CHICAGO AIN’T THE EAST COAST

Do You Weep When You Eat?

Can you milk a lobster?

Are lobster rolls any good? I ask you, reader. Someone in Maine just slammed down their lobster roll and hmphed at my question. They didn’t even know they could hmph.

Hmphings for old people named Beatrice or Archie! They yelled at the person sitting next to them at the lobster bar — pronounced baa, as in baa baa black sheep.

Whata the hell’are ya goin’ on about? The person next to them asked, sucking the lobster meat out of its buttery claw, like a Hoover discovering a banana sticker on a shag rug.

That was my Midwestern attempt at an East Coast accent. I’m not mocking. I’m jealous of people with accents. My Midwestern accent is as bland as licking a phonebook without any butter or salt. My accent is flat, man. As flat as our topography if you take out the hills and the potholes.

So I ask you, reader. Is a lobster roll merely a vessel for butter? Like an artichoke or a corn cob? I honestly have no idea if I have been eating genuine lobster rolls all these years. I’m in the Midwest, but you got that already. I don’t need to stab you in the eye with a lobster cracking tool to make my point, do I?

My fear is I might have been chomping down on some random farm fish or a knock-off Gucci purse saturated in butter and mayo all these years.

How could I have known? I hadn’t eaten Maine lobster until a couple days ago.

Why do I care? You’re probably wondering. Don’t I know that the world is burning down? Don’t I have anything better to do than ponder a fish sandwich? Is it fish? I don’t know. Is lobster a fish or is it a mammal?

Can I get lobster milk out of a lobster’s teets? How many breasts does a lobster have?

That’s how clueless I am about lobsters. Imagine how little I know about their rolls. This is a cry for help. You are listening to the woes of a woman whose Holy Grail was a lobster roll until two days ago.

I have always told myself when I ordered a lobster roll in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio, that this was what a lobster roll tasted like. Every time I ordered one, I paid a minimum of $22 for a sandwich that fit in my hand. I didn’t complain about its tininess because lobster was fancy.

I told myself lobster fisherpeoples led difficult lives. I was willing to pay the price for their dangerous fishing adventures which brought me such joy-of- sandwich.

All was going well with me and my lobster roll until I ended up in Maine, visiting a friend.

My friend took me out for lobster and I wept. This is lobster? I asked her, stuffing my mouth with the tender meat. Before she could answer, things got crazy. The sky turned a reddish-orange hue.

I heard a giant clicking sound coming from the sea. The world around me became blurry like a Zoom filter when you don’t want to clean your house. Everything disappeared and the Lobster Queen appeared, floating above our booth.

Beneath her ill-fitting Burger Kingesque crown, she spoke to me through her crimson claws, like they were her mouths. I thought lobsters had actual mouths, but maybe they don’t talk through those. I don’t know.

She came from the great-beyond-below, she said. She’d left a Bottomfeeders Anonymous meeting just for me. While listening to another speaker, she heard about someone who had only experienced lobster rolls in the Midwest. She was so shocked by that, she fell off of her anemone.

She heard my tale from a carp who’d had a rusty can relapse. The carp had just arrived in town beneath a ship’s voracious current. The carp had been so rust-drunk, he couldn’t tell the Lobster Queen how he’d discovered my sad story.

The Lobster Queen couldn’t tell me who the carp was because of the anonymity.

The Queen was so saddened by my tale, it reminded her someone always had it worse. She had to meet me. Upon seeing my tears at my delicious authentic lobster roll, the Queen said —

Jesus! Mother of Jaws. You were eating lobster in the Midwest? That’s disgusting. Blech. I think I just threw up in my shell.

I cried now for my lost funds. How many $22 sandwiches had I pretended were lobster? I wept harder, but this time for my stomach. I could have bought four Italian sausages with extra grilled onions for the price of that faux lobster roll. I did the math and it was confusing.

What does Midwestern lobster taste like? The Lobster Queen persisted with genuine curiosity but also rubbing lemon juice and cajun salt in my wounds.

Butter? Mayo? I guessed. I felt ashamed. I had no idea what lobster tasted like until today. How could I describe all those years of putting that shmutzy blando buttery mayo between my lips?

She clicked her claws and told me, You were merely noshing mindlessly, chewing on a bland bottomfeeder bedazzled by butter and slathered in mayo, but you’re okay. I’m here now.

And she was delicious, especially when I dipped her in butter and slathered her in mayo. She’s the real deal.

Thank you Andrew Rodwin and BOF for your lovely editing chops.

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