JOHN MARIANI
FOR THE PAST few years, on my birthday, I’ve held a pig roast in the backyard, an event that affords me the company of a dozen good friends for whom the uniqueness of the enterprise is at least as enticing as the eating of the pig, which Charles Lamb, in his essay “A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,” called “animal manna.” It is not an intimate affair. Everyone pitches in, making drinks, fetching utensils, and the all-important standing around the grill that males have been doing for millennia, muttering questions like “What kinda wood you using?” “Think you better give it another basting?” and “When’s the damn thing gonna be done?”
The sight of even a baby pig—twenty pounds is good-sized—its head, tail, and trotters intact, eyes staring at you, lends the preliminaries of preparation a ritualistic cast. Then, as the pig browns and the smoke twirls and puffs from the spit, the aromas drive your appetite to a frenzy and you feel waves of emptiness in your gut. When the pig is done and everyone sits down to pluck morsels of creamy flesh, sweet fat-cuddled ribs, and crackling shards of mahogany-colored skin from the platter, dipping the meat in a sauce of puréed garlic, onion, and orange juice, some people swoon, others moan, and some sit in silence, just smiling and shaking their heads. There’s no question that people will eat too much, and no doubt that there will be pig left over. I dissuade people from taking any home, for tomorrow I’ll enjoy the meal all over again, just me and the pig and a glass of red wine. And I forget all about the fact that I’ve grown older by a year.
