"Shit, Ramin," I cajoled, "I live with you. You're American, plain and simple. You're as Hindu as Santa Claus. This is the land of McDonald's, not sacred cows. What happened to Mr. Live-for-adventure?"
"Colin," he said, "have you ever seen me eat a hamburger? There are some things you just can't do, you know? I know the word 'abomination' doesn't come up too often these days, but really, I can't go with you."
So there I was without my best friend, on the Strip, sidling through the pressing hordes of protesters, inching closer and closer to the neon marquee. Who'd have thought you'd ever see such an unlikely coalition? This place offends everyone! There were feminists, the moral majority, Hare Krishnas, Animal Rights Movement members, Priests, and Earth Firsters, all chanting "Go Home! Go Home!" with their arms linked in angry unity.
I patiently ducked under the crudely painted picket signs that blared in red letters: "Meat is Murder!" "Sacrilege!" "People are starving!" "Women are not Meat!" "Sinners repent!" I jostled past unwilling elbows and finally paid my twelve dollars to the harried ticketeer, amid a resounding chorus of boos and abusive epithets. I gazed up at the neon sign which proudly proclaimed to the city streets:
One of them was chatting coquettishly with a suited gent at her table, charming him with her theatrical drawl: "Well paint me yellah and slap my face with a catfish! Y'all are really with the Foreign Service? A diplomat? Why, we're right honored!"
At another table, I noticed a familiar head of dark curls with a yarmulke and pushed closer to get a better look. It was indeed an acquaintance of mine from my physics section. "Avram?" I asked. "What are you doing here?"
"Well," he deadpanned, "I haven't eaten dairy in six hours," and then flashed me a huge grin. I shook my head, smiled, and moved on.
I didn't see a free seat, so I headed up a spiral staircase to the bar overlooking the pit. The bartender was dressed in the same uniform as the servers, but she was wearing a little gold cross around her neck on a delicate chain. "So you're a Christian, right?" I asked. "Doesn't working here bother you in the slightest? The exploitation? The waste?"
"Honey," she replied, with a solemn snap of her gum, "I make thirty-five thou a year here just tending bar on weekends. I spend much more time with my kids than I could doing any other job, and I don't have to work on Sundays. Now teachers in the public schools, they're exploited! And as for the waste, if it bothers you, why don't you talk to Stompin' Roy about donating all that Alpo to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm or something?"
"Touché'," I laughed, and focused my attention over the thick, polished, brass railing to the riveting tableau of wrestlers in the pit. A spattered whiteboard announced "Freyja, Mistress of the North vs. Saucy Sally." The smooth-sided pit was sunken into the floor like a children's wading pool, and brimming with what must have been a thousand dollars worth of fresh, bloody, fatty meat in chunks and shreds. The two women were locked in a tense clinch, their bodies streaked slick with the fat and blood, their blonde coiffures matted and dripping.
The sound system blared "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights" by Meatloaf. It figures. As the girl in the song cried "Stop right there!" they suddenly broke apart. The taller wrestler whipped around behind her opponent, grabbed her ankles, and drew her up suddenly so that she fell face down in the grotesque morass. Eyes screwed shut, and spitting bits of the raw meat from her mouth, the toppled wrestler struggled vainly to brace her hands under the slippery meat, but she just kept sliding back onto her stomach.
A huge man in a ten-gallon hat, Stompin' Roy Dodd himself, strode to the edge of the meat pit and started counting to ten. The audience quickly joined in. The prostrate woman simply could not rise, and lowered her head in exaggerated, melodramatic defeat when the man reached ten. The victor released her and joyfully bounded up next to Stompin' Roy, making an absurd show of posing like a coy, giddy little girl, despite being imbrued, cap-a'-pie, with gore. "Hey out there, all you meat-packers! Let's hear a big hand for our favorite champeen, Saucy Sally!" bellowed Stompin' Roy.
Then I realized I knew her! This woman displaying her blood-stained body for these slavering hordes was my own lab partner! Those breasts all shiny with grease and blood were not those of some nameless strip rat, but of a medical student! I shoved my way through the crowd, down the stairs, right up to the edge of the pit, and tried to cover her with my jacket.
"Nadine!" I yelled over the hoots and catcalls of the amused audience. "What are you doing here? For God's sake, cover yourself!"
"Sit down, Colin," she hissed, "you're making a scene!"
"Making a scene? I'm making a scene? You're meat wrestling for these animals, and I'm making a scene? Why are you doing this?"
"Animals?" she retorted. "Looks like you paid your admission here too. And as to what I'm doing here, Bonny Prince Colin, some of us don't have rich fathers to hand us our tuition on a silver platter. I'm working my way through medical school and paying rent and car payments on two nights of work a week! On my own! That's what I'm doing here!"
"This is the evidence of your independence? Fucking look at yourself, Nadine! Love your outfit. It shows off your figure so well! Red is definitely your color!"
"Colin..."
"And those chic boots? Gucci, darling?"
"I'm warning you Colin..."
"And what's that Perfume? Eau de Abattoir?"
"Colin, sit down, I mean it..."
"And your new name. Saucy Sally. Actually, I don't know if it quite suits you. Why don't you change it to Hamburger Patti?"
"That's enough," she said in a low, menacing tone. She paced up to me and deliberately, almost gracefully, pushed me into the pit. The crowd roared. I could hear Stompin' Roy beginning the blow-by-blow of "the grudge match battle to the death between Saucy Sally and her old lover" as I scrambled to catch my balance in the greasy, fetid pit.
I tried to yell back "that's 'lab partner, fat boy,' but my stomach was lurching too queasily to say anything, much less anything clever. I looked down at my arm and saw minuscule drops of blood clinging to the hairs, and swayed uneasily.
Nadine taunted, "Out of your element, Rich Boy?" I made it back up as far as my knees, trying to quell my rising gorge, when she hurled a five pound ball of meat at my jaw. I fell backwards in shock and pain as Stompin' Roy said, "Uh-oh, looks like ole' Lover Boy ain't too fast on his feet." The audience answered him with gales of heavy laughter. Nadine let out a banshee shriek, leaped onto my chest and started jamming meat into my face, into my mouth. I choked and gagged, but she would not stop. As I slipped into unconsciousness, I wondered dimly how I'd explain myself to my mother if I made it to the hospital alive.
O, fresh ram's meat n' lard! I sin!
