“I’m not going to order that by myself,” [she] shouted into the phone. I don’t know why the hell not. Everything I’ve heard suggests – no, unequivocally states – that the new KFC Double Down is absolutely delicious. So it can’t be that she’s embarrassed; that there would be some question about her taste in cuisine. So maybe it’s that some condescending KFC aficionado would be watching her every move from some dark corner of the restaurant, writing on his blog about the crazy white lady that just walked in – fooled by the marketing hype and hipster appeal of the obviously satirical sandwich that was created solely to reinvigorate the waning youth market of the once dominant KFC franchise. Or maybe it’s because the KFC I’m making her go to is in a bad part of town (read: black neighborhood). I don’t know. Look, I can’t speculate as to the reasons, but I will – she’s totally racist.
The last thing death row inmate Danielle Nathaniel Simpson ever ate was four pieces of fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, and milk. The last thing Robert Lee Thompson ate was fried chicken, french fries, onion rings, fired okra, jalapeño pepper, and milk. Larry Bill Elliott requested that his final meal not be revealed to the public (which I guess is some huge controversy). I’ve been reading Dead Man Eating Weblog for a while, and I’ve noticed that many of the final meals for death row inmates include fried chicken. Not that I plan on being put to death any time soon, but I should probably have a plan for my final meal, right? And if I’m to do that then there’s a hell of a lot of fried chicken I have yet to eat, because if my rudimentary polling of a moderately popular internet blog is any indication – fried chicken is the greatest thing ever. Ever. And who makes the best fried chicken? Besides Mama. No, not Popeye’s. Think bigger. Long John Silver’s? That’s fish you idiot. Buffalo Wild Wings? No, no, no. That’s just a KFC for white people. Oh wait, of course! KFC!
“Our car stinks now. Oh, and the drive-up had bulletproof glass,” she said as she tossed the brown KFC bag on the kitchen counter. Probably because the Double Down is $5 and change and so delicious that eventually people are going to start robbing the place to get their fix. If nothing else, KFC will always be remembered for being prepared. That, and forcing you to go in the restaurant to hold them up. I applaud their commitment to curbing laziness. You know, I wonder if any of the death-row inmates committed KFC-related offenses during their criminal careers. Is it possible that one might kill for the very fried chicken that he or she eats just before being put to death for the crime of murdering for chicken? You bet your ass it is. The KFC murders of 1983 remained unsolved until November of 2005 when Darnell Hartsfield and Romeo Pinkerton were arrested and charged with the murders of five KFC employees. Wikipedia says: “On the evening of September 23, 1983, just before the restaurant closed, armed robbers held up the KFC in Kilgore. The five people in the restaurant at the time (who were either employees of the restaurant or were waiting for someone there) were abducted, taken to a nearby field, and each executed in the back of the head with the exception of the manager who ran and was also shot in the head.”
Okay so they didn’t get the death penalty, but it was at least an option so I’m satisfied with my story. Anyway, the point is this: the new KFC Double Down sandwich is real, which means two things. First, the sammich really only exists insomuch that the mere suggestion of it provides us a source of meaning to apply to an otherwise normal pile of fried food; and second, you can jam one in your stupid mouth RIGHT NOW. That said, I have one sitting in front of me stinking up the place so I better get to it (although as I’ll discover later, your immediate surroundings will smell like KFC for some time after the sandwich has been consumed).
If you haven’t noticed by now, the smell is not good. I haven’t had KFC since I was a child so of course my expectations of it were like those that an acid freak might have for an orange – it can do anything. Only this time instead of being a sparkling sunshine sphere of indescribable beauty, the orange turns into an old pair of fanged gym shorts that steals my penis. Surely not something I would like to experience just moments before I die. But then again, does it really matter? Let’s think about this as if it were a game – that is, consuming this sandwich is part of a deCerteauian practice designed to prepare me for a time when eating the sandwich has actual pragmatic effects. I’m learning that the situational context of being executed might afford me some unusual possibilities – not the least of which is consumption without consequence. That is, I eat this awful sandwich and then experience horrible consequences for that consumption extending well into the next day. What if those moments following consumption were known to not exist? Or maybe they exist, but only as fantasy. So if instead of eating for myself – eating for my body, for nutrition – I’d be eating for nothing more than the memory of eating.
I can’t, or perhaps won’t, pick this thing up like a sandwich as it’s intended. I mean, this thing is solid meat. I’m no savage. I eat with a knife and fork. First bite is not good. I try to pour whisky on my tongue to scare away the peppery tang and hot grease, but it just bends away from me as if the Double Down has generated some magnetic field around my mouth that repels anything but more KFC. Second bite and I’m done. Shit, no I’m not. Some primitive urge takes hold and compels me to continue. I get through half of the sandwich and realize that it doesn’t exist as something that CAN taste bad. It’s simply not possible. It’s an indulgence. Nobody actually believes this is a meal, it’s too absurd. Our discourse has already established that (after all, there’s no bun!). And if one were to put the Double Down sandwich on top of a salad we’d all point and laugh at the irony of it. Why? Because food is no longer tied to any logic of desire. Food is a nutritional tactic to be mastered. And if someone can momentarily retrieve that logic of desire (when eating out at a restaurant, or having dessert), one is said to “indulge.” And indulgence is a loss of control – it is a loss of one’s mastery.
So I’ve lost control. I’ve consumed this weird creature, and its demon eggs will lay inside me until one day they’re called up to release their evil hunger upon my soul and I am once again forced to get me some KFC. It will drive me to do inhuman things, and I am powerless to stop it. Because it’s a metaphor. For sex.
