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THE PALACE OF THE NAPALM EGG
a culinary misadventure...
Once upon a time, there lived a slovenly young bachelor, recently graduated from college and newly emancipated from the crushing clutches of an overprotective mother. Ignorant and indifferent to domestic trifles like hygiene, cooking, cleaning and the like, our hero (lets call him "Vic") lived in semi-squalor with a roommate of equivalent grossness (lets call him "not Vic").
One afternoon, Vic awoke from 14 hours of slumber, like a bear coming out of hibernation. He sniffed around for food and found a recently purchased carton of eggs in the dark recesses of the ancient refrigerator. At least he THOUGHT they were recently purchased. For all he knew, they could have dated back to the Pleistocene era. But i digress.
After removing three eggs and replacing the carton in his Frigidaire, Vic turned to face a sinkload of unwashed dishes and pans. In fact, the sink contained every single cooking utensil owned by both Vic and Not Vic. And so it had been for many days, growing into weeks. Also growing was a new lifeform at the bottom of the sink. The reek of sulfer emanating from the sink led Vic to the conclusion that their was a dark hellish creature living there, and so neither he nor Not Vic had the fortitude to confront such hellspawn.
They began to live solely on take out food.
But now, that particular afternoon in his Carroll Gardens apartment, hunger was gnawing at Vic's abdomen like a raging weasel. There was neither time nor currency for a call to the Hung Lo Noodle emporium.
Hunger drove Vic past his fear to confront the hellspawn living in the sink. He delicately lifted the topmost dish he could find, then raced with it to the bathroom to wash the decay and rot and stench off the dish's faded, chipped white glaze. When it approached a level of sanitation that was close enough for horseshoes and hand grenades, he returned with it to the kitchen.
Rather than face the sink again to find a pan, he decided on an alternate means of preparing the chicken embryos. He would put them in the microwave. He had made scrambled eggs in the microwave before and, though it was not his favorite style of preparation, it would suffice under the circumstances. But that day Vic did not favor a scramble, as he had neither milk nor cheese to properly thicken and flavor the eggs. Instead, he'd do them "sunny side up".
So Vic cracked the three eggs onto the recently sanitized plate and placed the gelatinous mass in the black box atop his kitchen counter. He set the time to "1 minute" and waited. Dressed only in his jockey shorts, he stood in the semi-darkness of the tomblike garden apartment, staring at the infernal machine, waiting for its "ding" with the anticipation of Pavlov's dog.
The ding sounded. Vic removed the plate only to discover that the "whites" were not yet white... the albumen was still just as viscuous, cloudy, and snotlike as it was a minute earlier. He placed it back in the box and set the timer for another minute. He stood, eager as before, waiting for the ding. It dinged again. The yellows of the eggs were starting to firm up, and the albumen was whitening a bit along the edges, but were still too snotty to consume... even for one with as little sense and with as damaged sensibilities as our hero. So the eggs were returned to the microwave for another minute. ding. and another minute. ding.
After 4 minutes, Vic had enough. He took the eggs out and was prepared to eat them, no matter their texture or appearance. They were certainly no longer dangerous, since 4 minutes of radiation was sufficient to kill the microorganisms in the egg and on the dish.
So Vic picked up the plate with a dish rag -- actually, with a dirty t-shirt stacked up in the corner with other dirty laundry that had been long abandoned -- and, standing in his kitchen ,dressed only in jockey shorts that had long ago turned gray by time and indiscriminate laundering, he touched the strangely quivering egg yolks with the last fork he could find...
... and it exploded.
The metal of the fork had pierced the membrane surrounding the yolk, which had become molten under the intense radiation to which it was subjected. and it exploded... exploded like a small sun, like a nuclear bomb... no, like a "dirty bomb". And the explosion set off the other 2 yolks. And the exploding egg yolk sprayed over Vic's bare chest and arms, and the concussion knocked him back against the wall, stunned.
He slid down the wall until he was sitting on his yolk-soaked jockeys, eyes wide in pain and horror. The lava-like yellow goo burned him like a toxic spill and yet he was unable to scrape it off, stuck as it was in his vast follicular forest of arm and chest hair. And he started to laugh.
He laughed like a howler monkey, unable to stop. The yolk burned, and he just continued to screech uncontrollably. He looked around the room and saw egg remants, the whitened albumen and hardened yolks, splashed across the canvas of his cabinetry like a Pollack. He laughed even harder.
And why? Well, aside from the shocking, unexpected ridiculousness of the situation, there was something about Not Vic that he knew and you do not. Not Vic was a disgusting fellow, to be sure, with as high a tolerance for filth and degradation as Vic, in all ways but one...
Not Vic was made sick to his stomach by the sight of certain things. Mayonaise, for one. But there was no mayo around, so Not Vic was safe. But there was alot of....
Suddenly, at that very moment, Not Vic returned to the apartment, having completed his afternoon activities. He walked in and saw Vic's figure lying prone on the kitchen floor, in his underwear, laughing hysterically. Not Vic, concerned for his friend, walked into the room and faced... his worst nightmare.
Now, whether it was the sulfurous fumes from the sink, or the sight of gooey egg droppings everywhere, or the vision of Vic, covered in egg, laughing and nearly naked on the kitchen floor, that finally set him off, i cannot tell. But Not Vic errupted in a vomitous stream of beer and burritos that followed him into the bathroom, a step too late.
And, knowing that THAT would be his response should he find Vic in that state caused him to laugh uncontrollably, which prevented him from cleaning it up in time to prevent the armageddon to follow.
They took turns mopping, vomiting, and then showering, the rest of that evening.
And they never spoke of it again.
until now.
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