The Grossest Food You Love

I was thinking about a small local carnival that comes every year to the neighborhood I grew up in. This is an event that I have gone to nearly every year of my life. I grew up in an Italian neighborhood and the carnival reflected the Italian culture. There were vendors selling Italian flags and food, etc. It is a very basic carnival as far as carnivals go. They have the usual ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, games no one can win, etc. Over the years, the cost for this has skyrocketed proportionally with the number of kids added to the brood. The carnival is staffed by the usual array of slack-jawed, gap-toothed wonders that make every ride a scary ride. It doesn’t matter, at my age, my stomach no longer goes into those positions without rebelling violently.

When I was growing up, my dad and I would immediately stop at the “raw bar.” For those not living near the ocean or for those not into Fear Factor, the raw bar is where raw oysters were served. My dad and I would order dozens of these nasty things and watch as a man of questionable hygiene skillfully coaxed the shells open. We would then take some Tabasco Sauce and lemon and put it on the squiggly mass of stomach and muscle and shoot it down our throats. The goal is not really to chew and savor, but more like get it down and let the flavors slide off into your throat. We were in heaven as we drank all that briny goodness.

I did this for a years with my dad. One needs to grab these moments of pure joy as they tend to be as fleeting as cotton candy in the mouth of my son.

Fast forward a billion years and I was trying to impress a woman on a date so we went to a nice restaurant in Rockport. As we looked through the menu, I noticed they had raw oysters. So I told my date the above story and that I hadn’t had oysters in 20 years. She said that I should get some and that she would get a kick out of me eating them. Now, you really need to know that she was as delicate as they came. I believe that she only ate a few different foods and most food was “gross.”

Because I was so nostalgic, I decided to go through with it and ordered a half-dozen oysters. They were presented beautifully on a tray of shipped ice and a dollop of caviar placed on each oyster. The first thing I noticed is that these were the size of Buicks! I remember these things to be very small…small enough to fit into my mouth! But these clearly had undergone some sort of nuclear waste-related accident as they were as big as Rhode Island!

My date stared curiously at me as I tried to remain cool and brought one of them to my face. She smiled. I smiled back. Then I shot the small, wet water balloon into my mouth. My mouth filled to capacity, my cheeks expanding Louis Armstrongily and there I remained. For a solid few seconds that feel like hours, I sat unable to handle this in my face. My swallow reflex all but shut down on me. My eyes watered as I tried to smile and I bit down on the oyster and I only made it through one chew before it became obvious that my mouth was not going to process this. All the while, she looked at me with a curious disgust something akin to watching liposuction on the plastic surgery channel.

I reached into my lap and pulled up my, luckily, linen napkin and delicately removed the gastropod from my mouth. I apologized to my date and to my surprise she asked if she could try one! I said that it would not be a good idea. She insisted. So, I loaded one up for her, carefully helped her angle her mouth and the shell and told her to go for it. She lifted the shell, dumping its contents into her mouth. I looked at her prepared to come to the rescue if anything goes wrong. She smiled, swallowed and then opened her mouth, Fear Factor style, as she showed me that she did it. She swallowed the oyster that I had to spit back up. “I like it,” she said triumphantly.

I dropped to my knee and proposed to her on the spot. I wonder what she is doing right now.

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