Logs:What Belongs On A Seder Plate

What Belongs On A Seder Plate
Dramatis Personae Kitty, Shane	2023-04-05 But none of that felt right, you know? Not like home.
Location <NYC> Evolve Nightclub - Lower East Side
Accessible up a flight of stairs from the coffeeshop below, Evolve's nightclub is only open Thursday-Sunday nights. The bar stretches wide along the back wall, polished dark wood with an abundance of drinks available behind, their selection none too high-end. A balcony overlooks the dancefloor, filled with plush black and green couches and armchairs and small black-wood and glass tables between them. The stark white and black walls encourage graffiti, paint markers of all shades hung around the walls by chains. On daytimes and off-nights, the nightclub often gets something of a makeover, more seating brought in to the dance floor to accommodate the wide range of community events that take place when Partying is not in session. There is, kind of, partying in session tonight, although not of the nightclub variety -- loooong tables have been set up to allow for a very large seder meal, at which alcohol has been plentiful long before the Actual Food made an appearance. It's making for a very tipsy late late dinnertime now, lively with conversation and mostly no drama (save one extremely heated conversation about singing "Go Down Moses" which ultimately caused one young white man to storm off in a huff, although he has since a little sheepishly returned from the cafe downstairs.) At one end of a table there's an increasingly silly game of This Belongs On The Seder Plate Because happening. Shane's contribution (a small cuff that turns out to be a Spiderman webshooter -- "on the seder plate this webshooter represents getting ourselves into -- and back out of -- a very sticky situation", Shane's earnest explanation) is now causing a small bit of chaos as two very young mutant siblings squirt each other with the goop. Shane, having inflicted this chaos, has now removed himself from the immediate vicinity of it to confer with the skull-vested Mongrels chattering at the room's periphery (refreshingly, no reported trouble) and then go to replenish the drinks table, maybe not quite fully adjusted to actually being one of the people the seder meal is for, this year, instead of simply working the meal to provide for Someone Else's Community as he had been years ago when this event originated. He's dressed sharp tonight in a three-piece suit in light blue sharkskin with a subtle silver sheen that makes it pop against the darker blue of his actual shark skin, a white dress shirt of soft knit fabric, a tie patterned in abstract flames tied in a neat fishbone knot, and black oxford shoes with white spats edged in silver. He's idly humming "Dayenu" to himself as he collects the many used cups people have simply left on the table, empty bottles, starts to gather them into the trash to make room for fresh wine and soda and juice and water. Not so longer after Shane arrives at the drinks table, so too does Kitty. Maybe she was here to refill her own cup -- certainly the one she is holding is empty -- but in the time it takes to realize what Shane is up to she is shifting, as if it was what she intended all along, to help with clearing the empties. Kitty's gold Star of David rests over the skinny astronomical-star studded black tie, today attached to a gold chain of collar clips pinned to her burgundy woman's dress shirt (the sleeves slightly frilled and ballooning around her arms) instead of on its habitual chain. She's wearing starry heeled ankle boots and wide navy slacks, pockets deep enough, perhaps, to hide a portion of matzah in for later yet still in the evening. Curls are beginning to escape her space buns, her navy starry yarmulke has lost some hairpins, and her lipstick has not survived the first two glasses of wine. She's retrieved her jade bangle from her contribution to "This Belongs on the Seder Plate Because" and restored it to her left wrist. "You can sit if you want," she says after Shane's finished humming another verse of Dayenu, voice light and gentle. "This is easy, I'm not schnokerred yet, I can restock." "You're not hammered yet we're clearly fucking this up," comes Shane's cheerfully amused answer -- though at Kitty's offer he is at least setting his current load of bottles down haphazard without much more attention given to tidying up the table. If he's hammered it doesn't show... much, easy and steady in his speech although he drops kind of precipitously to take a wayward chair right then and there rather than returning to his meal. "Your boy not scared away by the inundation of Jewry yet? Not that Catholics are famously light drinkers, at least." "Oh, please, my liver is still recovering from last night." After a beat, "And Purim, honestly. I will top up cups three and four, I promise." Kitty is smiling, and though she is apparently steady on her feet her hip is clipping into the table as she leans forward to gather and stack empty cups. "He's been studying," she says, voice warm with affection. "I think he's memorised the Jack Black version of Chad Gadya. Give it another year and he could belt Dayenu with the best of us." She glances back at the room at large, smiling at her boyfriend before returning to the cups. "I think he might even like matzah," she says with a wrinkle of her nose, her tone making it Exceptionally Unclear if this is a joke or not. "Definitely'll belt it better than me, singing is not my forte. I blame whatever the fuck is happening with my lungs." Fish lungs, apparently, not designed for real singing stamina. Shane is peering vaguely over in the direction of wherever they had been sitting before -- maybe suspiciously trying to see if he is illicitly relishing matzah -- before turning a broad smile back at Kitty. "Hope that's not grounds for a break-up, if he's studying for you this shit's getting serious, huh?" "Now if we have an underwater seder, maybe you'll win?" Kitty doesn't seem certain on that point, let alone the practicality of such an event. The second question turns Kitty's cheeks pink, in a way that is definitely not just wine-flush. "It's only been a year," she mumbles, more to the growing stack of cups than to Shane but loud enough for him to hear. "And not like -- really studying, you know? Just enough to