The Manwich Mystery
It’s important to know where food comes from.
No, I’m not talking about political stuff like what kind of cushy life your chicken had or didn’t have before he ended up a strip of hot carcass on your dinner plate. Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting a good life for dead meat, of course. But I’m not interested in creating backstory for anything that will eventually take a tour of my intestines.
I mean literally to trace where the food comes from immediately before it’s put on the plate. Was it dropped on the kitchen floor and then quickly skirted back on the plate before it reached the table? Is what appears to be cracked pepper really just fragments of squashed cockroach that stuck to the honey glaze marinade when the food was dropped? Or worse, was the damn thing cooked enough in the first place?
People die every year from under-cooked meat. Some don’t just get sick or die–they go crazy. Speaking as someone who witnessed how awful madness can be, personally, I’d rather die a painful death than lose my mind. Some of the symptoms of mad cow disease are muscle spasms, trouble walking and coordinating movements, and memory loss. I already find myself with terrible hand-eye coordination–so bad I can’t parallel park without changing the shape of the cars and telephone poles around me. And memory? Memory gets me in trouble each and every day.
Just tonight, Drew and I were late to dinner because I couldn’t find my keys. I can never find my keys. Once Drew bought me a key chain device that beeped when you whistled for it. But that didn’t work because at the time I had a professor whose high pitch voice set the thing off, even as it lay buried at the bottom of my backpack. I got rid of it after that.
Finally, at our favorite tapas place tonight, Drew asked, “Why won’t you have a meatball?”
I looked at him like he was crazy. He, too, has trouble with memory. For a moment I wondered if the meatballs were tainted.
“You know I never eat those things.”
“I forget. You’re always changing your mind.”
It’s true. If the dish looks good, all my fears and rules about meat are quickly forgotten. But tonight I stuck with them and chastised him for not remembering that I never eat meat at restaurants.
“But you don’t cook meat either,” he pointed out.
Right again. The only things I cook are two-minute noodles and cans of soup. And I’m certainly not a vegetarian. Not anymore. But where did I eat meat? Losing this argument was really beginning to disturb me. It was time to pull out the big guns.
“Yeah? What about the Manwich?”
This terminated all discussion of meat-cooking. Manwich is the great mystery of our relationship.
For the rest of the evening we relived the night it happened. A few weeks ago, Drew cleaned out our kitchen cabinet while I sat on the couch and wrote bad poetry. There was a can of tomatoes I once bought to make pasta sauce “from scratch.” There were cans of Amy’s Organic Vegetable Soup, and in the back of the cupboard, rim stuck to the paisley lining, was a can of Manwich.
“What about this Manwich?” Drew had asked me that night.
I laughed. I thought it was one of his novelties, like his oversized can of Spam–which he just informed me is not a novelty. He actually ate its contents and apparently does this regularly.
When I realized the Manwich was no joke, I asked, “It’s not yours?”
“No. I thought it was yours.”
This was the moment every couple dreads. It’s the moment when the abyss of suspicion and dread opens up between you. Anything is possible. Questions flood your mind, like, is he really cheating on me with some Sloppy-Joe-making-hussy? How dare she lay claim to my man by leaving behind a can of Manwich? And if she didn’t do it, does this mean we have some kind of twisted stalker who sneaks into our apartment leaving cryptic cans of meat? And if so, does this mean we will become dead meat?
“Wait a minute,” he said, “I remember moving this can from your old apartment.”
Before moving into our humble abode, I lived half a block away in a studio. Four years ago, I had just moved to San Francisco, and not long after that, Drew and I practicallly lived together in the tiny place. It all happened so quickly–moving here from New York, starting my new job as a documentary film producer, falling madly in love. It was quite possible that there had been a can in the studio apartment before I moved in. God knows I didn’t spend enough time in the kitchen to actually investigate the contents of the cupboards.
“I clearly remember it now. At the time I thought it was strange that you, a then-vegetarian, would have a can of Manwich in your cupboard–but hey, who am I to judge? I just packed it up and moved it here.”
I believed him. And it reminded me of why I fell in love with him in the first place. He really wouldn’t judge someone the way I would. So what if a vegetarian is harboring a can of Manwich? It’s her choice. This is also why I moved to this city–for its tolerance and nonjudgmental stance on absolutely everything–even Manwich.
But none of this–the discovery of the Manwich or reliving the discovery–solves the mystery of how it got into our home in the first place. Even if it came from the studio apartment and sat in our one-bedroom for over three years, why did someone leave the can of Manwich in the cupboard? Who is this person? Was it an act of kindness or a cryptic threat? Where did the Manwich come from exactly?
We might never know. The mystery of the Manwich might plague me for the rest of my life–if I can remember it, that is.
