The three boys came back from their “coming-of-age” cross-country trip in mid-August, a few days before their freshman year at Rutgers started. When they got back, they took their girlfriends out to a fine Italian restaurant (at the suggestion of one of the boy’s old-fashioned Italian mothers) with the remainder of their cross-country funds (an allotted portion of money that they purposely did not spend so they could take their girlfriends out- a suggestion from the same old-fashioned Italian mother).

Chris, Steve, TJ, and their dates were seated at a table in an alternating boy-girl circle. Five of them started leafing through their menu, quietly glancing at headings and picture-reading it like a new magazine, while Chris wondered aloud: “What to get, what to get?”

Suggestions of traditional Italian dishes were whispered between some of the dates, while Chris continued to read the menu aloud to himself, giving his opinion on every entree and appetizer on the menu, peeking up at the table to see if anyone was paying attention.

“Hey, you think they can whip up some okra soup back there if we asked’em to?” Chris anxiously asked Steve and TJ, sitting across the table.

The two refrained from answering, hoping a small glance up from their menus and the hint of a smile would veer conversation away from the direction Chris was subtly turning it.

“’Member okra, guys?” Chris finally asked his buddies after their long silence, in a tone a father would use to try and rile up his napping newborn.

Steve and TJ smiled and nodded before ducking back behind their menus. They hated the okra story. They hated Chris’ version and they hated what really happened. And they especially hated that even though they heard it a million times, and even though Chris had to have known at some level of subconsciousness that they hated the story, Chris was still going to tell it. Chris kept smiling, bobbing his head up and down, waiting…

“What about og-rah?” his date asked, taking the bait.

“That’s okra, hun,” Chris intelligently repeated for his date with the word’s correct Jersey pronunciation. “You can’t screw up that word- ’specially not in the South. Funny story ’bout that.”

“What happened, hun?” his date asked, folding her menu. Steve and TJ’s dates curiously lowered their menus, too, glowering at their boyfriends and wondering if they needed to worry about their high school sweethearts.

“Well,” Chris started, unfolding his arms and pulling up the cuffs of his Armani Exchange buttoned-down shirt. “We were like a week or so into the trip, and we were down in one of those deep South states-” He turned to Steve and TJ. “Georgia? Alabama?”

The two shrugged, failing to remind Chris it was somewhere on the North and South Carolina border.

“Anyways, it was one of those inbreed states- with the ‘hey ya’lls’ and the two teeth dangling in their mouth.”

The dates giggled.

“Yea, a bunch’a real class acts down there. Well you know us, we was lookin’ for a little adventure,” Chris said, encircling the table with a pointer finger. “Y’know, see the world, get a lil’bit of culture. More like spread a lil’bitta culture,” he leaned in and told the girls with a smirk. “So we get off the highway and drive a good two or three hours down this dirt road before we run into this real hic town. Really out’a the way, y’know? Population: brother and his sister with only one hole for a toilet in the whole town.”

“How exciting,” one of the girls peeped.

Steve and TJ rolled their eyes and tried to find unexplored sections on their menu to read to occupy themselves during Chris’ story.

“Yea, it was. Anyways,” Chris continued, “we came up to this diner thing in this town and decided to stop for a bite, y’know? We was hungry- hadn’t eaten in hours. So we walk in, and lemme tell you girls, it’s everything you’d imagine about a place down there. Probably more.”

Chris started pointing around the cozy, Italian restaurant, using it as a model to explain where things were in the Southern diner.

“The bar’s packed with every kinda tha’hard stuff you could imagine,” he said, pointing at the decorative wine rack near the hostess’ stand. “There’s a whole bunch of gator heads on the wall. You got some sister-lovin’ hicks playin’ cards at these raggedy ol’tables,” Chris explained, using a white-collared happy hour gathering for an example. “They had this twangy-”

Chris paused to cover his ears and scrunch his face in agony at the awful flashback.

“Oh, that God-awful country stuff on this ol’jukebox!”

“You guys go square-dancin’?” one of the dates smirked.

Steve and TJ both folded their arms over and leaned back into their chair, not answering the question.

“And the jukebox was right next to a gun check-in! Right when you walk in, there’s a big sign. Says ‘No Firearms Past This Point’.”

“Wow,” his date gasped, leaning back from the table, shocked.

“These people carry guns out in the open,” Chris said specifically to his date, reacting to her stunned reaction. “They’re nuts.”

Steve and TJ distracted themselves from listening to Chris’ story by silently trying to add to a list of people from their neighborhood they knew who carried concealed guns and made it openly known. They started thinking up names after the fifth or sixth time Chris told the story. Their list of locals was a lot longer than the people they saw openly carrying firearms in the diner, or South Carolina- the entire South.

