If you aren't in ceremony, are you even?

This transcription is a humorous account of a person's experience at a trendy and pretentious restaurant, as well as their interactions with their date. The person describes the over-the-top rituals and practices at the restaurant, such as the blessing of animal products by a shaman. They also attend a cacao and cuddle ceremony and a Burning Man fundraiser with their date. Despite finding their date annoying, they continue to tolerate her because she is attractive. If you aren't in Ceremony, are you even? By Quinn Larrabee January, 2023 Is the tuna Ceremonial grade? she asked with a touch of concern. I didn't think tuna came in any grades other than Middle School Lunch Box or Sushi. I wondered what the fuck this second spectrum of grade was, and what was on the opposite end of Ceremonial. Stoic? Of course, purred the waiter. All of our animal products and plant-based foods have been blessed by our in-house shaman. My date smiled and nodded. That's what I thought. I just wanted to be sure, she said. I looked closely at her for a flicker of irony. None. I'll have the sesame tuna, then, she said, however the chef likes to cook it. That would be rare, responded the waiter, a little more firmly than I would have liked. It can be unrare, and we can no longer guarantee the quality of the chi imbued by the Ceremony. What is the Ceremony that imbues this chi? I asked, over-enunciating a bit to make sure he knew that I was not entirely sure how the involvement of someone who didn't catch, cook, or even plate this fish could justify a thirty-dollar premium over any tuna I had ever seen in any restaurant that wasn't wearing a Japanese flag hand-painted by Murakami. I'm afraid that's proprietary, he smiled. For you, sir. My date eye-stabbed me over the two glasses of organic skin-contact wine that he had set on the table. I looked back at the menu. I really couldn't make out any recognizable foods other than the word hen. I'll have the chicken, I said, handing him the menu, which was coated in living moss. I wiped the dew from it onto the patchwork napkin on my lap, which was, according to the hostess, who provided a twenty-minute introduction to the restaurant before we receded, apparently sourced from up-cycled organic cotton diapers that were once worn by Gwyneth Paltrow's children. The biodynamic wheat-grass-fed wild hen. Very good, sir. He smiled with only his mouth and walked towards the blinding white light coming from the cave entrance directly in front of me, which was apparently the kitchen. My date took a deep breath and searched my eyes. It was our fourth date. The other three had gone reasonably well. We had met at a cacao and cuddle ceremony at a communal living society in Bushwick when she had walked up to me from behind and wrapped her arms around me, breathing into my upper back. You're so warm, she had said. Yeah, I run pretty hot. Have we met? Her arms loosened for a moment. Oh, gosh, I'm sorry. Do I have your consent to cuddle you? Yeah, of course, I said. Please don't take my wallet, I quipped. She hummed against my spine in such a way that my teeth sort of vibrated. I wondered what she looked like. She had a nice voice. Everyone around me had started hugging or stimming against one another, some standing, most on the floor, following the invitation of the ceremony leader to find a joyfully consenting body of whatever gender or non-gender with which you feel the most aligned in this present. I looked down at her hands, one of which was still holding the matte brown cacao mug that I was sure a very sad, spiteful person had made in a pottery class in Bed-Stuy following a messy breakup related to ethical non-monogamy. I counted at least one ring on every finger, all with semi-precious stones, and noticed what appeared to be tiny hieroglyphics running from the end of her right pointer finger all the way up her lean-toned arm. I wondered what it said, but I knew I'd probably have to feign some sort of ancient mystical wonder if she told me. The guy in the cream-colored robe stepped back into the circle of candles at the front of the room. I stifled a laugh, imagining his robe catching fire and someone having to empty and extinguish her on him. It'd fucking turn that into part of the ceremony, I thought, and let out a bit of a laugh. What's funny? She asked. Oh, just conspiring with the universe and my good fortune, I said. How lovely, she said with a smile in her voice, still clinging to me from behind. I'd like to invite everyone to make your bodies one with the surface on which only a small number of us still stand, he looked pointedly at me, and find the eyes of whomever the magic of this evening has presented to you, he said, much too