Fear, Loathing, and BBQ in Alabama

One Rib Over The Line, Sweet Jesus...

It’s smoky here in Los Angeles. A thin layer of black soot covers my windshield and the air tastes like campfire. This is my second scary fire experience — when I was in middle school, we got a week off school (“fire week!”), and I remember stepping outside and seeing the blood orange sun and baleful black clouds and white ash raining from the sky. An image of Hell. Now, today, I’m spending my time inside, doors and windows closed, soothing myself with baths and a quart of Moose Tracks ice cream. Cooped up. Bags packed and an ever-present eye on the fire-tracking app. And now it’s time to write. There’s not much I can say about the fires — the destruction and scale of loss across the city is just impossible to wrap your head around. As I sat down to write something, the smoke and the restlessness and the days spent inside reminded me of an essay I wrote a couple years ago, about my last extended period of seclusion and anxiety. You can find that below, and I’ll use the extra time to… well, perhaps I’ll take another bath.

In the spring of 2020, fresh off a Dantean breakup (feels necessary to clarify here that I have not read Dante but I think I get the gist), I found my self-esteem, -image, and -conception corroded, and myself isolating for several months in my mother’s detached backyard studio. I was crying so often that my mom set me up with a therapist (thanks, Mom) who mostly said things like “it’s always darkest before the dawn,” and referred me to self-compassion podcasts. Still, somehow, therapy helped.

But in the darkest moments of my anxiety-depression, I developed what they call in the business: “intrusive thoughts.” Unable to sleep, I’d lay awake cycling through feelings of regret and shame, and these thoughts would bring up violent images in my mind's eye. It was a sort of crime-and-punishment call and response — I’d have the thought “I’m a bad person” followed by the image of knives stabbing into my flesh. Soon the intrusive thoughts became more elaborate, and a spiral of self-criticism would be accompanied by detailed images of myself being butchered and broken down like a dead animal. The images weren’t gory; they were technical, like an educational whole-hog butchery video — my shoulders cleaved off at the joint, back flaps peeled off of ribs with swift slices, hind legs scraped from hip bones.

That summer, I moved my sorry ass back to Brooklyn. But to my surprise, it turns out that being depressed in a big city can actually be an incredibly lonely experience. So, a few months later and waist deep in a quarter-life crisis (if I lived to be 120), I decided to buy myself a car and hit the road. I didn’t buy a Mustang or a Lotus Elise (though I did have a poster of the latter in my childhood room next to my poster of Anna Kournikova); I bought a 1985 Dodge Van, oxblood red with an ash-gray stripe, shaky on the highway, with a loose steering wheel and a speedometer that jiggled and bounced so much it was hard to tell what speed you were actually going. I named her “Poot, ” and I loved her very much.

My first picture with my 1985 Dodge B150, Poot.

Before I could leave and search for my soul, I had to make Poot cozy. So, I took out the two rows of passenger bench-seats, and got to work building myself a bed. I put together a simple but sturdy frame out of cheap wood, and cut a spare memory-foam mattress from the apartment I was renting down to size with a sharp bread knife. Foam is not bread, I found out, and it took me about four messy hours to remove the crust and slice the mattress in half, width-wise, like a hamburger bun. But for just under $60 and a few days of work, I had a bed that fit flush sideways inside the cab of the van, and was pretty damn comfortable (for anyone no taller than 5’7.5”). Finally, I fashioned some incredibly janky curtains out of old tablecloths, PVC pipes, and Velcro. With that, she was road-trip-ready.

Some highlights from the cozification of Poot.

And so, on December 1st, 2020, just as a chill was starting to settle on New York City, I set out on a four month, 20,000 mile, self-guided regional food tour of America in my temporary home on wheels. I was going back to my hometown of San Diego, and decided on a southern route, as the north of the country was frozen and the middle of the country was cold enough to avoid and not interesting enough (to me, at the time) to entice. After researching the food of the South, it became clear that the first half of my trip would have to be devoted to an amateur study of barbeque, its regions, sauces, and sides. I learned that there were four main barbeque regions in America — the Carolinas, Memphis, Texas, and Kansas City — and realized I’d barely eaten any of them in the states that they hail from. I’d be able to sample at least two on this trip and, with the goal of collecting as many data points as possible on the platonic ideal of these styles, I was determined to eat as much slow-cooked meat as I had to, no matter the cost to my cholesterol.

