The mission of this zine is to write about my life, without tidying anything up. This unavoidably means writing about other people, which inches toward awkward when the people I’m writing about are family. I love ’em, and yet most of them drive me nuts.
As what happened on this page happened, I didn’t think I’d be writing about it. Writing about it would be mean, even if I tried to be nice. But it’s a day later and it’s still on my mind, so fuck it. This is my diary, and he’ll never see it, so here’s dinner with Dick.
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He’s my brother. He’s a few years older than me, which makes him really, really old, and he’s a walking collection of serious illnesses. After several mysterious infections over the past few years, he had his prostate removed a week ago. He also has an unexplained, recurring constriction of his throat, so once in a while he starts unexpectedly honking and horking up food during a meal. And he’s recently been diagnosed with skin cancer. And there’s more.
Via text (the only way we usually communicate) he’d complained for a week since his surgery, about the indignities and itch and awfulness of peeing through a catheter.
It’s occurred to me that he might not be around much longer, so I wanted to make an attempt to bond better with my brother. I texted back, “Hey, when the catheter comes off and your stomach is strong enough for a meal, let me know and I’ll take you to lunch at my favorite all-you-can-eat.”
If it’s possible to jump by text, Dick jumped at the offer, and immediately suggested we get together for dinner on Wednesday night. That’s about six hours after his catheter was scheduled to be removed, and per doctor’s orders he’s been on a liquid-and-mush diet, so I texted back, “Are you sure your stomach’s ready for food?”
He said he was sure, so we agreed to meet at 6PM on Wednesday, at King Buffet in Renton. Most surprisingly, Dick said he wasn’t bringing his wife, Young-sook, which I’ll admit made me smile. Dick always, always, always brings Young-sook to any family event, but she speaks about fifty words of English and interrupts a lot in Korean, so her absence would be a treat.
Without Young-sook, this would be my first time alone with my brother since… sometime in the 1970s, I guess. My fear was that he’d want to talk about politics. Any time he’s at the family breakfast, and often via text, he steers the conversation toward how great Trump is, though my opinion (and objective fact) is that Trump is a fascist monstrosity.
Surprisingly, though, Trump didn’t come up at dinner. Closest to talking politics was when Dick asked about the pin on my jacket, and bent in close to read it out loud. It’s a Bible verse, Leviticus 19:34: “The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born.”
I’m no Christian. I wear the pin to poke at people who are, but defy Christ to hate immigrants. Dick is one of those Christians who hates immigrants, but after reading the pin he shrugged, and wanted to talk about how miserable the catheter had made him. Which is understandable, and I’d invited him to dinner to celebrate the catheter’s removal, so yessir, let’s celebrate with Chinese all-you-can-eat!
Before and after my first visit to the buffet’s food islands, Dick talked about his health issues, and his doctors, and his upcoming appointments, and how he’d been stuck paying $500 for the surgery, because Medicaid wouldn’t pay the whole cost. I’d been concerned, and it was good getting the straight scoop.
After my second plate of food, he talked about Young-sook, and their vacation plans, and his condo, and his condo payments, and his job delivering pizza, and his ex-father-in-law’s funeral, which he’d attended despite Dick not being especially beloved by that family.
Dick had only gotten a plate of salad, and he nibbled at it slowly, while I ate those first two plates of pretty good Chinese food. He said he couldn’t eat much and had to eat slowly, because this was his first solid food in a week.
That’s when the honking started. It’s a phenomenon I’ve seen before — his throat tightens up, and he can’t swallow, starts coughing and barfing, but with his throat shut he can’t do either. It’s all very loud and worrisome, but Dick always says not to worry. It happens all the time, he says, and it’ll pass.
This was a rather mild bout of his honks and horks, thankfully, and most of the noise happened after he’d excused himself to the men’s room. The honking was only faintly audible at the tables, as I finished my third plate of food.
When Dick returned from the men’s room, he got himself a second plate of food, and I got my fourth, and then he talked about songs he’d sung in church recently. Despite my saying please don’t, he sang the solo he’ll be singing next Sunday, “Fill my cup, Lord; I lift it up Lord; Come and quench this thirsting of my soul…”
Yes, my brother serenaded me with a hymn at our table in the restaurant, but at least he kept the volume low, singing softly enough that it was probably heard only at the nearest tables.
After that he talked about his new car and how well it handles, and his Korean in-laws, and his grandson and granddaughter from his first marriage. He talked about the local baseball team, and a guy he doesn’t like at his church, and how loud the garbage truck is when it empties the dumpster at his condo.
I was able to get a sentence in here and there and now and again, but never two in a row. Dick has always been a talker, mostly about Dick, and he peppers everything with the corniest puns and jokes that are barely jokes.
“All old people have AIDS,” he said, and here comes a joke he’s told me half a dozen times. “Hearing aids, and Rolaids!” When I didn’t laugh, he added, “Haw haw.”
This being an Asian buffet, it was only a matter of time before he made a crack about “flied lice.”
“Dick, don’t,” I said.
“What?” he said with a smirk, but he didn’t mention the “flied lice” again, so it felt like a victory.
After I got a fifth plate of food, Dick talked about his new shoes, and an old friend he’d known from high school, and how he wants a dog but his wife will only allow a cat.
