It was just a fun,informal list,scrawled in burger grease on a napkin at Greasy Joe's,with a dotted line down the bottom for me to sign in chip ketchup. There was another dotted line underneath for a witness signature,ideally a JP,but it wasn’t mandatory.
Rule 1:Lose The Clip-On Pants-Suspenders. It was a little fashion thing I was trying at the time,but she said it made me look like an elderly Tin-Pan Alley songwriter from the 1930s (which was actually the look I was going for,but I kept that to myself).
Rule 2:No More Weird Laugh.It was an unpleasant high-pitched EEEK EEEK laugh that sounded like I was choking on meat (unfortunately it was the only laugh I had,but that was OK,I’d just stop laughing altogether,no great loss).
Rule 3:Don’t Eat Raw Onions Or I Won’t Kiss You,Touch You,Or Sleep With You For 24 Hours. Happy to oblige. I told her I didn’t even like raw onions — they gave me bad bloating and I always wound up sitting on the toilet for ages.
She quickly scrawled down a fourth rule: Never Tell Me About What You Do On The Toilet. I agreed to all rules,signed on the dotted line,got a waitress to witness,and we were a couple.
Thirty years together and I’ve kept every rule because I’m a good man,an honest citizen,an upholder of the law,who likes to be slept with.
No pants-suspenders:I use a belt now,or walk around holding up my pants like a rodeo clown wearing a barrel.
No weird laugh:I’ve developed a new HRRR HRRRRR laugh,part Gilbert Gottfried,part emphysemic pirate,only slightly less unpleasant.
Definitely no raw onions:I always fry my onions hard,until they’re charred crispy cinders,enhancing meals with the delectable flavour of ash.
Then yesterday I was chopping an onion to cinder-fry in a Mexican bean-mix,and while I chopped,I was singingLa Cucaracha because I’m a culinary master of offensively stereotypical cookery.
And on the wide-mouthed ‘“aaaaaa” of “Cucarach-aaaaaa” a tiny fleck of raw onion flew off my knife,into my mouth. Instinctively I bit down on it,releasing a sweet/salty/bitter/sour/umami/rancid sensory-explosion on all 10,000 of my 10,000 tastebuds.
It burned the tongue,teared up the eyes,caused ammonia fumes to gush from the nostrils … man,it wasgooooood.
My brain went into some kind of oniony toxic shock because I suddenly remembered how my dad started gorging on raw onions when he reached his mid-50s - he ate them sliced,diced,even whole like a white sulphurous apple.
Nobody went near him,nobody touched him,mum refused to kiss him — he didn’t care. Raw onion was more important than familial affection or any form of human contact.
Now it was my turn:I too have reached The Age of The Raw Onion - an age in your mid-50s when you just don’t care any more.
I weighed up a mouth-kiss from a beautiful woman and a mouthful of chopped pungent acidic vegetable-bulb that will lead to several hours of gastrointestinal cramping,and I jammed an entire handful into my mouth.
And another handful. I can’t stop:my middle-aged body just seems to crave those mysterious essential breath-reeking human-shunning raw onion nutrients. And the chronic bloating holds up my pants without the need for a belt or hands,hrrrr hrrrrrr.
Danny Katz is a Melbourne humourist.