In my opinion there are times when eating in public should be illegal. Eating citrus in any communal place is one of them. The scent of citrus automatically stimulates the saliva response, and I dislike involuntary impulses that have not been previously and mutually consented upon. Eating anything on the subway, including but not limited to egg salad, is another crime that should be severely punished. One sour morning commute, I had to watch as a man opened his plastic Tupperware and went down on a mess of egg whites, mayonnaise, yolk, vinegar, pickle juice, and misanthropy. I was incensed. I was so angry that the subway car and all its inhabitants became a strained red as if a lighting designer changed all the Lekolites for the theatrical effect. I was in a musical comedy version of hell and Patti LuPone-ing my way out of it.
I looked on in disgust until I said something. But did I, really? True, I uttered something. But I did not clearly say it. It was aggressive but still, in its way, pussy. But it was out there creating an energetic shift. I am not sorry I muttered my disapproval; I was sorry that I didn’t do it with banal detachment, which is how you win in life—a tactic I have continually tried and failed to learn. Or that I didn’t say it fully with a barbaric yawp, transmitting the intense discomfort that I felt within.
He eventually resealed the lid and put it away but the odor still lingered on the ripe train air for all of us to taste with our noses and eyes. Was he trying to disgust everyone? Was he limited in his sense of smell and texture? Some people are! Was he a pederast with an egg salad kink? The circle of thought always crept back to blaming myself for not being more assertive in my distaste but also knowing as a woman, I stood no chance. My ineptitude was the takeaway of this experience, and I wish I was the kind of person who could ignore egg salad being eaten on the N train, like a tourist or a Midwesterner.
Every time I get a craving for egg salad, it’s never as simple as just eating egg salad. I still see that man, smell that subway commute, think about the pre-pandemic world where unsightly things like that happened on a daily basis and are probably happening now as though the lock down never existed, even though the anxiety lingers in our yolks.
