Neat rows divided by tar-black metal beams. An Olympic-style pool if the swimmers lived in hell, lapping through the fiery lanes at Satan’s YMCA. I turn the gas on, and the valve rises from a propane tank. I think of the joys of a party store, the giddy anticipation before helium balloon inflation—a ready-to-pop “6” glittering and pink under the store’s fluorescent lights. I scrub the leftover soot from the surface, hoping the act can wipe away all my psychic debris with it. “Sweee, sweee,” go the ashen bristles.
Apply grease.
Ignition on.
Dial up the heat.
Close the top
and you’re off!
Primal immediacy. Try to think of the last time you felt it coursing through your veins, depositing itself in your brain. Your mind comes alive again, awakened from a 9-to-5-induced stupor. A hypnotic daze from the clacking of your computer keys. The licks of smoke that rise remind you:
YOU ARE NOT AN AUTOMATON
THE OFFICE IS NOT YOUR MASTER
REMEMBER THE HEARTH THAT BORE YOU
The next few moments, you would be wise to savor. As you lower the links and succumb to the steak, submit to their solicitations and requests for devotion. If you adjust your eyes, the grill does look like quite the shrine. You can almost picture it being used that way centuries in the future. When past customs have been annihilated and post-apocalyptic humans repurpose the vestiges of our time.
No matter. No need to think of times to come. At least not now, as the pork fat makes its first contact with the flame beneath it, “PSSSSTT,” the scent whispers sweet nothings in your ears. A smell so beautiful you can see it. Almost as well as your first love’s upper lip, the curvature of your grandmother’s hand stirred chicken soup.
A trance befalls you. The grill is a conduit of nostalgia; after all, you can almost see the figures of your past and present dancing atop the flames. Watch the past guide the present through the heat—a father with a child on his feet.
It’s a tender line, one you can cross with a second’s notice, between charred and burnt. A mastery of sorts, accumulating debris but not too much. One step too far and needed depth becomes an unsavory weight. Grilling is a practice in moderation, from low and slow to hot and fast. The movement of the meat around the grill top is a delicate affair. Each cut asks something different of you with each arising moment.
I want more from you.
I need some space.
Maybe we’re due for a break?
If you’re cooking for a crowd, the affair complicates further. Your brother wants his steak rare, but your mother-in-law calls for an infuriating “well done, dear.” There are seven burgers to flip, and the hot dogs fall through the grates. Sweat pools on your forehead like the condensation on the beer bottle someone’s uncle left unattended. The heat slaps your face with renewed vigor. It’s at this moment you might doubt your quest, wish you had not resigned yourself to the whims of the elemental. But if you stop now, you might threaten every law of evolution. If you stop now, you are cursing centuries, nay millennia, of your ancestors. Think of sacrifices made so you could spend your days at a modestly regarded corporation! DO NOT LET THEM DOWN!
Remove meat.
Dial down the heat.
Ignition off.
Carry the bounty
towards the sound of applause.
Gemmarosa Ryan can be reached at gryan@wesleyan.edu.