What it is, dear reader.  Today’s Word of the day is “triturate.”  Just saying the word summons memories of 10th-grade science classes I probably attended with a hangover from Bartles &James, trying to grind down some uncooperative substance in a mortar and pestle while wishing I could do the same to the pounding in my skull.  But I digress.  Today’s word is deceptively fancy for what it means:

Triturate (verb): 1) To crush, grind, or pulverize a substance into fine particles or powder, often for medicinal purposes.  2) Chew or grind (food) thoroughly.  Fancy word for smashing stuff to bits.
Comes from the Latin triturationem, which means rubbing or grinding, derived from tritura, the action of threshing corn.  Imagine some toga-clad Roman farmer grinding wheat into flour and muttering to himself, “Ah, triumphant trituration!”  Or not.  It’s your brain.

Well, here we go again…another weird event I don’t really want to be attending.  Mgmt gets free tickets for all sorts of shit, and then no one wants to go, so eventually, they say, “give the tickets to Jayson…he’ll go.”  Which is true, alas. 

Today’s weirdness is something called “Bayou by the Bay,” which is a bunch of New Orleans’/Cajun stuff (mostly food and music), brought to this purgatorially humid fairground, as if San Francisco didn’t have enough culture of its own and needed a bunch of live Zydeco from the swamplands.  Whatever…it’s free. 

After pre-gaming in the parking lot, I wanted to eat.  I wandered into the fairgrounds, the smell of deep-fried everything and the twang of accordion hitting me like a wall.  The air was thick, not just with the prenominated humidity but with the kind of indescribably energy that comes from people who are way too into crawfish.  We passed a guy in a sequined vest playing a washboard strapped to his chest, and I thought about returning to the parking lot for more strong drink. 

The food stalls were lined up with several species of southern weirdness.  Gumbo, jambalaya, po’boys, beignets – each on promising a little slice of Louisiana heaven.  I didn’t know what most of that shit was, so I made a beeline for the “Gator on a Stick” stand, because if I was going to commit to this experience, I might as well go all in.  Besides, I always enjoy eating animals who would otherwise be eating me. 

The guy behind the counter was a caricature of Cajun charm, complete with a straw hat and a thick accent I could barely understand.  Eventually he handed me three skewers of what I assumed was alligator meat, though it could’ve been anything, really.  It was grilled to a leathery brown and glistened with some kind of glaze that smelled vaguely of teriyaki. 

“Enjoy,” he said with a grin that suggested that he knew I wouldn’t. 

I found a picnic table under a sagging tent and took my first bite.  Or tried to. Dear God.  The texture was somewhere between chicken and rubber, leaning heavily toward the rubber end of the spectrum, and the flavor was mostly just the glaze.  I chewed.  And chewed.  And I chewed some more.  After a solid 15 minutes of attempted trituration of what was basically dinosaur meat, I realized I hadn’t actually made any progress…the gator seemed completely unaffected.  

The Zydeco band started up on the main stage, and crowd was eating it up – figuratively, of course, if they too were attempting to eat this rotten lizard meat.  People were dancing, clapping, and shouting happily at each other under a huge banner that said “Laissez les bon temps rouler!” which I assumed meant, “Let’s get sweaty and pretend this is fun.”  I ignored these people and kept chewing.  This was clearly no Cajun snack…this was a Sisyphean trial, a culinary gauntlet thrown down by some cruel, toothy deity.  My teeth gnashed, my temporomandibular joint screaming in protest, but the gator refused to submit.  Not a single fiber gave way, no matter how I chomped or cursed.  I imagined my saliva pooling uselessly, a pathetic attempt at softening what might as well have been vulcanized rubber. 

Two hours in, my mouth was a war zone, my pride a tattered flag.  But I didn’t quit.  Not because I’m noble, but because I’m too stubborn to let a dead lizard win.  The sun kept burning, and I kept chewing, chasing the faint hope that persistence might transmute this torture into triumph.  Spoiler: it didn’t.  But damn if I didn’t feel alive, locked in combat with that unyielding piece of prehistoric jerky, the world reduced to me, my teeth, and a fight I’d already lost. 

Eventually, I gave up.  Twenty-five dollars and two hours of my life, gone.  It lives on, though, in the part of my jaw that clicks now when I try to eat steak.  A little souvenir from the gator that refused to be ground down, bitten through, or tamed. 

There you have it, sexy reader. Triturate: grind it, crush it, make it submit—or, like me with that gator, learn to live with the ache. Now go forth and chew on something that fights back.

N.P.: “Rock Roll” – Executive Slacks