Killin' Your Own Kind
There comes a time, H.L. Mencken said, when every normal man is tempted "to spit on his hands, haul up the black flag and begin slitting throats."
Gourmet supermarkets are thick with yuppies the way online chatrooms are thick with people named DARKKNIGHT141 who ask "WHAT R U WARING?" Amid the lox and shallots, the places teem with people talking on their hands-free cellphones. People squeezing each individual peach to ensure that they're getting the best peach in the entire city. People walking with a fast, determined, achievement-oriented stride, heading heedlessly toward the yogurt section, plowing through those in their path. People cheerfully spending 70 cents on a single extra-chewy bagel.
Spit spit. Hoist. Sching!
So let's say you're in the store to begin with. Let's say you're buying a pound of tuna steak for $15.99 so you can sear it with a nice ginger-shiitake cream sauce. You're one of them.
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And you suddenly realize that not only are you one of them, but they also do a lot of things that are totally odious. This kind of revelation, of course, isn't limited to yuppies.
It happens to longshoremen. And middle school students. And lawyers. And visual artists. And almost any large group of people. Sometimes it looms suddenly: "My peeps have some awful habits. And I share the fault or at least the stigma."
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So disturbing is the dual revelation that if you're in a place packed tight with your peers the initial urge is just to go bugaboo, and start throwing jars of lemon curd at their heads. It's to run from aisle to aisle, pushing over shelves until they fall like dominos, burying editorial assistants and associate professors under mounds of tahini and fresh pasta. It's to put on cleats and jump up and down on a pile of mangos screaming: "HERE ARE YOUR PERFECT MANGOS, YOU GULLIBLE, OVERPAID CUNTFLAPS! HERE ARE YOUR MANGOS!"
And then, with a wave of reason, the urge passes. You're back in the real world, and the fish guy is asking you if you'd like anything else. No, the tuna will be fine. The tuna, and the understanding that you're part of a group with some loathsome habits.
And some kickin' cuisine.
James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)