Barbecue
By H.G. Miller
As far as Jeremy was concerned, the chicken had it coming. She'd probably been
mouthing off to all of her chicken friends about how she had the best tail
feathers in the coop, or ate the most chicken feed in the lot, or some such
thing. In Jeremy's eyes, the chicken was a selfish, rude and altogether
unpleasant creature, and the world should be glad to be rid of her.
Unfortunately, the vegan chick that Jeremy's friend, David, had brought to the
barbecue held different beliefs.
“You know, that used to be a living, breathing
individual
.” She stressed the
word individual, as if that's what made this particular chicken so much better
than the rest.
“Yeah,” Jeremy replied.
“So, doesn't it bother you that it used to be alive?”
“Not really.” He flipped the individual over on the grill and enjoyed for
a brief moment the simplistic dissonance of the fat popping in the flames of the
charcoal briquettes. “If it came back to life and started talking, that might
freak me
out.”
Jeremy thought that would be pretty funny, actually. A chicken coming to life
and speaking to him in a proper British accent: “Excuse me. This grill is
frightfully hot. Do you suppose I could be removed, or perhaps flipped over.
I'm quite certain my back side is done.”
Jeremy felt for sure that the funniest part of this scenario was the British
accent of the chicken, but since the idea of it most likely originated from his
viewing of the movie Chicken Run, he couldn't take much credit, so he decided
not to share his talking chicken bit with the rest of the barbecue attendees.
“I think a lot of what's wrong with our society can be traced back to our
insatiable need to gnaw on the charred flesh of animals which we feel in some
way superior to just because we managed to develop opposable thumbs.”
Damn, was she still talking?
Jeremy began to think of some polite way to shift the conversation away from
his cooking of the chicken - which he was only making for Michelle anyway,
since she wouldn't eat red meat because of some stupid diet she had read about
in Cosmo or Marie Claire or some other magazine that existed only to make it
that much harder to throw a good-old-fashioned barbecue.
And, did he even want to know what David's vegan friend thought about the herd
of slaughtered cattle he had ready to go in the kitchen? What was she doing
here, anyway? It's a frickin' barbecue! Who invites a vegan to a barbecue?
“David,” Jeremy asked once the girl had decided to express her disgust by
moving away from the grilling area, “why is she here?”
“She's an, um… new friend,” was David's shaky reply.
Behind him, Matt made an 'O' with one hand and proceeded to thrust the index
finger of his other hand through it, thus insinuating that the girl was
somebody David was currently having sex with, or more likely that he was trying
quite hard to have sex with her in the near future (in which case, bringing her
to the barbecue further exemplified the lack of common sense thinking that had
kept David from escaping his meager post in life as sub-salary,
middle-management
executive for the local department store).
“That's quite animalistic,” Jeremy thought to himself as he flipped the
offending chicken over again on the grill.
Perhaps he could discuss this with the girl, if she found the driving
principles of
basic animal living so fascinating. Hell, it was basically the only reason he
was bothering with this single chicken in the first place.
“Michelle!” he shouted. “You're bird is ready to go.”