Big Love

Written with the prompts: when we first met, onions, and high tide

When we first met he was sitting on the beach at high tide throwing sweet yellow onions at the sea gulls. It’s not like I thought, hey, that’s my kind of guy!—but I was intrigued.  Nonetheless, I’m no fool so I tried to back away, but he’d seen me. “Hi,” he called out.  “Would you like some onion rings?  I could fry some up for you!”

Well, it’s as if he looked down deep into my soul and discovered my love for all things breaded.  But I wanted to be cautious.  “How are you going to fry up some onions?” I asked.  “You live near here?”

“No, no,” he insisted. “I can fry them up right here.  Go collect me some drift wood for the fire while I mix up the batter.”  Damn if he didn’t have a back pack full of butter and flour and milk.  Next thing I knew he fried me up some onion rings so fat and juicy that I swore I was in love.  It was like eating big old onion-infused donuts they were so sweet and moist.

We took to traveling together, two big hefty people seeking white fish and sliced potatoes and chicken patties and chunks of snickers bars dipped in flour and butter.  We went from beach to beach from Mendocino to Calexico, then we sailed to Hawaii in a big black kettle.  On Oahu we fried sweet potatoes and shrimp and chunks of coconut. It was heaven.

When he had the big heart attack the doctors were scathing in their criticism of our life style. They got their hooks into him and the next thing I knew he was jogging on the beach. He’d eat nothing but raw ahi tuna and thin little slices of cucumber flavored with rice vinegar.  I couldn’t have been more depressed.  He became the spokesperson for Jenny Craig and Gold’s gym and he had abs as hard as lava rocks.  What had happened to my pudgy teddy bear of a man that I’d fallen in love with?  His arms and legs were like cords of steel!  Who wants to cozy up to that?  I rolled along from beach to beach in despair, gnawing on seaweed and decorating my hair with gull feathers.  What a life, what a sad, sad life.