It is never too late for a revelation

The Column: 08.30.24

I was in a flesh-eating mood last Sunday and so I and two other cannibals headed for a steakhouse in Midtown Manhattan –– my beloved, the vegetarian, was up in Connecticut so we were free from moral censure –– and we found a joint on West 52^nd with tables out on the sidewalk so we sat there.

The carnivore section of the menu was extensive and the prices were stunning. The Japanese Wagyu steaks cost more than my quarterly tuition at the University of Minnesota back in 1961. I am often shocked by prices these days –– Tootsie Rolls were penny candy when I was a kid and now you pay $72.99 for a box of 36 –– but I stifle my shock at high prices, not wanting to seem out of touch or sound like a cheapskate. So I bit my tongue and ordered the 10 oz. Wagyu medium-rare, meat from highly sensitive cattle who are given emotional therapy and massaged daily and fed kale and arugula and mushrooms and are not slaughtered but anesthetized.

It was a lovely summer evening, watching the people passing by. This is the beauty of outdoor dining in New York: the constant floor show. Here, individuality is allowed to blossom fully, even extravagantly. You watch harmless crazy people, tattooed ladies, kids who are creating a gender all their own, elderly adolescent men like Donald Trump, it’s a show.

My steak arrived and I hated it. It was tender to the point of being gelatinous. It was rare, not medium rare. It wasn’t chewy, as steak should be. It was sort of like eating raw liver. But when the waiter came by to ask if everything was okay, I said, not wanting to be a complainer or seem unworthy of this great delicacy, “It’s wonderful.” Other Midwesterners have this same problem. Hauled to the gallows to be hanged for a crime we didn’t commit, asked by the hangman if the noose is too tight, we’d say, “It’s just fine. Very comfortable. And if you don’t mind, please don’t offer me a last cigarette, I quit smoking years ago.” Self-advocacy was not taught in the Anoka, Minnesota, public schools back in my day. We were taught to be grateful for what we had.

I paid for the dinner, a sum of money I associate with first-class round-trip airfare between New York and L.A., and I went home, fell into bed, woke around 3 a.m. feeling an urgent need for Alka-Seltzer. I took two tablets, which helped. Around six, I took two more. I felt queasy most of Monday, was okay by Tuesday.

A true New Yorker would’ve rejected the steak. He would’ve raised his voice to the restaurant’s manager. He might’ve posted devastating reviews of the restaurant using the phrase “food poisoning.” Did I complain? Are you kidding? Who do you think I am?

I am a Minnesotan and I take this experience as a lesson. BE WHO YOU ARE, NOT WHO YOU AREN’T. I have rolled into many a drive-up window under golden arches and ordered a double quarter-pounder and a medium vanilla shake and was perfectly happy with it. Why ask for more? I used to live in a mansion in St. Paul once owned by a lumber baron; now my sweetie and I live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. It suits us. The mansion obligated us to hold big parties and me to wander through the crowd being charming, but I am a recovering fundamentalist and charm is a language I’m not fluent in.

On Tuesday, I went to LaGuardia to fly home to Minnesota and standing outside Terminal C, I had an illuminating moment. Back in college, I was an ambitious guy, wanted to be a writer, a great writer like Liebling and Wodehouse and Perelman, meanwhile I put myself through school working as a parking lot attendant, handling the 8 a.m. rush, directing cars to park in double straight lines, yelling at the independent-minded, bending drivers to my imperious will to achieve maximum efficiency, and as I watched the young guys in yellow vests directing drop-offs at Terminal C, I realized that maybe traffic control was my true vocation. I was good at it. I really was.

I don’t know what traffic controllers at LaGuardia earn but my guess is that I wouldn’t be paying round-trip first-class airfare for a piece of meat, I’d be riding the subway out to Rockaway and stop at a burger joint and get me a double quarter-pounder and that’d be just fine by me.

Come see A Prairie Home Companion during its 50th anniversary tour, with stops this fall in Minnesota, North Dakota and Georgia.

CLICK HERE for tickets!