In Which I Eat Lobster For the First Time

There are a few types of seafood I can tolerate. For example, I don’t care how fish sticks are made; whatever those machines are doing, it’s right. I like tuna fish sandwiches, though I’m not sure tuna, the Bastard of the Sea, really counts as seafood. And I endured enough dates appeasing a girlfriend who enjoyed sushi that I learned to adore sushi.

But other than those delicious exceptions, I have always had an aversion to seafood. It’s hard to describe, but almost everything about the experience of eating fish, from the taste to the texture to the senseless tragedies it triggers every day (when will we learn?), I find repulsive. Even when I persuade myself to swallow a rubbery chunk of seafood, convinced that no self-respecting foodie can avoid it, it makes me gag. In the end, chewing even a mediocre steak is still a treat, whereas chewing a well-cooked salmon is torture akin to waterboarding. (Seafoodboarding? There’s a joke there somewhere.)

I’ve always wondered, though, whether my gagging wasn’t just some juvenile impulse harkening back to some fateful night my mom tried to serve me fish when I was five — whether I had just decided, then and there, that fish was yucky and Trix was high cuisine. Now that I’m older, maybe I could learn to get over it. Straight-up fish is still a risky venture, but considering my odd appreciation for sushi, I suppose it’s possible that I could find some majestic creature out there, swimming deep in the sanctuary of the sea, that I’d be willing to murder and eat.

Enter Lobster, the King of Seafood — besides possibly the king crab.

Nothing says 'I love you' like a disgusting crustacean.

David Foster Wallace once wrote an essay about lobster in which he pointed out that, originally, “lobster was literally low-class food, eaten only by the poor and institutionalized” — a far cry from its gilded status today as the quintessential aquatic cuisine, the Surf to steak’s Turf, the fairest of marine fare. Lobster has a whole mid-level restaurant chain devoted to it — though I believe that’s only because the shareholders voted down “Yellow Cheese Biscuit.”

A few days ago, my stepmother, May, fresh from her trip to Maine, brought back eight some-odd pounds of still-kickin’ lobster — four shackled prisoners on Death Row in the bottom of a styrofoam cooler. When she opened the lid, the lobster on the top wiggled around, struggling to escape. It was hopeless. The other lobsters seemed to know this and simply lay there, awaiting their execution, and I could have sworn I heard the faint requiem of a lobster harmonica.

I had seen and held live lobster before. My sketch comedy group in college had a sketch starring a live lobster, whom we dubbed Arthur Podd, who spent most of his time moping around backstage until it was his time in the spotlight. He was a diva, but he was a virtuoso, dammit. What I noticed then — and what I noticed even more now, keeping guard over the inmates — was how unbelievably ugly lobsters are. Everything, from their strange eyes to their carapace littered with spines to their feather-duster tails, is grotesque. I couldn’t even admire their appearance out of some Lovecraftian sense of bewilderment. They are just ugly. How could they possibly be delicious?

(Side-note: just because lobsters are ugly doesn’t mean I don’t find them fascinating. In fact, their ugliness is part of what’s interesting about them. All aquatic life fascinates me in some way. The ocean is a whole world distinct from our own, with its own natural laws beyond our understanding of the world, not to mention countless undiscovered organisms we couldn’t even begin to imagine. But yeah, lobsters are ugly.)

The lobsters are red, which means they've already been cooked. Preposterous!

We decided to steam the little buggers, and I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of the process. With most fish, meat, and poultry, you have to kill the animal — as humanely as possible, of course — and then skin it, clean it, and carve out the haunches or the fillets or the breasts or whatever. In each case, it’s almost an art, a craft that, at its most elegant and efficient, requires a chef or butcher’s carefully honed expertise. But with lobster, you just shove it in the pot, still breathing, until it changes color to let you know it’s finally out of its misery. I, for one, would rather be hanged. Or electrocuted. Or shoved in front of a bus — on fire.

It finally came time to eat the lobster. May did the honors of extracting the meat, and I marveled at the way the meat retained its shape from the claw, like a naturally occurring Jell-O mold. She placed a sample on my plate and I picked up my fork, dipped the meat in some butter, and took a deep breath. This was it. This was the moment when seafood would cease to be gross, when I would once and for all welcome the veritable smörgåsbord awaiting me under the sea.

I took a bite, and suddenly it all made sense…

Lobster is the King of Seafood because it’s even grosser than everything else. Dad gobbled it up, while I tried bite after bite, wincing every time, piling in rice like it was an alternative gift from God. I tried eating the lobster with the rice, and that seemed to work, but every time I tried it alone, I nearly gagged.

I want to like seafood — I really do — but I don’t find anything remotely pleasant about it. I think I like sushi because it blends the taste of fish with seaweed and rice and vegetables and all kinds of spicy delights, but the taste of fish alone is horrifying. So nothing’s changed. I’m not a better, more refined person after eating lobster. I’m just a man who will know when to spring for the Porterhouse instead. And hell, if nothing else, maybe some day I’ll end up sparing a poor, helpless, disgusting water-spider the searing pain and undignified torture of being steamed alive — for a few more minutes, at least.

By the way, in case you’re curious about the fate of Arthur Podd, we never ate him. He died in the bottom of a fridge. He never even made it to Hollywood.