Against the Grain

“It’s definitely gluten intolerance,” I said.

“I told you so. How did you figure it out?” His comment was punctuated by the harsh blare of car horns and a muttered ‘Get the fuck out of my way, bitch.’ Cal was mired in traffic somewhere on the 405 in L.A. I was, as usual, standing in Jack Kerouac Alley in San Francisco’s North Beach, cigarette in one hand, cell phone in the other, hundreds of miles from Los Angeles.

“I performed an experiment on Saturday.”

“Okay. By the way, you know we’re supposed to have a conference call with Ron on Monday. Do you have any new ideas for the Lorenzo Lamas script?”

“Lots of ideas. And maybe I’ll be able to get some work done now that I’m not shitting my brains out every day for the next thirty fucking days. So here’s the deal: I’m sitting in Vesuvio on Friday, reading and having a few beers –”

“What’re you reading?” And then a muttered ‘Goddamnit.’ Cal was never good at handling traffic in L.A.

“A book by Denis Johnson. Never mind. You wouldn’t know who he is. Anyway, I was gonna go out with Greg and Joanna for drinks and my stomach was upset so I stopped drinking beer and switched over to Black Russians.”

“Who are Greg and Joanna?”

“Friends of mine up here. What does it matter? So, when I go out with Greg and Jo I decide to stick with vodka, okay? The next morning I wake up and I feel great. I go get lunch, I hold it down okay, I have coffee, I hold that down okay, and all that gets to me thinking: What’s the variable here?”

“You weren’t drinking beer the night before.”

“Exactly!” I stamped the cigarette out on the alley cobblestones and lit a fresh one. “Now, normally I drink Bass Ale but I went for a much wheatier beer this time, a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and, wouldn’t you know it, three-quarters of the beer down and I am rushing down the stairs to the fucking bathroom.”

“I told you months ago you had to stop drinking beer,” Cal scolded. He likes to scold me. Cal never had kids of his own.

“My doctor told me to stop drinking completely. I thought beer was still okay.”

“Dumb fuck.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”