Dinner in East Egg, Dim Sum in the Valley of Ashes

Toby McGuire as Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby.

I've had tempura lobster dusted with Himalayan sea salt, part of the chef's special tasting menu in a Michelin-blessed restaurant. I've sunk my teeth into a one-inch-thick New York steak while looking at the twinkling Vegas skyline. I've sucked on garlic-roasted sea barnacles in Barcelona, chased down with a stiff shot of liqueur. I've sipped wine in the shadow of the Opéra Garnier in Paris and drank coffee by the canals of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, all on someone else' dime.

The history of these all-expense-paid trips and meals began when I became an associate editor in a trade magazine. No longer was I just a proofreader picking out misplaced commas and dangling modifiers. I was now entrusted with the fate of feature articles, reviews, and news. That put me on the PR people's wine-and-dine roster.

Sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of the bill my host is signing for, I'd start doing math in my head. How many Huevos Rancheros platters can I get at the local Taqueria for that sum? How about those steamed mussels in wine sauce that I usually order at the diner by the park? How many bowls of those can I get if I trade that tempura lobster in?

I distinctly remember the aproned waiter who grated the block of salt tableside at the Michelin-endorsed sushi place, across the street from a golf resort. With white shirt and manicured hands, he looked more like a banker than a busboy, definitely overdressed for shaving salt. But he discharged his duty with a sense of decorum. Presenting the block on a silver tray, he explained how it had been harvested from a mountaintop in Asia. All of a sudden, the household item seemed too sacred, almost unapproachable.

I don't really feel I belong in these perfumed hotels, star-lit restaurants, and catered receptions. The truth is, if I have to pick up my own tab, I can't afford to go to most of these places. I've been granted temporary access to this world because I'm a storyteller, and people want me tell their stories (their clients' stories, to be more precise). I feel like Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald's narrator from The Great Gatsby, flirting with the privileged East Egg crowd.

One morning I was having breakfast in a Hilton somewhere in southern California, slicing into a smoked salmon omelet cooked to order. Then I strolled through the Art Deco lobby, signed my bill, and headed to the airport to catch my flight home. Six or seven hours later, I was back in San Francisco, standing in line to pick up shrimp dumplings in a takeout place run by a Cantonese immigrant family. That's how I eat when nobody is paying for me.

The cook, a gray-haired Asian grandma, came out to check on the fast-dwindling batch of egg rolls. Her face was cracked and wrinkled, like a pork bun left unsold overnight. There was a smudge on her nose. The poorly ventilated place was all steamed up. One could barely make out the warrior god, the bearded Guan Yu, guarding the altar with a raised halberd. The little setting made me think of the valley of ashes, the working class section Carraway passes through in his commute: "This is a valley of ashes ... where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air," he observes. As I was paying my bill at the dumpling shop, which seldom comes to more than $6, I wondered how the cook would react to a block of sea salt from the Himalaya.

Carraway lives in a small rented house in the less fashionable section. "A view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month," he describes. I live in small studio in a decent part of the city, with a view of the tree-topped mound the locals call Turtle Hill, just 10 minutes' walk from the dim sum shop.

Sometimes, when I'm being wined and dined in a marbled ballroom away from home, when I'm surrounded by truffle-topped hors d'oeuvres on platters passed around by white gloved hands, I'd remember the shriveled piece of dumpling shaped by a pair of withered hands. And then I'd long to be in consoling proximity to the valley of ashes, far away from Gatsby's moonlit lawn and all that Jazz.