The 1812 Overture sounded, which meant that my brother had an incoming call, and of course he took it. Dick and whoever talked for five minutes, mostly about some TV show, while I started eating through my sixth plate of food. When the call ended, he talked about the call, the friend who’d called, and the TV show they’d been talking about.
A dozen times through dinner, when Dick said something, I thought I’d say something in response, but he’d moved on to a different topic without a moment where anything could be inserted. Over the whole evening, I think he asked me two questions. First, “What does your pin say?” and much later, “How did you get here on the bus?”
“I took the #128, and transferred to the #560,” I explained, and then Dick said he’d forgotten to take the pills he’s supposed to swallow with dinner, and excused himself to dart out to his car, which seems to be where he keeps his pills.
He came back with a plastic pillcase, opened it, but his hand slipped and meds erupted like Mount Vesuvius. I helped gather pills off the table, but bending over is difficult for me, so Dick and some little kids from a nearby table picked up the pills from the carpet.
Then Dick sat down, counted his pills carefully, and downed eleven tablets and capsules of assorted shapes, sizes, and colors, in two separate swallows. Then his throat tightened, and he stepped into the restroom again, for more honking and horking.
I got a seventh plate of food while he was gone, and when Dick returned he told me about his wife’s foot fungus. He told me about his daughter’s husband, who’s borderline rich. He told me about his adult step-son’s dental work, after the poor schmoe got into an auto wreck. Then Dick brought out his cell phone again, to show-and-tell pictures of his adult step-son’s dental work and facial repairs.
Then Dick excused himself again, “Not to honk and hork this time,” he assured me, “but this is the first food I’ve eaten in a week and I suddenly need to sit down, if you know what I mean.” I knew what he meant, and so do you, and I had an eighth plate of food while Dick was seated elsewhere.
King Buffet in Renton, by the way, is the Seattle area’s best buffet. It’s not one of those sprawling places, has only three hot-tray islands, plus a sushi stand and a dessert stand, But would you rather have a buffet with 200 hot trays where the food’s all average to ugh, or a buffet with two dozen hot trays where the food’s reliably quite good? Low prices at lunch, too, but we’d come at dinner, when it gets more expensive. Dinner for two was $52, including our senior discount.
When Dick returned from his fourth or fifth excursion to the john, he said he maybe shouldn’t have come to dinner so soon after his surgery and catheter removal. I agreed. Like I’d said when I first suggested a meal together, maybe he should’ve waited a week until he was more recovered. “But, oh well,” he said.
After eight plates I should’ve stopped, but instead I loaded a ninth plate with assorted fruits and pies and puddings and carrot cake. By then, Dick had eaten a salad and a small plate of chicken and corn, but we’d both eaten enough.
I’d suggested a buffet, not an ordinary restaurant, because Dick has a tendency to be borderline rude to the wait-staff. A buffet doesn’t have wait-staff, so he’d have less chance to be rude.
Ah, but I’d underestimated my brother. He yanked out his cell phone again, and asked a passing busboy to take our picture. He hadn’t said please, but at least he’d asked, instead of telling the guy, and it’s probably a fairly common thing folks ask, right?
Dick opened the photo app and handed the busboy the phone, then came over to my side of the table, and we posed, smiling. The busboy took two pictures, and in broken English he said “Thank you,” to Dick, who took the phone back, looked at the pictures, and said, “We look fuzzy.” But he didn’t say it to me; he semi-shouted it to the busboy, who was ten yards away by then. “Can you take the picture again?”
“Sweet Jesus, Dick,” I said, but he didn’t hear me. He was already huddled with the bewildered busboy.
“You need lighting,” the busboy said, and led us to a better-lit section of the dining area, where Dick and I stood against a wall, and the busboy took two more snaps that Dick judged adequate. I thanked the busboy, and quietly told Dick he should thank him, too.
“It’s his job,” he said, and I shook my head.
This is Dick. I’ve known him all my life. How could I be surprised?
I’d had enough food, and had enough Dick, so we walked into the parking lot, where he showed me his new car — a recently purchased used Subaru, ten years old. He told me about the engine, though I hadn’t asked, and said there’s something weird the transmission does, and that he’d always wanted a red car, but this was the car he could afford, and it was beige.
“All of us yearn for the red car in life,” I said, “but we settle for the beige.”
You get it, right? That line was a half-assed hint at philosophy, at conversation about topics other than things and people and events.
Through two hours of talking, we hadn’t spoken about anything bigger than ourselves — the universe, life and death, the meaning or emptiness of it all. In my entire life, I don’t think Dick and I have ever spoken of such intalectchul stuff. On Wednesday, there hadn’t been even a moment of politics or religion, unless you count Dick singing the hymn.
“Oh,” he said. “You always wanted a red car, too?”
“No, I was trying to say something about the yearning of the human soul.”
“Well, if you need to yearn, go back inside to the men’s room. Haw haw.”
I tried again. “But seriously, Dick, are you happy with what you’ve gotten from life? Even without a red car, have you found a few ‘red cars’, so to speak, along the way?”
“Quit kidding around,” he said. Then he offered me a ride home, so I wouldn’t “have to” take the bus, and I explained as I often explain, that I’m a white-knuckle passenger in any car, and very much prefer the bus.
I asked if he was tender from the catheter or if a hug would be OK. He didn’t answer, just hugged me, and then he drove away in his beige car he wished was red, and I waited for a #560 bus toward home.
4/10/2025
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