After binging on coverage of the current debate over our health care system and all the insanity it’s wrought, I had a seriously disturbing dream last night. It was that special brand of nightmare you tend to have after you’ve been up way too late with a bottle of Stoli and a hefty edition of Kafka. I sat alone in a spare, dark room, lit only by a floodlight with me directly in its beam. Before me, a very tall, menacingly heavy table — all sharp, slightly off angles — at which sat a panel of drably dressed, humorless bureaucrats. They appear to be scrutinizing an avalanche of paperwork for some time, just long enough to make me feel suitably terrified. Then they address me.
DEATH PANEL: Mr. Gold, it is the final and irrevocable decision of this council that, because of deliberate inaccuracies on your initial application for Obamacare Socialized Health Insurance, Inc., your motion for continued existence be denied.
ME: (Baffled) Excuse me?
DEATH PANEL: You perjured yourself when you applied for medical benefits, and hence we have no option but to recommend that your coverage — and your current “alive” status — be discontinued at this time.
ME: (In horror, shifting wildly in my seat.) What the hell are you talking about? I’ve always been in great health!
DEATH PANEL: Not according to this physician’s report one year after your signed, notarized application. It says here that you suffer from “acute dermititis.”
ME: I had a pimple!
DEATH PANEL: Nonetheless, Mr. Gold…
ME: It was one of those right-under-the-skin monsters that just sit there for days, all swollen and red and puffy, you know, the sort of nuclear zit that never seems to want to go away…
DEATH PANEL: Still and all…
ME: …so the doctor gave me some ointment, problem solved, honest! You don’t have to put me down, I’m fine! I swear! I mean, look at this complexion. Not a blemish, right? Not a mark!
DEATH PANEL: Mr. Gold! Be that as it may, there’s nothing you can do to appeal our decision. It is final. You are hereby scheduled for “transition” next Thursday at 12:01 am., at the Joe Biden Vice Presidential Health Services and Execution Facility in your neighborhood.
ME: *!#$%*
DEATH PANEL: We only have one last question for you. What would you like as your last meal?
***
There’s a little game — or a thought experiment, rather — that cooks, food writers and gourmets have been engaging in for decades. You are told that you are slated for execution the next day, and that you may have one last meal before your demise. So, armed with that knowledge and your own culinary imagination, the game asks: What’s on your menu? What food will last touch your lips during your final moments among the living?
Almost always, the answer is a simple one, often a dish from one’s youth. Comfort food. Because, if you’re walking that Green Mile, you probably want a little comfort at the end. I know I would. A book was published not long ago regarding this phenomenon entitled My Last Supper, and it featured famous chefs from around the world and their Death Row meals. Lidia Bastianich called for linguini with clams. For Eric Ripert? Bread and butter. Gordan Ramsay went with the English classic: roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and red wine gravy.
But what, you ask, does all of this have to do with meat?
Take a look at a list of actual Death Row inmates’ final meal requests, and you’ll find a smorgasbord of carnivorous, artery-destroying delights. Popular items include steak, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and, of course, fried chicken. And not in small portions, I’ll add; when these guys go, they’re going packed to the gills with red meat, nacho cheese and deep-fried everything. Take Stanley Baker, Jr., who robbed and killed an adult video store clerk in 1994: Two 16 oz. ribeyes, one lb. turkey breast (sliced thin), twelve strips of bacon, two large hamburgers with mayo, onion, and lettuce, two large baked potatoes with butter, sour cream, cheese, and chives, four slices of cheese or one-half pound of grated cheddar cheese, chef salad with blue cheese dressing, two ears of corn on the cob, one pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream, and four vanilla Cokes or Mr. Pibb. If the electric chair failed to turn Mr. Baker into worm food, I’m pretty sure that meal would have done the trick.
I think it only appropriate that almost all of these guys put meat on the menu. After all, there is an inextricable link between meat and death. Like it or not, if you want a steak, you’re taking part in the deliberate dispatching of a beef steer. Fried chicken? More death. Maybe on Death Row there’s a kind of “If I’m gonna go, I’m taking as many of you with me as I can,” mentality, but my guess is that the decision to order all those tacos and burgers is the chance to embrace life until the very end, even if that final bit of vitality comes at the expense of more than a few animals’ lives. It’s eerily paradoxical, when you think about it.
As for me, you’d probably be shocked to learn that my ultimate feast has nothing to do with mammals at all. No steak, no fried chicken, no cheeseburgers. Nope — if I’m headed to “Ole’ Sparky” in the morning, I want to indulge in a meal that brings me back to my roots, to my New Orleans upbringing: Three dozen raw and charbroiled Louisiana oysters (big ones, the kind you get in December, my birth month), five pounds of spicy boiled crawfish with corn on the cob and new potatoes, and lots of ice-cold Abita and Dixie beer. The good thing is, I get to enjoy this very menu every time I go home to visit my family, no murder necessary! Well, there is the small scale oyster and crawfish holocaust I inevitably incur upon my homecoming, but they haven’t declared that a criminal act yet, thank goodness.
[Scenes from the author's last supper: Raw oysters and Dixie beer at Casamento's, and hot boiled mudbugs, New Orleans-style. Good enough to die for.]
And for you? What would your last meal be? Better find out soon, if you haven’t yet considered it. Who knows when the Death Panel’s bell will toll for thee?
More on these topics:
