You know I love you, really love you, if I let you see me eating bones. My poor husband has never said a word about it to me, what it’s like being married to a hyena who will barehand a chicken thigh, gnaw it almost to the marrow, leaving ragged edges where the cartilage once was. In deference, I do my best to avert my eyes from the flesh and gristle he leaves clinging to a leg, because I know how it feels when our dogs’ eyes bore into me as I put food into my mouth that they clearly wish was in each of theirs. He is tidy: knife, fork, and linen napkin, always. I do my best not to be actively gross, but more often than not, my utensils lie untouched at the side of my bowl. (The napkin has had a workout; I’m only so feral.)
He knew what he was getting into, at least in part. We met online 21 years ago this past January, and the site that connected us had a few fill-in-the-blank prompts, one of which was: ___ is sexy; ___ is sexier. His answer is lost to the digital void, but mine was this: Eating is sexy; eating with your hands is sexier. In many cultures, hands are the primary utensil, and so long as they’re clean, what’s the harm? I am perhaps aggressively demure, take great pains not to slop, and am extremely judicious about the company I’m in when I decide to eschew silverware. Save for the time a friend of a friend scolded me like a child when I picked up a rib at Peter Luger, the hands have never been the issue. (And I never ate with her again.)
It’s the bones, the cartilage, the tendon, the silver skin, the gristle, the fish head, the tail. It may be greed on my part or guilt over leaving a single edible scrap behind, but I think this may be my inheritance. Though my mother didn’t care to cook and didn’t have a tremendous curiosity about the world’s cuisines, she was a joyful, enthusiastic eater and I loved to watch her. She was unapologetic about her revelry in the nasty bits: the textural thrill of a burnt edge of a casserole, the crunch and fat gush of a chicken’s pope nose, the rich sludge of giblets in the crevices of a chicken carcass. Maybe these are the secret spoils of the person who labors in the kitchen — the scraps left to the help while others get the prime cuts. I like to think we’ve earned the best parts.
But I’d watch her gnaw the ends of chicken bones while the rest of us feasted on the dull tundra of breast. She never seemed to mind — the opposite, rather, and since happiness was a seldom state for her, I decided two things, consciously or not. I was never going to fight her for those parts, and I would have to explore this for myself someday. Now, in my own home, not only will I chew the end cap of a poultry femur, shove my pinky into the marrow well of a steak bone, and scrape the tail of a fish with my teeth like an artichoke leaf — I will put the spines and skeletons into the air fryer along with any remaining skin and crisp them until I can bite down without risking a trip to the dentist. I see your potato chips and Corn Nuts, and I raise you the compelling crunch of a chicken neck and fish skeleton.
I felt ashamed of this until I found my fellow bone people, catching their surreptitious nibbling or spying the hillock of remains on their plates. At dinners together, our friends and partners are tolerant, even if quietly appalled, and have in recent years proactively forked the Porterhouse bones onto our plates, gone about their own conversations as we nibbled tendons, and understood that the Dover sole spine would end up draped across the plate next to them. And we bone eaters have our own accords, negotiating politely for who will slurp out the snapper head or if someone needs it unsullied for stock.
It has been one of the great surprises of my life to find the people in front of whom I can be my most animal self. Those who partake are people I know have the same wild desire to suck every morsel of delight from a creature that’s lost its life in service of our sustenance. Those who don’t shame us or stand in our way, I especially treasure, because you sublimate your disgust in the face of our ferocious pleasure. I feel your love, and it’s bone-deep.
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