be, like, here, and other events I really want to share. I don't expect -- I haven't asked --" None of these sentences come together. Kitty leans back against the table, tall stack of cups in hand, looking at Shane a little more curiously. "How long did it take you? To --" Her brows scrunch together, continuing uncertainly, "-- realize you were at Sinai, too?" "Couldn't have an underwater seder the wine would -- wait," Shane has hit upon the clear solution to solve The One And Only logistical difficulty here, "flasks." His forehead scrunches in deep thought at the question. "I dunno, like, forever?" he hazards an uncertain estimation. "I kind of dabbled in, like, fucking everything once we got out the labs. I must have been annoying as fuck, any of my friends with even a hint of religion I'd tag along to their shit and see if it worked for me. Got all witchy with the Tessiers, went to mosque with Lyric, several fucking churches, Hive's temple, even Flicker's fucking..." He trails off at this, gills whickering rapidly open and closed. "But none of that felt right, you know? Not like home. Not like just. Cooking shabbat dinner with my brother. What I always came back to." Kitty nods along at each beat of Shane’s travels through religion, stilling only a moment at the mention of Flicker to whisper zikhrono livracha into the pause. “… I don’t really think I know,” Kitty admits, her tone contemplative. “Unless you mean the general discomfort of like, existing in a church, but maybe it’s different when you know, already, that where you are is not for any part of you. I’ve been at shuls that haven’t been right for me, but I think every Jew here has done some version of that wandering, it’s not the same as having to looking for home in the first place.” Her gaze is tracking back out to the room, not just to Leo but to the smattering of other non-Jewish mutants attendance. Mostly on Leo, though. “Did you ever feel — obligated? At all? To formally come home?” "Nah, not that. Going to church or whatever is fine but it isn't..." Shane turns his eyes outward, too, searching the room but ultimately returning to Kitty. "I think it was less an obligation, more a personal... need. Like shit, why'm I still pretending this isn't who I am? Never much for staying in any other kind of closet." He's sitting up a little straighter to give Kitty a quizzical lift of ridged brow. "You hoping he's gonna decide no more of this Jesus stuff it is the life of suffering and stompy songs after all?" Kitty hums thoughtfully. "Fuck all of the closets." She looks back at Shane, hand crumpling the bottom (load bearing) cup in her stack, which she hastily sets down, cheeks flushing a touch more. "A little? But it's totally a fantasy, it's not -- I think interfaith could work, for us, I would be happy to make it work, it would just be..." she trails off with a small shrug. "Nice, I suppose, to not worry about years like this when Easter and Pesach fold on top of each other as much. Little things like that. But," she's quick to add, "definitely not a dealbreaker. It'll piss off my--" the hesitation here is very brief, "--parents, but that's not my problem." "Do you go to church with him?" Shane is suddenly wondering, his wide eyes a little wider. "-- oshit I can sneakily sic my pa on him for you," he offers, then, very earnestly. "He did the ardent Catholic to Jewish pipeline and he's..." Here he huffs a small -- dryly amused -- breath. "... I dunno if I can say thriving, but, y'know." "No, I don't--" Kitty is beginning, eyebrows beginning to knit together before Shane continues. At this she laughs, short, clearly at the delivery more than the actual situation. "I think I can set Jax on him myself if it gets that dire, but I'm really not that worried about it. Half the 'you have to have a Jewish partner to have a Jewish family' stuff is just cover for shuls to be shitty to interfaith families, anyway." "I mean, you're gonna be Jewish no matter what, yeah? So that kinda makes your family a Jewish Family even if some assholes sneer about it. You'll just have to learn to make..." Shane scrunches up his face again, contemplative. "Gefilte fish lumpia or some shit -- I gotta say, he's probably contributing the better half to whatever culinary jumble you settle on." Kitty’s face is contorting too, exaggerated disgust plain on her face for a moment before she laughs again. “That would be so terrible. Gefilte is not for fusion food I will not be subjecting anyone to that. I’ve barely got a culinary culture I can learn to do regular lumpia.” She’s half turning to stack more cups, now. “Anyway, exactly, right? It doesn’t matter if he quits Jesus or not, really. If he’s willing to be here and leave Christ at the door, I’ll be plenty happy.” "Psssh, I have had a chance to study some white-people-Jewishness and your culinary culture is clearly a romaine lettuce on matzoh sandwich." Shane is slowly pulling himself back to his feet, only very barely wobbly. "But. What if. Jesus is inside him this whole time." He says this with a kind of spooky-movie-narration tone that immediately dissolves into a wicked-sharp grin as he glances back towards their table. "-- he's your man so I will refrain from where my mind just -- no wait shit I'm thinking it. Fuck," is yet another shift in tone, amused rather than all that dismayed, as he continues to observe the table he's vacated. "I really should go get my fucking webshooter back. If I can even unattach it from sticky lil kids now." "That's what I'm saying that's one matzah away from not being culture at all." Kitty's grin is only growing as she follows Shane's train of thought, laughing as she gathers her stacks of cups in her arms. "I won't tell him where you're putting Jesus if you don't. Go on --" she lifts her chin towards the table, the boyfriend, the children, "-- I got this. If you really can't get it off them, I can pry it off in a minute. Fulfill the symbolism of the seder webshooter." "From what I've seen of Catholic art, a lot of people have had that same train of thought." Shane frowns and hastily clarifies: "... about Jesus. Probably not about Leo." He lifts his chin in a cheerful thank-you to indicate The Entire Drinks Table and Kitty's help with it, and then ambles back towards their table. Possibly to get himself stuck to a kindergartner with a webshooter.