dutifully with a fashion retailer spatula replaced each Father’s Day. Julys came and went and the meat from his grill tasted considerably worse, stewing amidst the charcoal of all the cuts and chops laid down in sacrifice before. No one ever said anything because it was never about the taste, was it? This was ceremony.
Pyrolysis, over time, creates enough activated carbon that, when coupled with the particular blend of acid rainwater that falls over his specific subdivision in his particular suburb of his metropolis, can create life. Listen, I don’t want to bore you with the inside baseball of what has been biochemically going on under the hood of his grill but there is a petri dish of civilization in there. A community of grill-beings. He chats with them on hot post-church afternoons. They don’t speak English and he doesn’t speak Grill-beingese, but they have klatches nevertheless. Telepathic understandings. It’s a colony in need of a god and he’s looking pretty good in his “Kiss the Cook” apron.
Check it out: this Sunday, live and in performance, he’s diving in. Permanently. He told me when we hauled our garbage to the curb Wednesday night. He’s gonna be king of the grill people. I live right next door and for five bucks I’ll let you stand on a milk crate and peer over the privacy fence when he plants his face next to the hot dogs. What a spectacle it will be! What a way to welcome summer.
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