“They knew we was different the second we walked in there,” Chris went on in a quieter, angrier demeanor. “I mean, take a look at us: nice clothes, some decent haircuts, we smell nice. ‘Specially compared to these guys at the bar, with these big, ugly ’staches and these dirty overalls and flannels-” He turned to his date. “Keep in mind it’s a million degrees in there. Hot as balls. And they’re in there wearing jeans and flannels.” He opened back up to the whole table. “No AC down there, neither. Nothin’.”

“Are you serious? No AC in like, the middle of summer?” one of the girls said in shock.

“That’s so gross,” another one added.

“That’s how backwards these people are,” Chris explained. He glanced over at Steve and TJ. “Guys, tell the girls how hot it was.”

 

TJ sucked in some breath to buy time, trying to put himself in Chris’ version of the story and remember how hot it would be.

“Hot as balls, right?” Chris said as a friendly reminder.

TJ pressed his lips tightly and nodded.

“Hot as balls,” TJ mimicked Chris.

“Hot as balls,” Chris proudly repeated for the girls.

The waiter walked by with their waters and asked for their orders. Chris sent the waiter back, the table too engrossed with his story to have chosen something to eat. The girls picked up their menus as a courtesy, giggling from embarrassment, but slowly dropped them back down as soon as the waiter headed back to the kitchen. Chris continued to tell the Jersey girls about the deep South.

Steve and TJ started a silent side-conversation of facial expressions about how they wanted the story to end so everyone would order and they could eat.

“Anyways,” Chris went on, “everyone in the place turned around and looked at us with this look, ya know?” Chris gave a menacing glare, like an old snoop staring between the blinds at his neighbors. He lowered his dark Italian brows, trying to imitate it. “Something mean like that. I mean, those people didn’t like us from the start.”

“Who couldn’t like you?” his date lovingly said, softly stroking his pencil sideburns with her knuckle.

“I don’t know,” Chris answered, eyes half-closed and smiling. “Probably just jealous of some good-lookin’ guys, ya know?”

The girls gave a unanimous ‘Aww’ and started flirtatiously touching their dates.

“Anyways,” Chris continued, “they’re all staring at us and giving us these stupid, toothless smiles like they had a problem with us. But you know us, we go and sit down anyway. We was hungry, and we ain’t let’n a bunch of sister-lovin’ hicks ruin our lunch. Right boys?”

They shrugged, unsure if they really would sit down in a diner filled with the type of people Chris was talking about. It sounded more threatening this time than the last time they heard it.

“So we sit down, look at our menus, look at the grub they got. Let me tell you girls something: those people eat some gross stuff down there.”

Chris gave the table a little smack with his palm to get his buddies’ attention. They were face down in their menus, still trying to avoid the okra story.

“What were the specials they had, guys? Fried gator or eel soup or what?”

“Something like that,” Steve answered, bored. He followed a server balancing a tray of veil parmigiana and tortellini and the leafy salads they came with and sighed.

“Eww, eels?” one of the girls squealed, smiling in amusement.

“Exactly,” Chris said. “Anyways, we get this waiter. Big, big hic. Guy was a beast. Big, dumb animal in overalls. He had to’a been one’a those guys that wrestles gators. I mean, how big was this guy, guys?”

Steve and TJ didn’t answer Chris at first, watching other table’s food pass by them, sniffing the fresh smells of tomato and parmesan and not realizing Chris was asking them a question, but they noticed the silence at the table after a few seconds.

“What?” TJ mumbled.

“The waiter,” Chris said.

“What about’em?”

“Big guy, huh?”

“Yea, I guess he was pretty big. Had some scary tattoos.”

“Real scary tattoos,” Chris added with a little more fervor than TJ. “Had a whole sleeve of ink.” He dragged his hand the length of his arm to give the girls a visual.

“Tattoos are gross,” one of the girls said.

“’Specially these things,” Chris enthusiastically agreed. “I mean, I understand a little armband thing like I’ve got- that’s got some class to it. Y’know, those look good. But this guy had a whole arm of dragons and skulls. What the hell is that stuff? I don’t know,” Chris answered himself, shrugging. “Anyways, we’re sitting down with everyone in the place lookin’ at us. We got this big hick staring down at us, waiting for us to order dead cat or whatever roadkill they just hit with one of their tractors.” Chris turned to Steve’s girlfriend, chuckling into the back of his hand. “Then your boyfriend looks at the menu and looks back up at the waiter - right at that ugly son of a bitch - and goes somethin’ like, ‘What the hell is ogra’, right in front of every one of those hicks in the place.”

