wine and cheap perfume

This week my cousin introduced me to The Office (the BBC version), which may be the funniest show I've ever seen. It's also heartbreaking, because it made me come to terms with the fact that I am David Brent. Not in his overtly humiliating ploys for admiration; rather, in the way he rationalizes everything. I do that. I should stop doing that. On another note, the owner of my favorite market, Gracefully, is anorexic. It's strange when you realize that this disease affects not just insecure white teenagers from upper middle class families; it also affects bony Chinese men in their late 50's. Park and Han, his trusty seven-day a week worker, come into the bar every Sunday night when they get off work. They generally drink three or four beers and do about twelve shots of Johnny Walker Black each. This past week, after I suggested that Park try a new kind of beer we just got in (Red Hook's winter lager, Winterhook. It's amazing.), he suddenly looked really anxious and queried nervously, "How many calorie?!" I figured that this lean, aged man couldn't possibly mean what I thought he meant, so I said, "What?"
"How many calorie in beer? I'm on diet!"
I looked at him incredulously. "Are you serious? You're skinny!"
At this point, Han chipped in, "I know! I always tell him, 'you skinny!' but he think he fat!"
Park shook his head wearily. "I'm 5'9. All my life, I weigh 130. Now, I get on scale, scale say 135! It's too much."
I said, "Park, you're deluded. If anything, you need to GAIN weight! I'm 5'9' and I weigh more than you do and I'm a girl!"
He laughed, pitying my stupidity. "You say this, yes. But you are a girl. You have FRONT-" he gestures to his concave chest- "and BACK!"-he gestures to his fleshless ass.
I suppose he's right. I am a girl. And I do have a front and back.
In three days it's Christmas. Time flies when when you pretend that today doesn't count.