On crabs, and parties. (2)

It was while sitting outside that I learned the proper way to eat steamed crabs. The girl who was throwing the party sat with me and helped me remove the top of the shell. I have no fingernails, as I am a biter out of habit, and I could not scrabble my finely honed fingernails into the conveniently shaped key of the crab's underbelly. She slipped a nail under that protruding piece of shell and I did the rest, opening the crab like a book, where the sound of a page turning is the same as a breath being drawn in. Next, I removed the head and brain. I could not touch it due to squeamishness, so I used a napkin and broke that part of the crab off and placed it aside. I removed the arms and legs and finally I was left with a bottom half of a crab, robust with secret meats and covered by treacle thick fat and gills.

The next move was to snap the body in half so that each moon-pie shaped piece sat heavily in the palms of each hand, and I watched as the girl demonstrated. Her face was the full of tired glee and her fingers shone bone white before a crack signaled the real death of an animal. I can't eat an animal. I can eat meat though, and up until this point I still saw the crab as an animal, albeit an animal without legs head or arms. I did the same and grinned when the body snapped open and I knew then that I had fallen in love with a process. It is in well defined processes that I most easily find something to enjoy, and this was truly enjoyable. The fact that I was making this transition on my own, from animal to meat, was something that I very rarely had the fortune to encounter. I looked up and around us there was the cold evening, where even bugs found no reason to fly anywhere but towards the light and I thought for a moment that we were on an island in the middle of a dark sea.

The next step was to hold half the crab as if genuflecting, and to pull the body apart, revealing ample space for slim fingers to gently pry meat from small, egg colored cavities. After seeing it done, I attempted to do the same and it felt like prayer, it felt like I was praying at last and that God was away but he would be back shortly, just leave a message after the beep.

I ate a few crabs and used the hammer as a visceral tool to get the meat in the claws. After a few crabs I was sated and I realized that it was cold outside, I realized that I was shivering not only from a blistering hangover(which even at this point hung over me as a shroud) but from the intensity of the temperature as well.

After washing my hands I stood on the porch and watched people by the bonfire talking and laughing and having a good time and I wondered if I ever really belonged in a place where people are doing those things - I wondered if I am even capable of faking talking and laughing and good times and all of that which remains a necessary disjecta in this world. I could have kept thinking about it to the point of going numb. Instead I grabbed a bottle of water and made my way over towards the warm red glow, that glow which speckled the crowd sitting in chairs around a blaze, that shimmered as it flew from mouth to mouth in the form of a smile.

-Rich

so we couldn't make out that night, so what