NAKED BRINE

Once upon a time, I made a valiant attempt at reading William Burrough’s incomprehensible book, Naked Lunch. All I recall is that it had nothing to do with being naked or eating lunch.

Now, if you want a saga of naked breakfast that even the most simplistic mind can understand, you need to read my pathetic story:

Growing up a Litvak, the heresy of eating sweet and sour together was akin to a sandwich of liverwurst and cheese. Sweet-and-sour, we were taught, was the province of “Polnische Juden,” who were of lesser couth than we Lithuanians.

To signify that I am now divorced from culinary prejudice, I soak any foodstuff in a sweet-sour brine of sugar and vinegar or any other ingredients that meld sweet with piquant: cucumbers, cabbage, beets, peppers, tongue, herring, salmon, you name it.

Pickling vegetables and fish do not smell like roses. Linda, who does, insists that I relegate my pickling to the garage, where their fumes mingle with the others. To obtain the full effect of the brine, they must be turned daily.

Now I will tell you the embarrassing truth. I prefer to walk around the house naked. I make the bed, clean up yesterday’s newspapers, make the coffee and visit the garage to stir my pickling brine. I typically perform my naked stirring dance while Linda is out exercising.

One morning, I was busily turning my herring. Linda would not be home for another 15 minutes. A dreadful miscalculation. Just as I stood full-frontal in my naked, corpulent glory, the garage door rumbled open for all the neighbors to behold.

What would you do? I grabbed the ladle and scrambled up the steps. I tripped, all 260 pounds of me, and fell forward, dripping pickling juices.

The aftermath? A huge hematoma on my head, a bloody nose, scraped arms, 20 visits to the chiropractor, sciatica. And of course, Linda bursting with schadenfreude, “Didn’t I tell you to get dressed?”

The worse admonition, though, boomed down from God: “Who told thou that thou wast naked?” He bellowed. “Why don’t you keep a dispenser of fig leaves next to the door? All this and you dare call yourself a Litvak?”