Swine

I'm sort of seeing this homeless guy. I wish I was saying this for shock value, but it's real. And he though he does not have a home, he has many addresses, including one at the Four Seasons. You see he's been doing something short of a social experiment where he had given up most of his worldly possessions in trade for a fuller life. He lives off the generousity of others, street smarts and charm. And to live this kind of life, and live it well, you must be one charming motherfucker. Which he is, which is why I'm so attracted to him.

I might him at the sotheby's spring auction where he picked me up with wit and free glasses of wine in the Southeast Asian contemporary wing. We had dinner when the wine boxes ran dry at the opening, where we continued on with a four hour conversation over a candlelit dinner at Union J. We spoke of his travels, he spends much of his life in the air, in first class no less, on a scheme. We spoke about wines, he spends much of his 'time off' touring wine countries. We talked about swine; about all the different ways to have swine.

He called me the next day and talk more swine, and the topic of buon mi came up. He suggested we spend the weekend in Hanoi where he would take he to have the earth's best buon mi. So then an entire dialogue of pork sandwich spun from that. We ended on a promise that he would make a cubano sandwich for me from scratch on our second date. This guy is a smooth operator. The only problem was sourcing the right bread, a serious problem citywide. By the end of the day, I sourced a baker who made portuguese rolls, the closes I could find to an authentic bun. When I dialed him back, the number turned out to be someone's phone he had borrowed. So no phone, and no home. Am I really doing this?

We began emailing a lot. It was our only communication without seeing eachother. Then one day out of the blue, he popped up unannounced to the office to tell me he found pulled pork. So with bread and pull pork, we have the two main elements for a proper cubano.

"It's my birthday on Friday," he said. "I could make it for you then. I just need to find fontina cheese, most people think it is made with swiss cheese, which is also good, but Cubans use fontina." He had learned to make cubanos in guest houses in Cuba by cuban women. He knew by heart exact measurements of spices, temperture, and time to roast the pork shoulder. He knew how to turn a brick and tin foil into a make shift sandwich press. He knew how to make his own mustard, which I don't think would be all that hard, but would never think to make it.

We had a great debate over whether swiss or fontina cheese made for an authentic cubano, but whereas I can only argue on taste and value, he could say he's actually been to cuba.

So we had a date of gathered ingredients to make the ultimate cubano and he promised me a real caphrina learned by his time spent in Brazil on his 30th birthday. He would walk me to work each morning telling me stories of his travels and what he ate and how he was going to make me that same meal. He would wait for me outside my office and walk me home or to dinner. I thought this was old fashioned sweetness until i realised he didn't have a phone.

The detail in his description put me to same. I could write an entire article about octopus avo lemono, but have never stepped foot in Greece. And he would tell me how he'd been to the bottom of the XX seas with a tickle stick to wrestle a family of octopi, skinned and dressed it with lemon and olive oil for lunch days ago. Whereas I could rate a cubano sandwich on the merit of taste and satisfication, he could name the origins, the authenticity and its history. I think I might have met the yin to my yang. He has spent months eating, cooking, learning the qualities of a good cuban sandwich. This made him an expert and me a pretender.

It all comes down to the references we have in life, and he seemed to have much more accummilated than I did.

We obsessively spoke about food, and I guess I didn't realise this at the time, but his guy could talk extensively about any topic as he just researches and absorbs topics all day long. He was charming my pants off. Quite literally. He wasn't an expert, but so much a con man I was half expecting.

"what do you see happening between us?" I asked him one morning. He had defacto been staying with me. What I was really asking was 'did he have direction in life or was he w=always going to be a wanderer? And it seems he has been in this circumstance before. When I was in the shower, he had made plans to make his next move: Massacusette. We spent one more evening together, eating swine and drinking rose.

Five days after he left, I walked to Gusto in Happy Valley to have a look. On its chalkboard specials it listed cuban sandwiches made with fontina cheese. I had to email him right away. The bread was all wrong and toasted up to be a hard rock, but he was right, the sandwich tastes much better with fontina.