“I would do it myself, but I don’t have any thumbs”
The “Beggin Strips” Spokesdog
"On May 8, San Francisco is hosting its second annual “BaconCamp,” billed as “an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment about bacon.”
I can’t think or write of bacon without using an exclamation point! It’s the end all and be all of meat – the living, holy relic of my church -- the manifest evidence of a benevolent god that’s able to actively intervene in my daily life. If the transubstantiation thing the Catholics do had involved bacon instead of wafers, I might have grown up to be the first American Pope. ("He tastes like bacon!"), and, ("white wine goes better than red when becoming one with a piece of the teriyaki-ed Jesus.") ,and, ("Could I get the breading on my cutlet of the lord unleavened?")
I’m a big pork guy in general: slow roasted pulled; knuckles of the fatty; jars of their delightfully pickled feet – but my first love is bacon. It both defines and completes me in a way that other foods can only wish for.
Bacon! Bacon! Bacon!
Recently, my oldest daughter came up to visit from LA. My ex offered her home for a family breakfast, but refused to make any bacon, “It smells up the house for weeks,” she said.
I replied to her offer:
“I don’t need bacon with every meal, but do insist that it’s at least available in case I need it.”
We met at Mimi’s for brunch instead. “If you don’t order the goddamn bacon, I’ll kill you,” she snapped at me from across a narrow table. It was delicious, all of it, and helped sooth the emotional hurt of her words.
I can’t even write poetry about bacon. It’s like writing about my children – all odes that end in a smaltshy stew of absolutes without the ambiguity of hidden meaning. Even Sonnets bow before the power of pork, and related pork products.
When I read articles about the seamy underbelly of pork production – The vast wasteland of urine and poo ponds; the nasty worms that are left in their muscles; the tiny cages they live their short lives in – I only see, “underbelly,” and think, that’s where the bacon comes from!
Don’t expect to see me in SF for BaconCamp – my love is a private thing, and never to be sullied by the common of public celebration.
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