See Me, Feel Me, Feed Me

My first concert was the Who (I know, right?), which in no way explains why I went to see The Who's Tommy at Theatre VCU today. Because I had never seen the movie, I had absolutely no idea what the storyline was, although I fully expected to recognize and enjoy the music, which I did. My girlfriend was no better informed than I was, so we settled in to enjoy an afternoon of theater from the front row. I love watching spit and sweat fly.

Turns out the reasons for Tommy's deaf, dumb and blind kid status was being witness to a murder followed by abuse, both sexual and physical; it was really quite disturbing. The production, however, was terrific, with one of the best parts being having the band onstage performing the Who's music throughout.

Ryan Lake was stellar on guitar doing his best Pete Townsend and one of my favorite keyboard players, Gabe Churray of Ilad (one of my favorite local bands) shone. VCU has done a great job with this show and it's definitely worth spending an hour and 45 minutes at this Tony-award winning musical before it closes.

Afterwards we strolled down to Kuba Kuba ostensibly for a glass of wine, but ultimately for a feast. It was nothing like busy; Manny greeted us and immediately made himself director of our evening. Since it was still technically late afternoon and sunny we began with glasses of Vino Verde and a bowl of olives. Within minutes, grilled shrimp appeared at the table. We were busy dissecting the play and peeling the tails off our shrimp before we knew it.

Moving on to talk of the nefarious motives for friendship, we were the recipients of smoked salmon bruschetta with cream and capers. My friend is gluten-intolerant, so she could only enjoy the salmon, but I had no problem with the oil-toasted bread underneath with melt-in-your-mouth salmon on top.

And probably because Manny knows I can't get past his mussels with Tasso ham even after all these years, a small bowl of it appeared in front of each of us. By now our topic was working vacations and U.S. vs. Europe, not that either would be a hardship when it comes to learning a new skill. Manny opined that vacations should involve no work.

Cod cakes with a spicy cream sauce arrived next, but their cornmeal crust prevented my friend from partaking, so once again, it was up to me to follow through, which I happily did. Manny came over and sat with us for a bit to discuss leisure activities, specifically music at Balliceaux and the pleasures of cocktails versus straight spirits on the rocks. Note the plural; his complaint was with places that provide only one slow-melting cube. To each his own, I say.

He'd also graciously delivered a bottle of Sass Pinot Noir, announcing it as his current favorite small production winery. Girlfriend and I were impressed first with the delicious aroma and then with its balanced fruit followed by an earthy finish. It was meant to accompany the lamb chop lollipops that suddenly appeared in front of us. What a beautiful combination these two were! I'm not in the least embarrassed to say that we sucked the bones clean.

To assuage any guilt about our protein overload, our last course was large salads with a side of cornbread. At this point, we were comparing past relationships and trying to determine what could be gleaned from them. As two unintentional singles who both want to be attached again, we are seriously trying to suss out relationship success by examining the past. Of course, we're both smart enough to know that it will happen when it happens. Still, we can't seem to stop talking about the possibilities.

Kuba Kuba was definitely starting to fill up by this time but so were we, so we gave up our table, bade Manny a grateful good-bye and decided to walk over to the Black Sheep for our last course of wine and dessert. Naturally I got the chocolate creme brulee, (as if I order any other dessert there) but my friend has become a convert, too and may have even finished hers first, no shabby accomplishment when eating dessert with a pro like me.

Walking back to our cars at VCU in the cool night air, we marveled at how our theater date had turned into a multi-course extravaganza which had given us unexpected hours to solve the intricacies of friendship and relationships.

Or perhaps we were just so full that we had a false sense of contentment, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's always tomorrow for figuring out how to handle friends and find new loves.

We're convinced that we're only going to get better at this. I wonder, does that make us optimistic or just naive?