Ice Cream Ashram

Penelope held an ice cream cone like the Statue of Liberty lady held
the torch of freedom. She bought it from Big Charlotte, the lady who
ran the ice cream parlor.

“I know I should never eat any of this, but it’s so good.”
She demolished the remainder of the ice cream, her mouth and tongue
working like an incoming tide on a sandcastle with a minaret of dark
chocolate.

“You should try it. Double Dutch chocolate,” she said when she finished.

Sure, why not? I needed a distraction. Food that entertained and was
full of calories sounded fine to me. I had an early dinner date with
Shiszu – Penelope’s yoga instructor. I couldn’t get her out of my
head, no matter how many times I did the breathing exercises that were
supposed to cleanse your mind of the landfill that accumulates there:
random thoughts, fantasies, hopes, dreams, wishes, and other mental
confetti. Maybe an ice cream cone would do the trick.
I walked to the ice cream parlor just this side of the Radio Shack
store where clock radios were on sale. Beyond that was Firestone
Tires. Four chairs with heart-shaped backings surrounded each table,
and there behind the counter, as usual – like six day mail service,
was Charlotte, big and white like a full moon, the de facto guardian
ad litem and patron saint of the donut rack, ice cream cone, the
refrigerated case, the soda pumps, the chocolate syrup pump, and
containers full of nuts, cherries, marshmallow and pineapple. Her shop
was an entertainment center for the stomach. Her warmth was a refuge
for the weary.

She had soft pink, fleshy arms and red lipstick, and was dressed in a
white uniform like an emergency room or a trauma center nurse. I
usually came down there to get a couple bags of cheese popcorn. This
time I ordered a double Dutch chocolate, but was indecisive about
whether to get it in a single or double cone.

“Single,” I said weakly, remembering that it was wiser to buy tires in
two’s so why not ice cream cones?

“Single? You sure now, Wilbur?” she asked.

“Yeah, go ahead. Give me a double.”

She turned slowly on the wooden rack that covered the floor. It
creaked under her massive frame. Her waist and midsection rotated
slowly like one of the mechanical bears at Disney World. The
undersides of her forearms were as white as the thick vanilla ice
cream she served. She grabbed a double-barreled cone from a dispenser
and turned to the ice cream case filled with pastel-colored cylinders.
She was the antithesis of Franz Kafka’s Hunger Artist who worked with
a palette of hunger, starvation, and malnutrition of the soul in its
various shades of de-manifestation. She was an artist whose medium was
obesity and cups and cones that runneth over with frozen dairy
products. The array of cylinders was her palette. The ice cream scoop
was the brush she created her masterpieces with – her Turner’s, her
David’s, her Gaugin’s, her Van Gogh’s, her water lilies of
lactose. She reached for the darkest cylinder and forced the chocolate
down the twin cone, and then she mounted two scoops on top of the
other two. By my count it was a quadruple instead of a double.

“Anything else you would like?”

She motioned with both arms, like one of Bob Barker’s Beauties on the
Price is Right, to all the treats that lined the counters, each one a
pulsing billboard shouting in vibrant colors for my attention. The
breathing exercises helped to a certain extent. I kept my order to a
minimum.

“Give me a couple bags of cheese popcorn. That should hold me,” I said.

Charlotte blinked her eyes then pressed a stainless steel spigot that
bore her reflection. A jet of pure chocolate as thick as crude oil
spewed on the counter.

She dipped her finger into the puddle and moistened her lips with it
so they looked like chocolate-covered cherries. She fluttered her eyes
like she did to all her customers making me feel as welcome as the
plaza security guard who sat at a table by the window.

She returned with the bags of cheese popcorn. I flipped two Susan B.
Anthony dollars on the counter and left.

****

The date was on Shiszu’s turf. It wasn’t a surf and turf restaurant.
Nothing on the menu had ever walked in the green meadows of the earth
or swam in the ocean blue. There were no salt or pepper shakers, or
slim statuettes of steak sauce, hot sauce, catsup or mustard on any
table. There was soothing, metaphysical music playing in the
background to fill the pregnant void, and bald, male waiters with
mustaches and disappearing waistlines. Rosy-cheeked waitresses wore
dungarees and smiled at the steamed vegetables and rice I forced
myself to order.

Across the street was Jumbo’s. It was a palatial hall of barbecue
chicken and ribs, ball bearings of cornbread, and mounds of coleslaw.
From where I was sitting wisps of smoke curled out of the chimney,
motioning and beckoning like a lady of the evening to come sample her
charms.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly in order to focus on the
pristine, translucent beauty that had drawn me there. Shiszu. She was
a natural waterfall in faraway woods that I wanted to bath in after a
long trek.

“This place is an oasis,” she said.

One of the waiters overheard her.

“All our vegetables are organically grown and are the finest
available,” assured the waiter whose mustache curled on the ends like
the helix of a DNA molecule.

Steam rose from the assorted, colored vegetables he placed in front of
me. I ate a few spoonfuls of chewy rice and crispy vegetables like I
was sampling an exotic dish of monkey or dung-beetle. I finished the
contents of the bowl. Shiszu must have seen the disappointment on my
face.

“Wilbur, my guru will be coming from the ashram in Pennsylvania.
He’ll be here next month. He would really like to meet you,” she said.

She looked directly into my eyes like I was the only one with her on
this oasis. Or the universe. I had broken through her sea of
tranquility.

“I’ve told him all about you,” she said.

‘Nights in White Satin’ by the Moody Blues flowed from speakers
mounted on the wall. I imagined a night of deep breathing, twisting
and contorting with her on white satin sheets. Ecstatic moans of
jubilation. All the landfill in my mind turned quickly to love.
The waiter brought the check. After paying, I walked Shiszu to her
dark blue Mercedes.

“There he is,” she said.

The parking lot was in a dark arbor of oak trees. I glanced around,
expecting to encounter a sprite or satyr. Instead, she pointed to a
framed photograph of a man with long, gray hair and beard, dressed in
a white sheet – not satin like the Moody Blues sang about but like a
sheet from a sweaty summer camp. The sheet was adorned with a red
flower near his heart. The photograph was mounted on the console of
her Mercedes. His face angled toward the driver’s seat. He looked
stern, self-absorbed, and self-digesting like a Hunger Artist.

“That’s my guru,” she said.

The taste of steamed vegetables backed up in my throat. It tasted
organic – like cow manure. I felt like heaving. I was a fool. I needed
something to wash the taste of oasis out of my mouth. Food that
entertained as well as enlightened was called for.

Big Charlotte appeared out of the landfill in my mind. She had an
ashram too. An ice cream ashram, simple and pure as her sprinkles of
kindness. I was on top of her double-wide, two scoops, confectionery
white body. We were behind the counter on the wooden rack that lined
the floor. The wood dug into her soft, white vanilla backside leaving
the impression of our encounter. ‘Candyman’ by the Grateful Dead
played in the shop. Jets and spigots for chocolate and other toppings
loomed above us.

​I could still taste the love for Shiszu I had lost or, perhaps,
never had. It tasted like landfill. It tasted like steamed vegetables
and rice. It tasted like guru. I turned to Shiszu whose eyes were
fixated on the photograph. I had an idea how to get her out of my
mind. The breathing exercises didn’t help, lactose had worked before.

“Would you like to get some ice cream? I know a great place.”