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a year out
Tuesday, May 11 2021
Today was the first anniversary of Powerful getting released from prison after 24 years of incarceration. We wanted to celebrate by getting Impossible Burgers somewhere, but lots of restaurants are closed on Tuesday. So we ended up driving down to New Paltz and going to P&G's, the sprawling restaurant with lots of big-screen teevees and college kids hoping to get hammered quickly. When we arrived, there was a line out the door of people waiting for a seat, so we got on the waitlist and walked to Commissary, where Powerful and I both got coffee. Unfortunately we read the mitzvah wall too late to take advantage of several mitzvahs for Black people. One was even for a Black person working in the restaurant industry, which fit Powerful perfectly.
We always forget how loud P&G's is inside. It's a place where you have to shout to be heard or else lean in close and talk next to someone's ear. This is great when you're sizing up a prospective sex partner, but a bit of an inconvenience for old married couples or those hoping to avoid coronavirus. It would be a good test for our vaccinations if nothing else. As for Powerful, he'd never been in such a crowded, festive, indoor situation since leaving prison, and anything similar in prison would've been circumscribed by dreary grey concrete and included a much lower percentage of nubile young women. He soon stated a desire to return to this place often, as he'd never seen anything like it. After he asked where all these young people had come from, Gretchen explained that SUNY New Paltz is a large university which has a big effect on the village.
We ordered burgers and fries of course, and Powerful got himself whatever IPA I'd ordered (I couldn't hear the waitress when she gave its name, but it was great). Somehow we managed to eat all of it, with no leftovers to take home. This wasn't much of a feat for Powerful, but it was for Gretchen, and I predicted correctly that she would rue her decision to eat it all later.
By the time we left, the young folks in the bar were singing and stomping along en mass to some unknown song playing on the sound system. When we'd arrived, the music had been classic rock (probably for the older drunks at the bar), but after 7:00pm or so it was replaced by bass-heavy contemporary pop. I noticed that the style for the college women had them wearing a uniform of extremely high-waisted blue jeans (what we used to call "mom jeans") paired with a poofy blouse. It looked kind of 1980s to me, and not in any way I want to remember.
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