slowly. I could have recited the fucking Constitution with all the amendments in the time it took him just to tell everyone to sit down. Her arms released me, and before I could turn myself around, she had slid beneath my left arm and sort of wriggled up my chest like a horny puppy. She peered up at me from her diminutive height, maybe 5'1 or 5'2. She had enormous hazel eyes and almost comically large, long eyelashes. Her features were so astonishingly perfect that I imagined her childhood doll, fraught with insecurity, had probably melted itself on a lightbulb before diving headfirst into the garbage disposal. The array of semi-sheer fabric she was wearing that really couldn't be called a dress suggested a body blessed with the delightful proportions refined by all the sun salutations in the known world. She was insanely hot, and I wanted to immediately rip off her clothes, or whatever they were called. We lowered ourselves onto the floor, and she clasped my hands, kind of in the way your grandmother might have done before asking you how school was going. Thank you for coming to this ceremony, said Robe Guy. The crowd murmured back its own gratitude. This is the part of the evening where we end the structured ceremony, and we invite you to create your own ceremonies, whatever that means to you, he continued. Some say that ceremony is like chemistry. You know it when you feel it, but I think it can be defined. Ceremony is an experience, elevated to its highest level, raised up by the powerful intentionality of the people creating, crafting, and curating it for participants. Each of you has the power to make anything you do ceremonial. Take that power into the rest of your evening, and into the rest of your lives. This container is yours, for as long as you feel drawn to be within it. He bowed slightly, holding the bow for an awkward amount of time, and then stepped out of the candle circle and into a gaggle of young women, wearing cream-colored rags. What should I call you? asked the woman who was now massaging my hands. You mean, what's my name? I responded, Is your given name what you want to be known as tonight? Is your given name ceremonial grade? She cocked her head and eyed me. I was baptized and circumcised, so I knew some degree of ceremony went into my given name. I was about to tell her my name when a tall, irritatingly handsome, shirtless, barefoot man wearing those insufferable drop-crotch Bedouin or harem pants sort of descended down into our space. Hello, friends, he said. Beautiful creature, may I kiss you in ceremony? She blushed and smiled. You may, she said, and with that he put one hand on my knee and the other hand on her left cheek and kissed her deeply. He pulled back an inch and pressed his forehead against hers, looking into her eyes. He didn't have a man-bun, but he had massive man-bun energy, and my instant hatred of him was ceremonial grade. May I kiss you in ceremony, he asked, turning to me. I didn't see this coming. I figured it would be very uncool of me to rebuff him. How about a cheek kiss, you know, Mafia Don style, I offered. He smiled and nodded and leaned in and literally made out with my cheek. He did things to my cheek that I did not know could be done to a flat surface. He withdrew and nuzzled the side of my head, then sat back on his sit bone or whatever, clasped his hands together in prayer, and pushed himself straight up to standing without so much as touching the ground with his hands. We both just made out with a genie, apparently, I said. I love ceremony nights, she breathed. I hope he finds his way back into his bottle, I said, watching him descend into a larger mixed group. Jesus, look at him go, he's like a ceremony super spreader. I wish there were more candles in here, she said, pouting a bit as she scanned the room, which was literally covered in candles. If there were any more candles, the elaborate but very shitty murals on the wall would reanimate into paint and people would begin dying of heat stroke. How about we go back to my place and have sex, she said. I blinked. Sure, that sounds great. So I guess that counted as our first date. Our second date was a continuation of the first. We went the next morning for matcha at a place called Nippon Cha a few blocks from our apartment in Williamsburg. The matcha here is all ceremonial grade, she assured me as we sat down. But what about the oat milk? Is it still ceremonial if it's in a latte? Remember, ceremony is about intentionality, she said, seeming quite proud of herself. She annoyed me at an existential level, but she was just too bonkers hot not to continue to tolerate for at least a few more weeks. Our third date was at a Burning Man fundraiser for her camp. I wore the same