As it turned out, my trip ended up taking me far beyond those main barbeque regions. After zig-zagging my way through a half dozen whole-hog roasteries in the Carolinas, I’d eaten about just as much pulled and chopped pork as I need to in this lifetime. By the time I reached Georgia, I was glad to sample its succulent mustard-sauced ribs, as well as the finest peach hand pie I've ever had (hot tender bubbly crust hiding molten lava canned peach pleasure goo). Mind now open to other types of barbeque, I arrived in Alabama in search of its famous White Sauce, a vinegar-licked, mayo-based barbeque dressing I’d only read about.

At Saw's BBQ in Birmingham, I ordered a ½ smoked chicken with white sauce, and for my two sides, deviled eggs and braised collards. The bird arrived with skin as brown as leather, rendered to the thickness of plastic wrap and smudged heavily in spots with a dark, thick sludge of unidentifiable herbs and spices. Beneath the snappy, wood-smoked skin, the meat was pinker than I’d ever seen cooked chicken; it wasn’t underdone, but so slowly bathed in smoke that the soft flesh was lightly dyed by the gentle heat. And oh, the meat! So tender and moist, and doused in generous squirts and slathers of the destination sauce: a malted-milk colored, thick mayo dressing punched with vinegar and flecked with large chunks of black pepper. Rich, certainly, but drinkable like a Go-Gurt, thanks to its high acidity and admirable seasoning. Sweet baby god, who told chicken it could be like this? This was easily the best smoked bird I’d ever had. I picked the bones clean and snarfed the two deviled eggs and the collards. After buying a souvenir bottle of The Sauce to-go, I got back on the road.

The half smoked chicken at Saw's.

Needless to say, at this point I wasn’t anywhere near hungry, but after looking at my map, the only thing I had marked down was another barbeque spot nearby. And so, an hour later I was at Archibald’s, a homey rib shack on the edge of Tuscaloosa.

I parked outside and paced around, trying in vain to agitate my body into digestion. Maybe a quick jumping jack could fix this? But before long, the hot smell of wood smoke beckoned me.

Inside the small brick building, a long counter separated me from the smoking pit, a fireplace-looking set up with a heavy, sliding metal door, behind which sat piles of rib racks and a basting bucket lacquered with glossy sauce, as if covered by many layers of paint. Around me, the perfume of caramelized pork fat and the thudding of heavy cleavers filled the air.

My fate was sealed.

I ordered a “rib sandwich” and a bottle of water (in case of emergency). And, okay, fine, maybe a slice of pound cake, too...

Suddenly, three hulking, drippy ribs slammed between soft pieces of white bread arrived. It was an intimidating sandwich that puzzled the eater with bones as well as bread in various states of disintegration. The bottom (soaking) bread quickly assumed the texture of a squishy, barbeque-bread-pudding shamwow — which, myself soaked in various meats and sauces, I deeply related to. In their lightless dining area, I sat alone, forcing ribs into my body like some masochistic, insatiable food bag. The meat crackled with bark before yielding to braisy tenderness; the sauce clung loose and tangy to my fingers and mustache, and I breathed deep, pained sighs of self-loathing.

The rib sandwich at Archibald's.

Belly full of smoked chicken, lower intestine of pulled pork, and rib sandwich in hand, I was perilously pushing the boundary of the human capacity for meat consumption. But why? Was this really research? Peering down at the rib bones leering back at me, I noticed jagged chunks of meat clinging to them; meat sweat slicked my forehead, and haunted images of the half chicken I'd ripped apart earlier that day flashed before my eyes. Call and response. Crime and Punishment. I’d inadvertently slipped into a different form of self-flagellation: over-indulgence. I was punishing myself with pleasure, and there was only one way to escape: more driving.

I was a few miles outside of Tuscaloosa when the ribs began to take hold, bowling over me like a freight train. Bleary-eyed and bilious, I tried to straighten myself out, but felt hopelessly delirious from over-consumption. I drove deeper into Alabama in search of a friendly place to park, but in my meat-stupor accidentally ended up in a ghost town in Mississippi. I turned off on an abandoned street, pulled up my curtains, and lumbered myself into bed, tumefied and uncomfortable.

As I lay my head down to sleep, full of shame and animal fat (and thankfully measuring in at 5”7.25’ this evening), I cursed barbeque, its sauces, and all its savory tenderness, and I swore then and there I would never touch the stuff again (at least, until I got to Texas). But as bloated as I felt, and as regretful as I’d be the next day, it was the first peaceful night of sleep I’d had in a very long time, the horrible images in my mind now replaced by the terrifying scenes I’d found in real-life.