“Oh dear, how embarrassing,” Steve’s date told him, trying to pet his spiked, gelled hair. Steve shied away, swatting her hand from the hair and burying himself deeper in the menu. He didn’t want his hair messed up, but that wasn’t the reason for burying himself further into the menu and slowly sliding down under the table. Chris was getting to the part of the story was the part he really didn’t like.

“So the waiter kind of gives him this look,” Chris started, pausing to gaze at Steve across the table, twitching up the side of his cheek in a wicked smirk, “and said somethin’ like, ‘Ya’ll boys ain’t from ‘round here, ain’tchya?”

Chris’ girlfriend giggled at her boyfriend’s Southern accent. Chris turned back to Steve’s girlfriend.

“And then you’re boyfriend- you know the mouth on him- he says to that big, dumb hick, ‘How’d you know? ‘Cause I don’t know what the hell this ogra stuff is?’”

“He certainly does have some mouth on him,” Steve’s girlfriend said, reaching behind the menu to have a pinch at his cheek.

“This waiter,” Chris slowly, dramatically said, leaning back into his chair, “he went, absolutely berserk when Steve said that. I mean, he slapped the table with those paws’a his and everything on that table rattled over. The sugar packets and salt packets. The ketchup - they call it catsup down there, by the way,” Chris smartly threw into the story, getting an impressed group of faces from the ladies at the table. “The mustard. The six or seven bottles of hot sauce. Our waters. Steve’s water fell right in his lap. Looked like he straight pissed his pants!” Chris laughed.

“That sounds scary,” Steve’s girlfriend said, hooking their arms together and stroking his shoulder.

“I mean, he threatened our lives because Steve didn’t know what the heck okra was,” Chris explained. “Straight up threatened to kill us, right then and there. It wasn’t like we made fun of his mother or anything that anyone up here would-”

“What is okra, anyway?” Chris’ girlfriend finally asked.

Chris was derailed from the excitement of his story and had to recollect his thoughts before nonchalantly explaining, “Oh, it’s a vegetable or something.”

He tried to fall back into his fervor and continue the story, but his girlfriend interrupted him: “A vegetable?”

“He got that mad over a vegetable?” another girl added skeptically.

“Not just him, the whole place! They were all just starin’ at us like we was the crazy ones!” Chris almost stood up to defend himself, the bottom of his Diesel jeans just hovering over the chair. “And let me tell you somethin’, when we ran out’a there, we ran. I mean, we gunned it. That’s how serious this guy was about hurtin’ us. Three kids from Jersey- toughest guys from the toughest place- and we’re running out that door and driving away from a mob.”

One of the girls picked up her menu and and started seriously looking through the selections. The two other girls slouched on the table, raising eyebrows.

“What?” Chris whined, noticing the girls sudden disinterest. “If we didn’t get out’a there that hick would’a made a belt out’a us, ya know?”

“Over a vegetable, Chris?” his girlfriend questioned in the ‘you-did-something-wrong’ tone.

“I’m telling you, those people down there are absolutely crazy down there. You think some people from the neighborhood are crazy? You go down there. Those people define the word. If they got their filthy hands on us they’d’a made us squeal like a pig and put our heads on the wall. Then who’d be buying you dinner?” Chris finally snapped, disappointed at the girls’ reaction.

One of the girls rolled her eyes when she heard that.

“Seems far-fetched,” one muttered, picking up her menu.

“It’s true,” Chris groaned, pleading for their attention. “Ask them,” he begged, opening his arms towards the table, trying to get the two to validate the story. “It was the scariest moment of our lives, wasn’t it guys?”

That’s how the okra story always ended- with Chris begging his buddies to agree that they were down in Alabama instead of South Carolina. How it was a hundred degrees in the place when the AC was on full blast. How there were dead animals and guns on the wall instead of USC Gamecocks memorabilia. Chris wanted them to say they had to order dead cat instead of a cheeseburger. That they were playing nothing but fiddle music over a jukebox instead of whatever pop music was popular that month.

Steve and TJ hated all that. But what they especially hated was that no one had a problem with Chris grinning and smiling like a vaudeville act as he told some story of a South that died decades ago. And the only time anyone ever stopped believing? That was when he came to the only part that was true.

The girls looked at Steve and TJ, who were emerging from the menus, slowly nodding for the doubtful audience.

“All true,” TJ said. “Those Southerners are a crazy bunch.”

“Yup,” Steve added. “Love their okra.”