gold tights I wear to every Burning Man party in New York City and San Francisco along with the charcoal gray cape I bought for $8 from a street vendor in Turkey. The DJ was self-indulgent and so loud that I could only pretend to have a conversation with everyone to whom she introduced me by occasionally nodding emphatically and screaming totally, and amazing. After 20 minutes of dancing, a woman wearing a disco ball dress, a chest harness and a top hat yelled something into my date's ear and she nodded. She grabbed my hand and pulled me in the direction of the disco ball bestriding in her twelve-inch platform heels. We walked through three sets of doors, each dingier than the last, until we entered a small candlelit room with suede-covered walls, a shaggy white carpet, and enough pillows to suffocate the entire Kremlin in its sleep. The bass still oozed into the room and shook the floor, but it was muffled enough to hear the really annoying conversation of the four people who had art-directed themselves onto the carpet, something about Holbosch and Guy Laliberte. The disco ball sat down on a pillow with a smiley face on it, pulled a bag of white powder out of her red-velvet belt bag, and removed her necklace, which held a rose-gold snow-go. She took a slow, deep breath and smiled at us. "'Let us form a ring,' she said, which I guess meant circle because that's what everyone formed. This is ceremonial-grade ketamine that was gifted to me by a shaman in Ibiza this past summer in a ceremony on Es Vedra,' she explained. I considered asking how and why she did ketamine on a giant vertical rock in the middle of the ocean, but that seemed uncool. "'So before we go into ceremony,' she said, closing her eyes, 'I want you to close your eyes and picture Es Vedra, and feel the magnetic pull of her, and feel the sunlight on your face,' I instinctively winced, 'and set an intention in this sacred container.' We sat with our eyes closed for what felt like a really long time. It was probably the highlight of my night. I may have briefly fallen asleep. If I did, the sound of snorting woke me up. I opened my eyes to find the disco-ball-looking watery-eyed passing the snow-go and the baggie to her right. When it made its way to me, I did what I almost always do, pretend to pack it, snort loudly, close my eyes, nod, and smile. Apparently no one else had just pretended to pack the snow-go, because everyone hit the deck within minutes of snorting. Lost with what felt like an opportunity in this subdued state to dissociate how annoying she was from her breathtakingly beautiful corporeal form, I laid down next to her and spooned her, listening to her hum and occasionally say, "'Whoa!' When I woke, it was two a.m. The room was empty, and the bass was louder. I followed the dingy doors towards the bass and found an even more heaving crowd. I did five laps around the space, weaving around men in floral kimonos and women in neon unitards. She was nowhere to be found. She didn't respond to the one text I sent. Lost you.' I felt that asking a question and using an actual question mark would seem like a desperate interrogation at this point, and sending more than one text in this day and age could warrant a restraining order. So after an hour of circling and being slimed by the shoulders and chests of sweaty hipsters covered in glitter, I left. A week later, she wrote as if nothing had happened, and suggested we try this new place in Greenpoint. So I was kind of worried when I didn't hear from you. That night. Or, like, the week after. I said. Aw, that's sweet. She smiled. Yeah. That night. She trailed off. Remember that guy who you called a genie? The one who made out with my cheek? I couldn't forget him if I tried. And I did. I said. He was at the camp party, and I thought it was important that I complete the moment he and I shared at the cacao ceremony. She said. The waiter arrived with a green ceramic vase filled with what appeared to be those sticks you see in those eighty-dollar scinticanters at Malabo. May I present our signature rolled spinach, burdock, cattail, and daikon chutes, unified by a gentle fry in the sesame oil and dusted with ceremonial-grade matcha, he said, and returned to the glowing cave. Yummy, she said, grabbing a chute, which was about the length of her hieroglyphic tat. So you were saying, completing with the genie, I said. Yes. It was really beautiful, she said, and continued shortening the chute with the tiny munches of her perfect white teeth. I tried to find my chill, but then I remembered I was born without it. Don't you think it was kind of rude to abandon me at a fundraiser for your Burning Man camp that you invited me to and go home with another guy without even telling me? She