Superbowl Sunday

While the rest of America ate buffalo wings, got drunk, and got into car accidents, I sat through a carnivore’s Chinese New Year’s feast in a Flushing restaurant with seven people to whom I may or may not be related. There were eight of us around a round table, all over sixty years except for me and some guy (a cousin?) who was probably 16, judging by his unshaved first mustache and his voracious appetite for fried pork. Everyone spoke a Shanghai dialect except for my aunt and uncle, who spoke Toisanese or Fukkian, so I understood almost nothing and substituted gratitude and stereotypically demure downcast eyes



for true communication. The one snippet I understood was directed toward me:

-- Do you speak Toisanese?
-- No, I don’t.
-- You’re impressive. (Whispers to sixteen year old, “She graduated from Ha-fo!”)

I passed out my business cards, which are printed with my high school and collegiate GPAs, my SAT and LSAT scores, and my lifetime earning potential.

(Just kidding!)

The first breach of my lax vegetarianism was nine shrimp (plural?) sautéed with their exoskeletons, legs, and eyes still attached. Eating them required pulling their heads off and squeezing their meat out of their skins. I pressed on their eyes and expected them to give, like peeled grapes, but instead they were hard, like shooter marbles. Then I ate several pieces of roasted chicken, the acephalous variety of the sort that hang in Chinese shop windows, rust-colored and dripping with drippings. I would order this for my last meal, if I had the choice. Part of me shakes with revulsion when I think of eating meat (the part of me that presses on shrimp eyes, for example), but another part of me enjoys anything fatty and salty, like my plump Polish bride.

(Just kidding! Lolo is a stick!)



Then there was a fried pork chop, which was okay. By the time this was in my mouth, however, my superego was revving like a racer and reminding me with each bite how I was separating and tearing the muscle fibers of a massive, unhygienic, possibly sentient, ecologically burdensome beast. (Did I say “unhygienic”? I meant “fed its own shit, fed others of its kind, rolled in its own shit, slaughtered its own and others’ shit.”)

There was a kaleidoscopic sausage and a white fish, too. Details on those were lost in the home stretch. I made it through the dinner having said nothing to anyone else but, “No more, please,” “Please, I’m full,” “I can’t possibly eat that,” “Good God, please no more.” The old folks raced out the door at 7:38pm to validate the parking before their ticket expired. I came home and massaged my stick-like Polish bride and watched the Eggles lose the Superbowl.