Ven Don't

I fancy myself an adventurous eater, and aside from super-spicy food, or the deepest of deep fried, I'm down to try just about anything. Alternately, my mother has always been somewhat of a conservative diner, passing on all things raw or tentacled (understandable), and warning quite often of the dangers of the dive restaurant. Avoidance of the cheapy eateries is a strategy I just can't abide by in New York City, as it would eliminate about 70 percent of the best dumplings, burgers and ethnic delicacies in town, and while scarfing down shumai in a Chinatown basement I occasionally congratulate myself on my well-rewarded rebelliousness. This shit is amazing! Mom doesn't know everything, now does she.

Street vendors have always been another big "no no" for Mama Jones. Pretzels, yes, but street meat, no way. I ate my first vendor hot dog at a cart in Times Square in the five minutes I had to kill between two New Yorker Festival events last fall. I vaguely remember spitting out a tiny pearl of what may have been plastic (or probably just congealed pig intestine), but aside from that, I remember tearing into that bun and feeling so alive. Just a New Yorker eating a New York hot dog. I've probably eaten street dogs about three or four times since, always with confidence that my mother's warnings of cart food illness were an exaggeration. Until it hit me.

Mom and pops came into the city yesterday afternoon to run a few errands and swung by my apartment to pick me up on the way. We drove down Fifth Avenue into midtown, the streets lined with smoking vendor carts that stirred a craving within me.

"Yes. " I thought. "I'm going to eat something from a cart, in front of my mother, right now. I will prove it can be done."

We parked the car but mom separated from pops and I on our way to get the grub from a lonely cart on Madison. I ordered mom's requisite hot pretzel, "and one hot dog please." My father's eyes lit up. He's the man who taught me how to chow down. He's the man who eats the fried shrimp heads - eyes intact - that come with his ama ebi sushi. The man who braved Woodstock-esque festival, Watkins Glenn, with only cans of cured oysters to keep him alive. The man is not afraid of any food item on the planet. And standing there ordering that little log of unidentifiable "beef" parts from the Pakistani vendor, I could see a gleam of sly pride in his eye.

I held mom's pretzel with one hand and watched the vendor flip open the lid of a metal compartment housing about fifteen tan links, floating in water. I thought about my friend Caroline's warning:

"I've seen the place where they keep all the carts at night. It's filthy. There are rats and roaches crawling all around. They never clean the carts."

Fuck that. I was starving.

The vendor dipped his tongs in the water, clamping down on one of the skinny dogs.

"No, the big one!" my father instructed.

"That's a sausage," the vendor told my father.

"Yeah, sure, that's what she wants," dad replied.

Umm, sure. A sausage. From a street vendor. A sausage that looks like a giant hot dog. Can't be any WORSE than a hot dog, right? I bit into the mustard-covered meat. A hot dog with a kick. Not terrible, but nothing I'd willingly buy again. Ravenous, I tucked the sausage away in under a minute, following with a bit of mom's pretzel and some Diet Peach Snapple to normalize my palette. Okay, feeling great.

Fast forward six hours. Errands have been run. A massive Italian dinner of beef carpaccio and tortellini has been consumed. I am curled on my bed in the fetal position and I think I might die. I call Caroline.

"I ate street meat today, and now I think I might die. I just thought I'd tell you so if I call out sick tomorrow, you can vouch for the fact that I am, in fact, dying of food poisoning."

"Awww, Stace," Caroline chuckles. "Did I ever tell you about the time I saw where they keep the car..."

"Yes, yes," I interrupt. "I should have known better, but whatever, what's done is done, and now I feel like..."

Belch.

"Gotta call you back Car."

And then the puke.

And then more puke.

It's midnight and I call my mother. She's sleeping. I ask her if she or my father was feeling sick from dinner and she answers that they aren't. I tell her I just vomited and that I think I have food poisoning.

"The fucking sausage," she says.

"Maybe, " I answer, "but maybe not. It could have just been the sheer volume of food I ate today."

"No way Stacey, that shit is poison! What have I told you about eating meat from the vendors. Pretzels, okay. Chestnuts, okay. But the street meat, that shit will kill you."

Now I want to die because not only is vendor sausage is wreaking havoc on my insides, but I know I will never hear the end of this vendor banter from my mother.

This morning I wake up feeling sick and call out of work. Then I call mom. She's in the office chatting away with the other ladies and asks me how I'm feeling. I tell her I'm feeling better and one of the girls in the office asks my mother what's wrong.

"My daughter ate a sausage from a street vendor yesterday," mom answers in obvious disgust. I can hear the ladies groaning, their matching squished up noses flashing across my brain. I feel my temper start to rise as my mother returns to the phone and begins yet another lecture on the dangers of the vendor hot dog.

I decide then and there that when mom is too old to care I will feed her nothing but street meat.

But regarding the more immediate future, I plan to stay away from the carts for a while. Until the tempting vapors of unidentifiable steamed meat reel me in once again.