blinked, looking astonished. Abandon is a really triggering word for me, and it was ceremonial, she said, very slowly and deliberately, as if speaking to a small, very uncool child. Your abandonment was ceremonial, I asked, becoming even less cool. No, having sex with him, she said, flatly. It was ceremonial sex, I asked. Yes, just ceremonial. Nothing more. It meant everything, and it meant nothing, all at once, she said, and ended the last few inches of her compost chute with her mouth. The waiter arrived with our entrees. My hen was splayed out, unaccompanied by sides, resting on a bed of actual living wheatgrass, like some sad-girl character at the peak of a teen romance movie where one of them is dying. Her tuna came pre-sliced, glaring beet-red, beached on the side of a jagged black rock dotted with barnacles. Ceremonial-grade tuna and the wild hen, he flourished. So, it's okay to unceremoniously leave the guy you've been on a few dates with at a party to have sex with another guy, if it's in ceremony, I asked. Yes, she said, as if it were obvious. She put a piece of tuna into her mouth with chopsticks and closed her eyes. I watched her chew, stewing in jealousy and fuming with incredulity. Her face went through a range of emotions that I imagined shirtless guys saw when he was in ceremony with her. She opened her eyes wide and fixed them on me. Oh, my God, you have to try this tuna. She seized another slice with the chopsticks and pointed it across the table at me. I took a bite, and then it all made sense. To say that it was the best tuna I've ever tasted in my time on Earth would be a disservice to this fish. It didn't just melt in my mouth. It atomized into my being and pressed emphatic flavor into each of my taste buds and sent torrents of emotions into my neurons. I closed my eyes, and I was transported the depths of the North Atlantic, the din of the restaurant fading into the inversed, pressurized non-sounds of the subsurface ocean. I swam through gently undulating sea trees, or whatever they're called, their green-brown extremities tickling my shiny, scaly underbelly. My narrow human line of sight became a panorama of bubbles, flickers of light from waning but determined rays of sunlight catching the sides of my aquatic brethren. I felt the water running through my gills, and breathing became less like a cadence and more like the effortless circulation of blood. And then, long before I saw the bright red morsel suspended in the expanse of the gloaming ocean, I smelled fresh herring, my favorite. I raced towards it like a projectile, my movement through the water refined to athletic perfection since Paleocene times, and found the target with my searching mouth. The delight of food quickly became the anguish of pain as I felt a foreign object piercing into my mouth. I tried to wriggle away from it, but the pain was everywhere, inescapable, racing through my nervous system. And then I felt a searing tugging from above, and the water I once had dominion over rushed past me helplessly as I rose rapidly towards the early daylight. The more I struggled, the more the pain in my mouth radiated. But now I knew I was struggling for my life, and just as an existential dread clouded my tiny brain, I burst through the surface of my homeland and felt the arrested current of my breath gasp in every cell of my body. Bright blinding light was everywhere now as I flapped against a foreign hard surface, suffocating and angry and desperate, but also fading. Without the water around me, I felt like my insides were reaching out in every direction until a series of prods and pushes and thuds rendered me into total darkness and an incomparable cold. I felt firm, smooth objects below me and next to me, and just as nothingness fell upon my senses, I realized I was packed, fin to fin, with my brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and kin. The last thing I saw was a bright white light. I swallowed and opened my eyes, squinting against the white light of the kitchen cave entrance. My vision was blurry, and I realized tears were resting precariously in my eyelids. I looked at her, wide-eyed, knowing, empathetic. She nodded slowly. I nodded back. I get it now, Ceremony, I said. It's a thing, she said. Are you going to Ceremony with shirtless guy again? I asked. Probably, she said, but that doesn't mean anything within our container, she offered. Cool, I said. I realized that calling something a ceremony was basically just an excuse to do something weird or illegal or hedonistic or maybe even immoral and write it off as a sacred act that had a higher meaning. I wasn't convinced there was a higher meaning to ditching me at a party to fuck another guy, but the tuna made it all worth it.