8/18
Back in Pittsburgh, back at the old college, but back early, during orientation. This town is Pittsburgh, I tell myself, but even as I dream I know it isn’t really. My heart tells me it is Montreal.
“What’s changed?” I ask Chloe and Gabe. We are going out for dinner.
Gabe drives a little green car now, not his mother’s blue minivan. “Oh, everything,” he says off-hand, and I laugh. He’s right.
Chloe interrupts, “Do you remember where Christopher’s used to be?” I shake my head, not even recognizing the name. “Well, we went there once, and it was practically empty, and it closed in the fall, but now it’s just… it’s crazy.” She shakes her head, and pulls up the fur hood on her jacket. She pulls Gabe’s arm. “Tell her.”
He sighs. “So you know luchadors?” he asks. I nod. “So it’s like, I don’t know. Almost dinner theatre? It’s staged lucha libre fights while you eat. You eat and it looks like rows around a boxing ring, but they’re actually tables. It’s sort of the place to go right now.” He parks the car and we get out, bundled against the snow, and walk past a deli I forgot about. It’s snowing lightly, and I realized I’ve missed this town and this weather. “It’s called the Green Slime. I don’t know why.”
“Wouldn’t Nickelodeon sue their asses?” I ask. “It’s like a lawsuit waiting to happen.”
He shrugs.
We walk down Murray Avenue, and there, almost a whole block in length, is the Green Slime. The sign is made up of thousand of green LCD dots, and you can justb barely make out that it says THE GREEN SLIME in a blocky font, surrounded by thousands of other green dots. It really just looks like a long green sign, and that is recognizable in and of itself.
Chloe grabs my elbow and we skip inside. I have missed this, missed her, and him, and all of this.
Inside, the whole place almost feels like a shady bar, but it’s actually a well-respected Mexican restaurant, and a fight has started. We sit down, awaiting our meals, and watch the luchadors fight. It is surreal, and we eat as others cheer the fighters, and I wonder where the hell I am, because I am missing a place that I’ve never been to before. This isn’t Pittsburgh. Not even close.
