I am deeply suspicious of anyone who claims to dislike bacon. A person may regretfully choose to abstain from bacon due to a religious obligation or a health concern, but he still likes it.
Fatty, however, took my love of bacon to a very dark place. One only has to refer to Chapter 3 to understand what she’s capable of.
You see, Ally sometimes works at a restaurant, and it’s a good one, evidenced by this glorious fact: several pans of bacon often sit cooling on a rack next to the oven. In other areas, containers of lardons wait patiently to be scattered atop a salad. Fatty will not shut up when she sees or smells bacon. She wants me to scrape together two giant handfuls of still-simmering cured pork from the speed rack and sprint into the parking lot, where we can devour it behind an SUV like an animal. She repeatedly demands that I grab that container of lardons, unhinge my jaw, and load both cheeks to capacity.
On one of these occasions, Fatty learned something terrible. Some innocent co-worker who thought he was talking to Ally explained that bacon (mmmmm....) could be purchased in whole slabs from McGonigle’s Market on 79th.
What would have been helpful to me in the coming weeks was some sort of bracelet or facial tattoo that warned the workers at McGonigle’s not to sell bacon to me, because once Fatty was able to procure her own slabs, she was no longer accountable to social mores or the boundaries of human decency.
Every day for about six weeks, she cut and oven-roasted about 3,000 calories worth of “sliced” bacon. I say “sliced,” because when something is three quarters of an inch thick and roughly the size of a rib eye steak, it can no longer be referred to as a “slice.” Bacon steaks.
Finally, one of my roommates, Matty, emerged from his bedroom to plead with me to stop. Clouds of bacon vapor wafted from the kitchen.
“It always smells like bacon in here. I can’t stop being hungry, and I really need to study.” He was clearly embarrassed at having to make this request, but it was the flash of fear and pity that caused me to question this new bacon lifestyle.
What was it exactly that produced that fear in Matty’s eyes? My newly acquired double chin and all stretchy pants wardrobe? Or was it my constant presence in the kitchen which had resulted in a severe decline in contact with the outside world? I tried to remember a time in the last two weeks when I hadn't been in the kitchen holding a knife and a spatula. Shit.
“He’s just jealous,” Fatty quipped. “He wishes he could eat this much bacon.”
No. Several feelings (dismay, revulsion, nausea) emanated from Matty’s face, but “jealous” was not one of them.
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