"Owl" Meat You Later (assignment #15)

 

The Hooters Roast Beef Sandwich

 

This assignment is about the most disgusting food /drink you’ve ever had in your mouth. This story is all about that, and more. I’m taking this drama from mouth to stomach and back again, without losing the sinuous thread of intrigue. Literally.

 

Back in the mid-90’s, there was a rash of Hooter’s openings in NJ. Fate would have one set up shop in Eatontown (aptly named in spite of this exercise, I know), the town where I worked. My friend Nick and I, hungry for the, ahem, Hooter’s experience, decided to check it out on our lunch break.

 

After a small line, we were greeted and seated and prepped to be treated. Our well teated waitress presented our menus with the flourish of a certain curtain opening. In unspoken words, Nick and I made eye contact acknowledging why they call the place Hooters. Only it was in an uh-oh kind of way, rather than a high-five kind of way.

 

Nick went chicken. I went beef. As in roast. Beef. Bar-B-Q. Sandwich. Yum. With fries. What better combination of the food pyramid essentials could there be? Meat, bread, sodium and deep fried potatoes. Salt of the earth food, filling and nourishing. Food arrived soon.

 

At first bite I hit a string of fat that unfurled with the recklessness of an unanchored kite string, but only bouncing downward. Instantaneously it obeyed the laws of gravity yet defied with vengeance the laws of digestion.

 

One end of the bite was in my stomach, but still connected to teeth. The other end was connected to my teeth yet on the hot sled to my stomach. Mind and body in total disarray.

 

The hunk of fat hung like a pariah on a tooth, yearning for his brother beef held hostage in a guttural stream. Cellular brothers, connected in an organic sense by mammalian tissue, yet separated by the twisted pipes and the mighty unsightly peristaltic fight of digestion.

 

I felt like I had pecked on the forbidden fruit of some eternal shoelace. I was a mix of shame and overwhelming physical discomfort. It was like I was sutured from the clavicle to the belly button and being pulled forward by an invisible force.

 

Gag is not the word. Swallowing one’s own revulsion comes close.

 

I couldn’t decide whether a plant was growing or dying within me. I might be tempted to compare it to post nasal drip, yet not in the least post and decidedly not nasal. And way more towards the front of the throat. Kind of like the heart to brain connection, except mouth to stomach. Totally emetic.

 

I instinctively stabbed at the stuck piece of sandwich stuck in my teeth with my keys. One chew suffering the indignity of an improvised toothpick, the other dropping down to the hungry sizzle of my stomach. It was ungodly awful. But yet, I was still hungry.

 

Let me ‘splain.

 

After the initial repulsion, after the ensuing gag, after the totally revolting sensation, after the analysis and evaluation, I took another bite. Of the same sandwich. Then a fry or five. Then another bite. Then, a chuckle after a Nick comment about the hairy chef’s boobs vs. those of our waitress, yet another bite.

 

Next thing I know, I’m in the clean plate club. With a shoelace of cow hung up on a tooth and rappelling into my body. Paid the check and left.

 

Not sure exactly when the string sprang loose and descended. It was sometime later that afternoon. Barely felt it. But afterwards there was a renewed lilt in my step. A response, a reevaluation, regeneration. A return. A response. A religion.

 

That glory lasted but mere moments. One cannot dispel the idea—let alone the sensation—of a Siamese piece of roast beef connected, yet somehow separate, in singular spaces within one’s body. It was truly disgusting.

 

(By the way, what’s with the Hooter’s logo? Are we supposed to believe those are a pair of owl eyes? Why don’t they cut the pretext and just have the damn signs in front of their restaurants lactate? They could use the same technology that made smoke come out of the Marlboro man’s mouth on those old billboards. But I’m getting a little off track…)

 

OK. I’ll stop now. Thanks for your time.