That’s a line from the movie Blade Runner. The replicant Leon says this to the main character Deckard, just before attempting to smash his face in.

A few days ago, I woke up with an itch I couldn’t scratch. I can put a name to this particular itch, and that name is David. And no, it’s not what you’re thinking. Pervs.

In the past, you see, I have never liked sushi. I’ve been taken to sushi places in four major cities on both sides of the continent, and I’ve come to the considered and well-researched conclusion that sushi sucks. This conclusion has been assailed by a number of people over the yers, but subsequent experimentation has always left that conclusion intact.

I have a friend and coworker who is quite passionate about sushi, and he decided he’d be the latest to take a tilt at the windmill. So he invited me to a sushi place in Buckhead which is, he assured me, the best sushi he’s yet discovered.

And a chorus of angels sang on my tastebuds.

I can even tell you, gentle reader, the exact moment it happened. It was the lava roll that did it. I felt as a person who’d spent his entire life seeing only in black and white had suddenly been granted color vision, and his first sight upon being gifted this wondrous new thing was Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night.

And so, just before New Year’s, when Shelly and Brenden and Taj were in town, we all joined David once more at this same sushi place for dinner. Lo, there was much sushi, and lo, it was all consumed. Then, after this orgy for the mouth, we went to see the new cut of Blade Runner. It was, truly, a Perfect Evening.

Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch!

And now, gentle readers, that itch keeps returning. Before, when I lived in night, I never craved sushi; but now that I have sampled its wonders, the craving is upon me from time to time, without warning, and always when I have no immediate way to satisfy it.

I can only imagine that the long-suffering, tireless testament to the human spirit, Paris Hilton, must have felt something similar when her grandfather (and controller of the Hilton fortune) decided to pledge the entire vast empire to charity upon his death, cheating her of a $2.3 billion inheritance. I do not miss that $2.3 billion, for I never knew its charms, but the lamented Ms. Hilton must surely feel some of the same pain I feel now. Before I knew sushi, I could never miss it; and before she knew drunken million-dollar spending sprees, she could never miss them, either.

But my itch is, I think, easier to scratch.