““Two-dollar beers that tasted like barely fermented, yeasty water. We salivated. There was no coursing - in ten minutes plates started pounding the spinning tray at the center of the table and we fought among ourselves. Conch in a hallucinatory Sichuan oil, a nest of cold sesame noodles, a wild, red stew that Scott called ma po tofu, cold tripe (“Just eat it,” Scott said, and I did), crackling duck, dry-sauteed green beans, skinny molten eggplants, cucumbers in scallion oil… We sweat, we breathed harder, our eyes ran. More napkins. The sauces ran. More rice. I touched my lips, numb and electrified. My stomach bloated out, a hard alien ball. I thought about throwing up so that I could eat another round.””
