Julian and the Oysters

I love mushy food.

I’m going to make a great old person someday because I won’t need teeth to chew; the stuff I like to eat slides right down.

Most people complain about soggy, wilting McDonald’s fries.  I don’t.  That’s actually the way I order them: “Do you happen to have, like, an undercooked batch?  Or could you scoop a few of them out of the frier a couple minutes early for me, maybe?”

I love when the fry is so soft and greasy with oil that it just sort of flops onto your finger when you take it out of the bag. YUMMY.

At restaurants, I ask for my steak “as rare as you’re legally allowed to serve it, please.”

The servers’ reactions to this request are always fun—especially if the server is a 20-something male who is ready to watch how this challenge will go down. His eyebrows will shoot up and he’ll nod his head, giving me a knowing smile.

I sometimes like to imagine the server and the chef in the kitchen, roaring with laughter about the still-bleeding steak they plop down onto my plate.  “HA!  Let’s see what the old lady thinks of this!”

And then I imagine their shock, disgust—and mad respect—when they watch me snarf it like a coyote does a small dog and then lean back to let it settle as I chase it with a satisfying sip of rum and Diet Coke.

I was once served a steak so rare that I had to take a picture to send to my then-14-year-old son.  “YOU DARE ME??” I said, even though I was just showing off.  I knew that he knew darn well I was going to eat it.  They don’t call me Mega Maid around here for nothing.

He texted back immediately, “Mom you’re disgusting and you’re going to die.”

That steak was delicious.  I still have dreams about it.

It’s no surprise that I love sushi.  Uncooked fish?  SIGN ME UP.  It’s one of my favorite foods. 

If you’re like me, any spare time you have is spent shopping at Aldi.  The Aisle of Shame is obviously the best part, but I also really love seeing what random thing they have in the freezer section that week.

There I was one day, looking into those glass cases, when I noticed bags of tuna steaks and I thought to myself, “Can you just thaw those and eat them raw with a little soy sauce?”

I didn’t want to ask the question out loud because sometimes that doesn’t go too well for me.  You can’t imagine (or maybe you can) how many times I’ve voiced a question that had previously been residing only in my head, causing someone to stop and stare at me, their jaw hanging slack.

Honestly I think it’s because they’re good questions but they sound like stupid questions, so the person wants to make fun of me but at the same time, they’re thinking, Well I don’t know.  Can you just thaw those out and eat them raw? I’m going to have to go home and Google that.

So I just tried it on my own at home and—yep!  They’re delicious raw.

Those frozen tuna steaks are now a staple in my daily diet.  If you came to my house this very moment, you would find 4 ½ bags of them in the door of my deep freeze—and actually that’s a lie because I just checked and there are actually 6 ½ bags. So good.

I do have to admit that I ate two of them yesterday and suffered a bout of explosive diarrhea a few hours later, but I eat so many random things that it really could have been from anything.  Plus I’ve eaten the tuna steaks before and had absolutely no issues, so you’ll probably be fine if you want to try them out. 

Just don’t buy Aldi out of them; save some for the rest of us.

One time my brother-in-law took a few of us to the river for a day on his boat.  A couple of the kids found some oysters—fresh water oysters, I guess?—and showed them to us. I immediately snatched one and began trying to crack it open—or “shuck it,” as those of us in the know like to say.

“LISA!” my younger sister squealed, wrinkling her nose in disgust.  “Please tell me you’re not going to try to eat that!”

“Of course I’m going to try to eat it,” I said.  “I love oysters!”

“You are so nasty,” she said, and then she did the unthinkable:  She slapped it out of my hand.

I had no choice but to take the loss, too lazy to bend over and try to retrieve the oyster from wherever it had landed among the rocks in the water.

My younger sister stopped talking to me about a year ago (my family is absolutely ridiculous) and one of my biggest regrets in life is that I wasn’t the one who stopped talking to her first because that slapped oyster would’ve been reason enough.  And if anyone were to have gotten nosy and ask why I’d shunned her, all I would’ve had to say was “SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE DID TO ME ON THE RIVER.”

Ah, missed opportunities.

