When I was in Vermont recently, while hanging out with friends, I was introduced to the glory of the fried bologna and cheese sandwich. Sitting around, drinking beers and getting stoned, my friend cooked up some serious white trash delicacy for myself and an aged Tibetan acquaintance. Neither of us, he being from Tibet and I being from the tribe of the white buffalo, had ever had nor considered frying bologna with cheese. In fact, I consider myself quite the hardcore food snob. I’m not the type to eat something so base as bologna, much less look at it without washing my eyes for having dirtied them and reciting fifteen Hail Marys as penance for sins committed against my digestive system.

It came as a total surprise when after my first bite, I found myself transported to places only leprechauns, unicorns and those that live in trailers know of. My taste buds jumped up and out of my mouth, sniffed some gasoline out of a paper bag, slapped their bitch around and slept it off in the county lockup. It was that good. Greasy fingered and covered in crumbs, I looked over to my Tibetan acquaintance to find him clucking and cooing over his lunch in much the same, albeit more verbal manner as mine. Fried bologna and cheese is the universal connector, the philosophic mercury of lunchtime communication. I looked over at him and we bonded over our greasy, meat smeared cheesy goodness, “Yeah motherfucker!“, said I.

“Yes, yes, yes, this is very good. This is a very handsome sandwich. Winter, spring, summer, fall. Very delicious.” said he. I took that statement to be roughly translated to something along the lines of “Dude, this shit is the bomb! Seriously, it was so good I just blew a load in my tighty-whiteys”.

While language, race and culture may separate us, the glory of fried processed cheese and meat binds us together like brothers. Cheesy meat brothers, if you will. I would give my life for this man, unless of course, he stood between me and a fried B&C sandwich. That would be the end of him, with extreme fucking prejudice.

Since returning to New York City, I have been haunted by this meaty memory. The ghosts of it’s cheesy tendrils tug at my taste buds and whisper desperate yearnings in my ears with a high, chipmunk like tone that cannot be ignored nor denied. The glorious white buffalo in me must be fed!

So, upon leaving work today, I made my way to the Whole Foods in Union Square. A man on a mission was I and that mission was processed meat and dairy product. I bought some organic, uncured beef bologna, expensive cheddar cheese and organic whole wheat bread. I figured I’d keep one foot in the trailer park and the other in the co-op. I headed home and fired up the frying pan.

After a quick call to my buddy in Vermont, I realized that I’d neglected to include one of the most important ingredients. The glue that binds the tribe of the white buffalo together. Mayonnaise, motherfucker. After much swearing, I ended up substituting the pale elixir of suburbia with some decent Dijon mustard. I put it all together with some butter, set off a fire alarm or two, cracked a damn pricey and fucking good bottle of German riesling and enjoyed the artery clogging fruits of my labor.

The result, while delicious, was no where near the heart-stopping, orgasmic joy that I partook of that Saturday afternoon in Winooski, Vermont. While I will never forget it, I vow to fight ever onward, frying sandwich after sandwich until I have reached that perfection. Life is only as good as the lunch you are about to eat.

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