I’ve always been a picky eater. I have elaborate lists of things I will and will not eat, preparation methods that are or are not acceptable. When people ask, I sum it up for them: “I’m basically a vegetarian. Except I eat bacon.”
They usually tell me, “That makes no sense. ” They're right. It doesn’t. And I don’t care. My love of bacon defies logic and reason. I shall never forsake bacon. Come on, what's not to like about bacon? It's fatty and smoky and salty and savory. I've had bacon so perfect it melts in your mouth like chocolate and it was transcedant, it was sublime. I tasted God in that bacon.
(Speaking of God and pork, sorry to any Jews in the audience. However, of my closest bacon comrades is Jewish. I'm a vegetarian who eats bacon, he's a Jew who eats bacon, of course we're friends. I once made the two of us bacon, drunk, at 4 am. Fuck, I'm going to make someone a great wife someday.)
Maybe my love of bacon is somehow pyschological. On weekend mornings as a kid I'd awaken to the smell of bacon filling the house, rousing me from my slumber with its siren call. In the kitchen would be a plate heaping with bacon, which we would eat with our hands, the skillet still sizzling with grease. My family takes their bacon pretty seriously. The last time I went home my father proudly whipped a ridged yellow plastic thing out of a drawer. "Look!" he said, brandishing it at me.
"I don't get it," I said flatly. "What is it?"
"It makes bacon," he said. "...In the microwave."
"What?" I asked. I had just woken up. I was probably hungover. This concept was beyond me. "But it's soggy and gross, right?"
"No," he said reverently. "It makes it perfectly."
"I refuse to believe this nonsense," I replied, wondering if my father was getting batty in his old age. Bacon in the microwave is unnatural. Next thing he'd be making toast in the shower.
He took out a fresh package of bacon out of the freezer, one of three or four that were stacked in there. Really nice bacon, wood-smoked, obscenely delicious. I told you we're serious about our bacon. He draped it elaborately over the little plastic wall and I understood -- the fat would run down the ridged sides and collect in little reservoirs underneath. Still, I was skeptical-- until a minute and thirty seconds later he produced a plate of flawless, crispy, melt-in-the-mouth bacon. We ate it with our hands. And then we made more.
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