Origins pt. 11

I grew up in a meat house. A week's menu would likely include fried chicken, meatloaf, hamburgers, roast beef, roast pork and spaghetti with meat sauce. No one made me eat my vegetables, so I didn't. For as long as I could remember New Years Eve was the apex of carnivorous behavior. All afternoon my mom would be cutting up steak into little cubes and making various sauces. As dusk fell, and my dad arrived home weary from another pointless day at the office, she would get out the avaocado green electric fondue pot (a wedding gift from 72) and begin heating vegetable oil. Once it was boiling we'd all gather round the table with our long, color coded forks (many an argument with my brother over who got red), and spear chunks of steak and dip them in the bubbling fat until they were brown enough to eat. This was a slow process, and dinner would stretch on for at least an hour and a half. Finally, after 30 or 4o pieces of deep fried beef I'd be full. We'd retire to the living room and watch movies until shortly before midnight when we'd tune in for the ball to drop. The kids would always get a cup of ginger ale for the toast. This went on until I was in 10th grade. That year I had a friend sleep over. He joined us for the weird flesh meal. By the next year I was completely immersed in my gone generation lifestyle and rang in the new year in the banging bass and day-glo of a Laurel, Maryland warehouse (at 11:58 the d.j. on the platform yelling out to a thousand of us "Just two more minutes mother fuckers!").