Early this past June, my family took a vacation to Cabo with my older sister and her family.  One day, we went on an excursion to Pelican Beach, a beautiful place with the coldest, most refreshing water right by the famous Cabo Arch.  There’s almost nothing I like better than a cold body of water on a hot, hot day, and for that particular excursion I knew I only had two hours to enjoy it, so I dove right in.

About an hour after we got there, I heard my older sister calling my name.  I was busy swimming in the ocean and didn’t want to be bothered, so I pretended I didn’t hear her. 

But she’s persistent.

She was calling my name loudly and gesturing toward my older son, who was hanging out on the rocks, chatting animatedly with a local.

As I got closer, she said, “Jay met this guy named Julian who hunts for oysters.  You can eat them fresh out of the ocean, right here.  He’ll shuck them and prepare them—he’s got a bag of different sauces and everything!”

Well, she could have stopped at “oysters.”  I was sold.  I had never even known you could eat them straight out of the ocean.  What an experience!

(TANGENT—Back in 2020 when people were saying that COVID had come from a bat at an Asian wet market, I remember shrugging my shoulders and saying, “I would’ve tried it…”

“Bat from an Asian wet market” doesn’t even sound good—really, if you stop and picture it for a moment, it kind of makes you gag—but I have a stomach of steel and I love diving into the culture and trying new foods when I travel. 

Knowing me, I probably would have liked it and gone back for a second serving.  “Bats are low-carb, right?  I’m trying to lose weight.”) 

My older son is just like me, which isn’t always good because it’s why we occasionally argue (well, that and because he’s 16-almost-17), but in most cases it works out because he knows me so well.  He had a feeling I wouldn't want to pass this up--both the oysters and the experience--and he was right.  He smiled broadly at me as I approached him and Julian. 

After chatting a bit, Julian and I agreed on a price of $20 for 6 oysters and one large chocolate clam.  I could have gotten them cheaper, but Julian was a nice guy and I was willing to pay that price for what I knew would be quite a treat. (Later that week, we would go to a restaurant where we would see that they were selling single chocolate clams for $11.  I’m not giving that information to show what I think about what Julian was charging or what I paid for the oysters but instead to give a sense of comparison so you can be the judge.)

My younger son made fun of me: “You have no idea how to negotiate, Mom.”

Actually, I’m pretty well-traveled and I do know how to negotiate. In fact, earlier during that same excursion when I was taking pictures of my family on the beach, a man had walked up to me and offered to take one of all of us.  I’ve never met a camera I didn’t like and I never miss an opportunity to be in a picture, so I handed him my phone and let him go at it. 

I knew it would cost me.

After he was finished taking the picture, he gave me back my phone and said, “I have a family to support; can I have some money?”

"Of course," I said. "Let me run back to my bag and grab some.  I’ll come find you.”  It wasn’t an unreasonable request. It’s a small beach and I would have just had to walk a few paces to the left to catch up with him after I’d grabbed a few bucks.

But my man wasn’t going to lose sight of me for a second.  “I’ll go with you,” he said.

I wasn’t in any danger; we were in full view of everyone and my bag was only steps away.  I sighed and said, “Well, come on then.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out my wallet.  I rifled through a few dollar bills and a couple of $10’s to find a five.  I held it out to him.

He didn’t accept it. Instead, he made a face at me.  “But lady,” he said, “I saw a $10 in there!”

“Quit looking at my STUFF!” I responded. “Besides, all you did was take a picture. I’m not giving you $10 for that!”

“But lady—”

I narrowed my eyes, giving him a face right back. “You’re lucky you’re getting $5 and not a couple of those dollar bills I’m sure you spotted in my bag as well.”

I shoved the $5 toward him again and this time he reluctantly accepted it. Then, transaction finished, we both burst into laughter.  No hard feelings.  HE KNEW I WAS RIGHT.

Still, I feel like he won.

We all watched Julian work in what he jokingly called his “office”, a shady spot in a shallow cave at the bottom of the huge Pelican Beach rocks.  He cracked the oysters open, arranged them on a plastic plate, and used the sauces in his backpack to season them to my liking.  It was, just as I’d imagined it would be, a really cool experience.

