Blade Cuisine

There's this picture of rough, uncultured masculinity that I idealize in my mind. It looks something like a thug from the Adventures Of Mark Twain. He's uneducated, slovenly, mean and violent. When I see myself doing anything that meets part of that description, I kind of like it. It's not good to be like that, but I must confess a certain charm in it nonetheless. It's hard to explain it, and I'm sure I've failed, but there's something to it. Maybe you just get tired of sticking to the rules, even the good ones.

Something that makes me think of this is how I eat. I often eat poorly, both in terms of the food's nutritional content and the manner in which I consume it. Suffice it to say that I don't lay out multiple forks and spoons on the table, both because I don't have the silverware and because I don't have the table. I'm certainly capable of eating in a sophisticated manner, but I don't make the effort to do so generally.

Something I do something is to eat something with just a sharp knife. Cheese is a good food for this. You hold the cheese in one hand and the knife in the other. You slice off a section of cheese and send it into your mouth by pushing it off the edge of the knife blade and taking it with your teeth. That seems to me very much like something that a Mark Twain ruffian would do. Even in Twain's time it was not really acceptable, so it's even more transgressive for me.

Of course I'm really not like one of those guys. I'm not even as rough as Tom, let alone Huck. An aspiration to put aside repulsive eating habits betrays me as much as anything else, but I mustn't be a slob all my life. The charm steadily decreases. It eventually becomes cool when you're old, I think, but old guys who are like that are destitute with no means of subsistence, which is a grim future to be sure. I hope to avoid it.