Fried Chicken Friday

IF YOU COME INTO MY HOME AND PUT THE FOLLOWING THING ON MY HOMEMADE FRIED CHICKEN I WILL PUNCH YOU IN THE NECK:

Ketchup – you people know my theory on ketchup in general. You’re not in the fucking Midwest, you’re not wrestling pigs back on the farm, this isn’t your first Happy Meal - put the fucking ketchup away and eat like an adult for fuck’s sake. Few years back I was in love with some chick, invited her over for dinner. Made her my signature “I love you, please spend the rest of your life with me” dinner: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, some combination of bread/Hormel chili. Coulda been Hormel Benedict, coulda been Foie Gras Hormel Drizzle. Whichever. So I spend every second of the day slaving over this chicken, throwing out batch after batch until finally, after going through about $19,000 worth of chicken I had landed upon my masterpiece, my magnum opus; what the Phoebe Cates-coming-outta-the-pool scene in Fast Times woulda been if it were fried chicken. Now I know that the second she bites into this heaven on a bone, she’ll fall in love with me and we’d make babies from then til…well, till I dropped dead at 37 of a massive coronary. Anyways. I put on my best gal-hosting sportcoat, some clean black socks and seat her at my table – of course offering up a glass of wine to “simmer down the heat” that was brewing in this dining room of lust…and by “dining room” I mean “table in the kitchen”…well….by “table in the kitchen” of course I mean “foot locker between my couch and tv.” So I’m not Cliff Huxtable, fucking sue me. Anyways, I serve her a plate of beauty, my best fried chicken, just above room temperature cuddling next to a small mountain of mashed potatoes (I believe the Hormel Chowder with sliced almonds appetizer woulda been done by this time.) As I’m sitting down to chow my precious angel looks up at me and says those three little words that should have let me know my life was to change forever: “Got any ketchup?”

“Ketchup?” I’m thinking, mind whirring furiously…ketchup..for what…the mashed potatoes? Really…ooooookay, I guess…hit the fridge, my roommate had a bottle, I bring it to the table, she flashes the big pearlies and I’m back in love. “Let it go” I tell myself “you’ll have a lifetime together to ween her off ketchup on mashed potatoes.” One look at her eyes beaming at me, her smile that crinkled the sides of her mouth, leading down a slide of smooth moist tanned skin along a swan-esque neck of beauty that you write books about, a neck that has started wars, leading down to the cove of cleavage that I knew she had dressed up for me, for my attention and want confirmed I was doing the right thing. So when she dumped some on the side of her plate my heartbeat was back down to 390 beats per second and I got back to yammering about whatever amazing piece of conversation I had been in the middle of; probably something about post-modern Dadoist cubism. Cause hey, I gotta be me. Then she takes her fork and tears into the chicken, taking out a hunk along with some perfectly fried crispy skin. Alright, I think in the middle of yet another Xmastime critique of how Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" demonstrates how cubism's multiple perspectives can be translated into literature, relax, she just is being polite, using utensils. But she was lowering her beautiful feminine fork hand towards the plate, dropping it slowly as she’s creaming in her pants re: my intellectual heroics, and I see it’s going towards the ketchup. “What the…” I’m thinking, not pausing as I run through some Czech Cubism Foundation stuff, “..what the..”

And then I see it, but I still don’t wanna believe it. Dipped the chicken, MY chicken, into the ketchup and…as my heart breaks, as my magic bag of spices sag and as my Crisco Oil stops popping with joy, she eats it. Fried chicken. With ketchup. Worlds colliding, worlds that should never see the light of day together. There is no joy in XFC tonite. Unreal.

We ended up not being together. Well. Obviously. I stayed here, still perfecting my chicken. She moved back to the Midwest, where I guess they approve of these things. If I saw my “Footloose” correctly, and I’m pretty sure I did, these people don’t allow dancing but they allow this shit to go on? Well. Not on my watch.

And one more thing…don’t fucking stand in front of me and add salt and pepper to my chicken. It’s already perfect. When you have a lady of the night come over to your place, do you say “one second please” and then start shaving her nether regions to your liking? No. She already did it, numbnuts. Leave it alone.

POSTSCRIPT – the whole time I was typing this I had an 8 month-old screaming in my ear, kept having to jump out and help RRTHUR (yes ladies, THAT Rrthur) work on building a deck and the lesbian who lives upstairs that I am in love with was down breathing in my ear. Sigh. So if there’s any mistakes fuck…..YEEEEEEEEEEEEW!