About 15 minutes later, after I had guzzled the delicious oysters and clam (they tasted amazing) I set off to find Julian and give him his plate back, along with an extra $5.

“Mom!” my younger son insisted laughingly.  “You have this negotiating thing all wrong!”

It wasn’t until we were getting ready to leave the beach that I noticed something…amiss…with my husband.  He hopped onto the small boat that was going to take us to the marina, and then he turned around to grab my hand and help me up.

My older sister teased him.  “Look how you jumped up there before your wife.  You should have helped her up first!”

My husband scowled at her as he pulled me up.  “How could I have helped her from down there? It makes a lot more sense this way.”  Then, under his breath, I heard him mutter, “Maybe Julian should’ve helped her up.”

I caught my sister’s eye and she snorted with laughter.

On the boat, I asked my husband if he could pass me the bottle of water.  It was hot outside and we were staying at an all-inclusive resort.  I needed to take any opportunity that I remembered to drink water in order to balance out the “free” rum and Diet Cokes I’d been drinking.

“Maybe you should’ve asked Julian for water,” he muttered, thrusting the bottle of water at me.

I shot a wide-eyed glance at my sister, and we started giggling again.  What the Julian was this?

Listen, my husband doesn’t get jealous.  Like, ever.  We have a very stable, very boring relationship and that’s exactly how we like it.  We work hard to be the type of couple that people say things like, “Do they even like each other?” about.

So this was really strange…

It didn’t stop when we got back to the resort later that evening, either.  We were sitting by the pool and my sister said something totally innocent like, “What time do you guys want to hit the buffet?” and my husband replied, “Maybe Lisa wants to swim back to Pelican Beach and have oysters with Julian.”

My jaw dropped and I looked at my older sister, who decided to play along.  “Well, good thing you got his phone number then, Lis.”

My younger son, standing nearby, snapped to attention.  “You got his phone number, Mom?  You would mess up the family??”

Even thinking about it now brings a bubble of laughter to my belly.  “NO, Rex!  I did NOT get his phone number!  Aunt Vickie is joking.”

Dumbfounded, I turned to my husband.  “I have like 300 ex-boyfriends on my Facebook, two to whom I text off-color memes while you’re sitting next to me on the couch, laughing along with me.  You haven’t shown an ounce of jealousy in 23 years. But it’s Julian in a cave that bothers you?”

“Well, you haven’t stop talking about those stupid oysters,” my husband grumbled. 

“They were GOOD!”

“And you gave him an extra $5.”

“It’s not like I tucked it into his Speedo!”

“He had on work pants.  He wasn’t wearing a Speedo,” my older sister supplied helpfully.

“Oh, BUT IF HE HAD BEEN” my husband said, thrusting his face at me with his eyes all wide and accusatory.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—but the random guy reclining in the lounger the row behind us could, and he spoke up.  “I personally think it’s really sweet that he’s jealous.  It shows how much he still loves you after 23 years.”

I looked behind me and caught the guy’s eye.  “Yeah, like I’ve still got it, right?”

He nodded his head, giving a shrug of agreement.

My older sister raised her eyebrows pensively. “I don’t know, Lis, if you moved into Julian’s cave, you’d be really tan after all those hours in the sun…”

I cocked my head.  “And I could probably stop bleaching my hair…the sun would do it for me.”

“And oh, man, the way the salt water made your hair look all pretty with those beachy waves in it today…”

“MOM!” my younger son said.

“Calm down, Rex,” I laughed. “Dad knows I’m joking.”

“Uh-huh,” my husband replied dryly. “Come on, Rex.  Let’s go get some dinner.  Your mom can call Julian to pick her up.”  They turned and started walking in the direction of their favorite resort buffet.

“I DIDN’T GET HIS NUMBER!” I yelled after them. 

EPILOGUE
This isn’t How Stella Got Her Groove Back or Eat, Pray, Love, you guys. There’s really no epilogue.

I never went back to Pelican Beach.  I never saw Julian again.

But I’ll always have the oysters.

Well, no I won’t.

But here are some pictures I took of them. (Also included is the group picture that cost me $5.)