They say you always remember your first. And were we talking about a
kiss, I remember sitting on a recessed bench filled with orange life
jackets on the second level of the Boblo Island ferry leaning towards
my sixth grade “girlfriend” Monica. I remember the stench of rotting
sea life from the Detroit River and the paprika scent of Better Made
BBQ potato chips mingling with the floral waft of Giorgio perfume from
her neck (though I suspect it was the Parfums de Coeur Designer
Imposters knock-off—after all what 12-year-old can afford the real
thing?) as we hesitantly merged our lips. Were we talking about sex, I
remember that too, but kissing and telling is one thing, getting laid
and doing so is quite another.
What I’m really talking about here is my first Eggs Benedict, the
legendary English muffin raft conveying tasty castaways of salty pork
and jiggly poached eggs awash in waves of silky hollandaise. And of
that, I do not remember my first.
Though, I suspect it was at an all-you-can-eat buffet, one of those
restaurant-larder-clearing affairs featuring an orgy of tangled
snow-crab legs, a miserable checked-pant-wearing short-order cook
manning a butane-fired omelet station and mountains of
chartreuse-rinded unripe cantaloupe. That means my first Benedict was
likely a steam-table-parched muffin topped with Canadian bacon
parchment and a sulfurous over-fried egg mottled with a gloppy, broken
mock-hollandaise. Thankfully I subscribe to the idea that you try
everything twice, because you never know if the first example was
cooked right.