Not long ago, I went, with my friend Karl to a gaijin-owned Chinese fast food chain where the minimum-wage workers are Caucasian teenagers.  We filled our plates; I grabbed a set of disposable chopsticks, and, after a moment’s hesitation, so did Karl.  But then he grabbed a fork and put it on the tray next to his little paper envelope of bamboo sticks.

I learned how to use chopsticks thirty-five years ago, in a restaurant called the Loon Foon, which was located on Long Binh military base in the Republic of South Việt Nam.  The base camp was the size of a small city; I’ve heard figures as high as 60,000 people, not counting the Vietnamese civilian workers.  The first time I went, with my Army buddies, little Vietnamese girls handed us hot towels.  I tried to refuse, that wasn’t an option; and after all, it turned out that hot towels were not a bad idea.  Long Binh was a huge military base; it sported a branch of the Chase Manhattan bank, steam baths, a country club for general officers, bowling alleys, handball and squash courts, tennis, volleyball and basketball courts, and a nine-hole golf course.  (The country club and golf course were located on Patton Loop; the restaurant, near Hawaii and Honolulu streets.)

I was stationed in Củ Chi, about 25 miles from Sàigòn and 40 to 45 miles from Long Binh; two or three times a week, someone from our detachment in Củ Chi had to take dispatches to Long Binh where company headquarters was located.  Since there was a war on, standing orders were that at least two armed people had to make the trip.  The trip was not particularly dangerous, but it took over an hour, in 110 degree heat.  By the time we finished up business at HQ, we were ready for a break.  We never had to be back by any certain time, since our sergeant-in-charge knew we were going to take up the whole day.

The waitresses would take your order and bring your food back almost immediately.  They were huge portions, the size that you can get now at the Twin Dragons restaurant in Cheyenne.  But you wouldn’t get any silverware unless you asked for it, and asking for it was a big begunza, as they say in Brazil.  You would ask.  The waitress would glare at you and disappear into the kitchen.  Your food would come out and everyone else would pick up their chopsticks and start eating.  Five minutes later, two Vietnamese women would march out and look at you and talk to each other.  They might even giggle.  “Fork,” you would say, miming eating with one.  Back to the kitchen where, I imagined, they would look through the pile of unwashed, crusty forks discarded from Army mess halls, find one and scrape most of the large bits off.  Your fork would arrive just in time for your fellow diners to have finished, whereupon they would sit around waiting for you to finish your cold food.  “Oh, don’t  hurry,” they would say.  “Take your time.”

Pretty soon even the most stubborn GI would yield and learn to use chopsticks.  You might be completely inept, but at least you had a chance of keeping up with your friends.  It took me awhile, but eventually I got pretty good.  Now, after thirty-five years, I tell myself, I’m an expert.

My friend Karl is young; it’s a cliche, but I really am old enough to be his dad.  In fact, his father served in Việt Nam.  But Karl was never forced to use chopsticks.  When we started to eat and I picked up my chopsticks (called “đũa” in Vietnamese), Karl tried to use his.  He had a terrible time.  After a minute, I said, “Relax; it’s not life and death.”

He laughed, but there were still beads of sweat on his forehead.  I showed him how to hold the sticks properly, but I could see that he was holding the sticks in an iron grip, as if they were live snakes, trying to wriggle away.  “You’re getting your exercise, anyway,” I said.  After a minute he put the sticks down and picked up a fork.

In the last film of Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, 1956’s Duel on Ganryu Island (Miyamoto Musashi:  Kettō Ganryū-jima), there is a wonderful scene where a ronīn tries to start a fight with Musashi Miyamoto.  The (clearly uncultured) masterless samurai from the boondocks barges into Musashi’s room at the inn, and blusters and brags, trying to insult Musashi so that he will accept a challenge.  Musashi is barely listening.  He’s busy eating, and there are flies everywhere.  They settle in his rice bowl.  Using his chopsticks, he plucks a fly off his food and throws it away.  He plucks another from the air, another from his bowl.  Soon, the rice is relatively clear, and Musashi continues eating.  “That’s better,” he says.  “Now, what was it you wanted?” he asks the horror-struck fellow, whose sword is dragging on the floor.

“Nothing!  Nothing!” he cries, and runs outside, where he tells everyone what a great man Musashi-sama is.  In the following scene, the ronīn has become Musashi’s servant.

Nicola Griffith has written a sequel to The Blue Place, Stay.  Griffith, like Musashi, is in complete control of her tools; she makes plucking flies from the air with chopsticks look as effortless as eating with a fork is for my friend Karl.

Buy it.  Read it.