exactly as wonderful as I remembered from my last visit. And the jacuzzi tub in the room looked very inviting.

We rested up a bit in the room. We lay down on her bed reviewing and occasionally mocking the hospitality materials. We especially had fun with the towels. The first FAQ in the book was, “Why are there so many towels in my room?” J counted eighteen towels for the two of us. We joked about calling the front desk for more towels so we could carpet the room with them. I played with the fireplace – I can’t resist a fireplace, even one with a quietly ticking timer. We marveled at the thread snagged on one of the rafters – how the hell did that get there? She took a couple of ten-minute naps that I let run about ten more minutes each because she just looked too cute to wake up.

This would have been AWESOME from Airport Butte.

And then it was time for the Main Event – the Sedona experience. We talked about going to Airport Butte for a spectacular view of the sunset, but it was pretty overcast and we didn’t think it would be all that great. As you can tell by the photo here, this proved to be a mistake. The sun lit the clouds with fiery color, and having seen a sunset lighting the valley and the red rocks before I can tell you it would have been amazing.

J was looking for a bracelet and a ring. We searched just about every jewelry store in downtown Sedona and didn’t find quite the thing she was looking for. A very nice older gentleman at one store put out tray after tray of rings for her to check out, but the ones she liked weren’t in her size and the ones in her size she didn’t like. I looked at some of them with her, toyed with the idea of buying a wooden flute, and made a little small talk with the nice man while she looked for just the right thing.

As we left the store, he thanked us for coming by and regretted not having what J was looking for. “And sir, you have a very lovely lady there,” he said to me. We laughed as we wished him a good night- “two out of three right”, I said when we were out of earshot. We’ve gotten used to people assuming we’re a couple. I’d always figured the age difference would discourage that, but apparently most people’s default expectation on seeing a man and a woman together who are clearly fairly close is still “romantically involved”.

I’ll tell you a funny story about that in the next entry.

Later, Part 1 – Ethnic Cuisine, Ninjas, the Forgotten Smoke, and Kung Fu Interruptus

My birthday fell on a Friday this year. I generally like to take my birthday off to make a long weekend of it. If I can, I travel to the mountains or the ocean. This year I’d made plans to travel with my friend J – she’d gone to Sedona with me a couple of years ago, and we both figured some time out of town was very much in order.

I had lunch on Friday with J at an Indian buffet she’d been telling me about. It was very good: butter chicken, palak paneer, tandoori chicken, and some excellent nan. Also some kind of mango pudding whose name I’ve forgotten. I’ve had Indian food before, but not fresh Indian food – it was delicious. We hammered out a few final details for our trip before she went back to work.

Another friend called me to meet him for a movie while I was out running a few errands. Since the movie involved ninjas and cowboys, I couldn’t say “no” and retain any meaningful sense of myself. How was it? Let’s just say it was odd. Normally I like odd, but this one left me as cold as the frozen fish the hero used to dispatch someone in the last scene. We had fun anyway. I met my friend’s new girlfriend, who is very cool and funny, and we had drinks and Italian food after.

This left me time to go home and watch The Forbidden Kingdom, which I mostly wanted to see again to watch Jackie Chan fight Jet Li. (EPIC.) I also had in mind to enjoy a cigar on the balcony. I don’t smoke them often – the last time was on my last birthday, in fact. But they’re nice once in a while.

My parents called just in time to make me miss the epic battle scene. (Timing runs in the family.) We chatted a while, particularly about what I might want for Christmas.

The situation with my parents has been what it is for a long time. So I’ve always had to make them a list of gift ideas so they’d have some inkling what I might like. The last few years I’ve put it up on Amazon. This has been invaluable for them – I don’t know what they’d ignore if I didn’t’. Mom seems determined to get me something very practical – something I need around the house, like a kitchen tool or a rug.

“Do you have a Crock Pot?” she asked.

“Yes, a great big one,” I said.

“Do you use it a lot?” she asked.

“Occasionally,” I said. “Mostly to make pot roasts.”

“They make smaller ones, you know,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “You got me one a few years ago. But I usually like to make more than one serving at a time – that way I have leftovers I can take to work for lunch.”

“What about a food chopper?”

“I still have the one you got me a couple of years ago,” I said. “Very handy on occasion. I have a rice cooker, a mixer, a toaster, pots, pans, knives – the kitchen’s pretty well equipped.”

“Pot holders? Towels?”

“Oh, I just reach into the oven and grab stuff bare-handed,” I said. “I like to make a game of it – how severely will I be burned? The urgent care nurses think I’m cute. And why buy towels when you already wear pants? I’m not the King of France.”

“Uh huh,” she said. She’s used to my sarcasm.

I think she sees Christmas gifts as a way to keep taking care of me. I’m forty-one, and I have a job that pays me enough to afford everything I need along with a few things I don’t. But I think part of her still thinks of me as her little boy. Or maybe she thinks that since I don’t have a woman to take care of me I’m just flailing around in pathetic domestic squalor. I don’t know.

I much prefer fun presents – something I can start enjoying that very morning. I’m kind of fanatical about it.  People used to get me those page-a-day calendars until they realized I would actually read the whole thing that morning like a book. So my wish list is mostly fun stuff: books, movies, toys. I’m pretty determined to keep having that childlike “yay! Christmas presents! let’s play!” mentality for the rest of my life. I saw a t-shirt this weekend that said “Growing old is mandatory – growing up is optional”. I’ll drink to that.

After we got off the phone, I went ahead and added a couple of home items to the list to give Mom some ideas. I forgot all about my birthday smoke and changed into my PJs. I got myself all packed for my trip, since we were getting an early start the next morning. I included the cigar because I was determined to make that a new birthday tradition. I answered a few more of the roughly fifty gajillion birthday wishes I got on Facebook. I think I replied to them all, but if I didn’t – thank you all. You made my birthday just that much more special.

It was a fine day.

Of Which More Later

It’s been a very busy and fun few days.

There’s been French vodka, Indian food, Italian food, Southwestern food, Mackinaw Island fudge, bar food, and junk food. Alanis Morisette, P!nk, and the soundtracks for Rent and Chicago. Art, history, and adult novelties in Jerome. A surfeit of towels, glorious scenery, and jewelry stores in Sedona. A night of beautiful Christmas lights, art we wished we could afford, and looking for our car. A mad dash on foot across the highway from our hotel to the biggest wooden dance floor in northern Arizona – and the emptiest bar at 10 PM on a Saturday we’ve ever seen. Sangria. Margaritas. White Russians. Appletinis with olives. Three kinds of whiskey.  Him:  “But friends with benefits, right?” Us (laughing): “No.” Him: “Really?”

A completely non-smoking hotel for a smoker and a guy with a fine cigar that has yet to be smoked. A hangover combined with low blood sugar cured by a French dip, Gatorade, Aleve, and Pepto. Two badly stubbed toes, a jacuzzi tub, a fireplace, and two half-viewings of Charlie’s Angels. Lunch with fall foliage and hummingbirds. The view from the Chapel of the Rock now includes a mansion with a four-car garage and its own observatory. Trying to name the voice on the GPS. Roundabouts and mountains that came out the sky to stand there. Outlet malls great and small, featuring great deals on jeans and heels. Great conversations and companionship.

I have a lot of great memories from this weekend with J. And yes, there are pictures. It was just what the doctor ordered for both of us. We’re already talking about our next getaway – maybe skiing, maybe the ocean.

And I still have two more days off to recover before I go back to work. Life is good right now.