Let's Talk: Goat Tails
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As you may know, GOAT: MEAT, MILK, CHEESE is full of stories as well as recipes. In the L. A. Weekly, Jenn Garbee even gave our style a name: "slapstick-tinged conversational." (See the full review here.) And on seriouseats, Tina Vasquez went so far as to say that no one's really writing book's like this: "part field research report, part cookbook, part personal memoir." (Check out her interview with me--complete with cussin'--here.)
Bruce does a bang-up job with the food. I'm so lucky to live with someone who thinks about food the way he does. But my part is putting it all into print--and so I've been allowed to go a little nuts, thanks to some very liberal editors at Stewart, Tabori, & Chang.
Today, I thought I'd offer one of those stories from the book on our blog. It's called "My First Time." I hope you enjoy it. I think you'll get the drift soon enough.
FROM GOAT: MEAT, MILK, CHEESE. "My First Time"
It was in 1977. I was seventeen, a college freshman. I had skipped out of high school and gone right to college. Where I’d told no one I was seventeen. Or gay. Waco, Southern Baptists, Baylor. You do the math.
Still, I was game for a winter-break trip. My roommates had cooked up a plan to head to Cancun.
“Think of the girls,” they said.
I smiled. Thinly.
You should know something about Cancun in 1977. It wasn’t Cancun. There was a dusty airport with a couple gates. There was a small town populated by Aussies, Germans, and their accumulated detritus, mostly prostitutes. And there were a few hotels out on the beach. The El Presidente was the classy one.
We didn’t stay there. We couldn’t afford it. We stayed in a flop joint. But on the beach. As I said, it wasn’t Cancun.
I’d brought a couple hundred bucks with me. (More math problems.) It didn’t cover much more than my bar bill and some meals in the hotel’s faded restaurant, a place where the cracks in the walls were deftly covered with blinking Christmas lights. Load-bearing Christmas lights.
Since I could afford only simple things, I ordered in like manner. Or tried to. I didn’t speak a word of Spanish. A white, upper-middle-class, Texas boy studies French. Because that’ll do him a lot of good.
After I had stammered over the menu, the waiter finally said, “Señor? Tacos? Si?”
“Si,” I said.
Apparently, my linguistic skills were picking up. I sat back and ordered a drink. Because cocktails are the same in every language.
I eventually got those tacos. They looked plenty good, stuffed with shredded meat, laced with fiery chiles, the green strips deceptively soft and inviting.
Still, meat, Mexico, 1977. I asked what was in said tacos, using that finger-flailing technique common to white, upper-middle-class, Texas boys who study French, are gay, go to college early, and end up in Cancun looking for girls in a flop joint. You know the gesture I mean.
“Cabrito,” he said.
I had no idea what he meant.
“Si,” I said. And took a bite.
It was searingly hot. Blindingly so. I coughed. Sat up. Tried to act tough. No tears, I thought. No tears.
I’ve since been all over the world. I now realize that “hot” is not a culinary term. It’s a lifestyle. Of which I had none on any count in those days.
I guzzled my drink. A Tom Collins. Oh, go ahead and laugh. My friends still didn’t know. I had that poster of Farrah Fawcett on my dorm room wall. A load-bearing poster.
Despite the fire in my mouth, that meat was sweet, a little musky, and crazy-good.
“What is this?” I spluttered.
“Goat,” one of my friends said. He was the worldly one. He drove a Trans-Am. “The waiter told you.”
I almost gagged. What in the world was I doing? Goat? 1977? Baylor? The closet? Underage? Cancun? My Tom Collins drained?
I couldn’t spit the meat out. My friends were looking at me. Showing any sign of weakness wasn’t worth the hassle. They might notice that I wasn’t picking up any girls.
So I took a second bite.
It was my madeleine. Something pinged up in my head. Yes, the chiles. But more: that intense, earthy flavor. Something elemental. A celebration of all things carnivore. And delicious, to boot.
I’d like to tell you my career as a full-time foodie began right there. It didn’t. There’s a lot between: street-preaching at Texas state fairs, getting married, going to graduate school, learning medieval Italian, getting a divorce, moving to New York, writing screenplays for persnickety celebrities, meeting the love of my life, getting married again. You know: the usual stuff. But at the back of it somewhere was goat.
I started ordering it when I found it: at barbecue pits in Austin, at xampanyerie in Barcelona, at run-down take-out joints in Queens. It made me sophisticated, worldly, exotic. People took notice. I wasn’t trying to hide. I was trying to be seen. And that’s what goat really did. It led me out of myself and into a much bigger world.
Reader Comments (2)
If drinking Tom Collins in Cancun in 1977 wasn't a dead giveaway, your friends must be pretty inebriated not to notice. Bravo to loving goat.
Great post -- great story structure, and my mouth is watering for one of those tacos cabritos.