Awww, Shucks
Anthony Bourdain is a superhero of mine. He found a way to create a life that acknowledged all of his deepest desires, and he lived fully in that until he couldn’t anymore. A lover of food in a way that not all humans get to feel so deeply, he traveled, he cooked, he immersed himself in the culture of food. A culture of hospitality and care, of wonder and awe, of surprises and science. A culture through which self-discovery comes through the appreciation of another’s goodness served up in a dish. It is a transference of love that cannot be achieved any other way.
When I read his book many years ago, the oyster story took my appreciation for him to another place. I genuinely felt his words, and this faraway human understood me [as far as oysters went, anyway]. When I was very young, me and my dad would go eat oysters. He swears that the four-year-old me would belly up to the bar, order a cherry coke, and eat a dozen oysters myself - no accoutrements, straight out of the shell. I had a Cajun accent when I was very young, and I imagine this to be one of his first proud father moments. He has always bragged about this, and his little oyster-shuckin’ Cajun girl.
I caught a scent of oysters today - unmistakable. Seawater scented with a nose-twitch full of horseradish, I could actually taste it. It was odd. I haven’t had oysters in a very long time. I’m going to let you read Anthony’s account of the oyster, and then I’ll tell you more about my issues…
“Monsieur Saint Jour (the oyster fisher), on hearing this – as if challenging his American passengers – inquired in his thick Girondais accent, if any of us would care to try an oyster. My parents hesitated. I doubt they’d realized they might actually have to eat one of the raw, slimy things we were currently floating over. My little brother recoiled in horror. But I, in the proudest moment of my young life, stood up smartly, grinning with defiance, and volunteered to be the first. And in that unforgettably sweet moment of my personal history, that moment still more alive for me than so many of the other ‘firsts’ which followed – first …, first joint, first day in high school, first published book, or any other thing – I attained glory. Monsieur Saint-Jour beckoned me over to the gunwale, where he leaned over, reached down until his head nearly disappeared underwater, and emerged holding a single silt-encrusted oyster, huge and irregularly shaped, in his rough, claw like fist. With a snubby, rust covered oyster knife, he popped the thing open and handed it to me, everyone watching now, my little brother shrinking away from this glistening, vaguely sexual-looking object, still dripping and nearly alive. I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back into my mouth as instructed by the by now beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour, and with one bite and a slurp, wolfed it down. It tasted seawater… of brine and flesh… and somehow… of the future. I’d not only survived – I’d enjoyed. This, I knew, was the magic I had until now only dimly and spitefully aware of. I was hooked. My parents’ shudders, my little brother’s expression of unrestrained revulsion and amazement only reinforced the sense that I had, somehow, become a man. I had had an adventure, tasted forbidden fruit, and everything that followed in my life – the food, the long and often stupid and self-destructive chase for the next thing, whether it was drugs or sex or some other new sensation – would all stem from this moment. I’d learned something. Viscerally, instinctively, spiritually – even in some precursive way, sexually – and there was no turning back. The genie was out of the bottle.”
A nostalgic and poetic love of oysters is what I mean to still have. As previously mentioned, it’s been a long time. There was an incident, and I just haven’t been able to be brave since. It will take bravery.
It’s not a long story, nor it is going to be one with many details. This oyster was consumed [well…sort of] in a restaurant owned by some dear friends. At no fault of their own [only the nature of nature can be blamed], inside of the slurp and the salt of the freshest oyster I have ever had, out crawled the smallest crab. Shell-less, quarter-sized, and very alive, this being ruined everything. I did not finish this oyster, and you wouldn’t know it, but the sliminess of an oyster defying the gravity of a throat is really enough to never let any of this ever happen again. But add in the creepy inching… crinching, cringing. I’ll not soon forget it.
I never get to tell this story. It only surfaces for potential to tell when there are oysters, and I never want to ruin the experience for the others. Knowing that without my negativity, they may very well be seconds and slurps from a truly transcendent life-event. “I’d not only survived – I’d enjoyed.” His words ring in me, not only for shellfish, but in everything. And here I am, whining. I’ve never won the lottery. What could the chances possibly be of this ever happening again? We may never know.
Sad though. I appreciated the waft of an oyster’s taste today in the wind - essence of oyster. I wouldn’t want to wear it as a perfume, but it was nice to visit in the breeze. I don’t often watch the wind this way. I not only survived, I enjoyed.
Jeanne might be one of the chillest humans I have ever met. She has a calming presence that couples with this delight and hilarity, and then all that dances around a rainbow and dips itself in a bucket of sincerity and compassion. Also, she makes art with oysters… and doesn’t that just add to the goodness?
I’m very happy to have found us all this gift. “He’s the workman of the sea, turning estuary plankton into food for you and me. There’s nothing moister than an oyster…”
Cite sourced:
*http://www.gastronomista.com/2009/11/miss-emmerson-speaking-of-oysters-and.html#.YE6zJrRKjGI
