Quote 415 of 497

... I had my first oyster.

Now, this was truly significant event.  I remember it like I
remember losing my virginity--and in many ways, more fondly.

...

We'd already polished off the Brie and baguettes and downed the Evian,
but I was still hungry, and characteristically said so.

Monsieur Saint-Jour, on hearing this--as if challenging his American
passengers--inquired in his thick Girondais accent, if any of us would
care to try an oyster.

My parents hesitated.  I doubt they'd realized they might actually
have to eat one of the raw, slimy things we were currently
floating over.  My little brother recoiled in horror.

But I, in the proudest moment of my young life, stood up smartly,
grinning with defiance, and volunteered to be the first.

And in the unforgettably sweet moment in my personal history, that one
moment still more alive for me than so many of the other 'firsts'
which followed--first pussy, first joint, first day in high school,
first published book, or any other thing--I attained glory.  Monsieur
Saint-Jour beckoned me over to the gunwale, where he leaned over,
reached down until his head nearly disappeared underwater, and emerged
holding a single silt-encrusted oyster, huge and irregularly shaped,
in his rough, clawlike fist.  With a snubby, rust-covered oyster
knife, he popped the thing open and handed it to me, everyone watching
now, my ilttle brother shrinking away from this glistening, vaguely
sexual-looking object, and still dripping and nearly alive.

I took it in my hand, tilted the shell back nto my mouth as instructed
by the by now beaming Monsieur Saint-Jour, and with one bits and a
slurp, wolfed it down.  It tasted of seawater ... of brine and flesh
... and somehow .. of the future.

Everything was different now.  Everything.

I'd not only survived--I'd enjoyed.
		-- Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential, pp. 13-16

Tags: accent fist rust slurp defiance brie firsts silt brine seawater personalhistory baguettes littlebrother gunwale kitchenconfidential sweetmoment proudestmoment oysterknife losingmyvirginity anthonybourdain