Balut

I like the Asian grocer's.  The aisles of exotic, cheap foodstuffs, the smells and familiarity of being surrounded by the unfamiliar.  It puts a smile on my face as I browse with a basket slung over my arm.  Picking, choosing, thinking.  I grabbed a sixer of duck's eggs on a whim yesterday; they seem larger than those of chickens, and I can't recall ever eating one before.  The gal at the checkout seemed a bit perplexed.  In broken English, asking if I knew they were ducks'.
"Aye, ducks' eggs," I nod on amicably, glancing at my watch.  My lunch hour's nearly up and I've yet to get back to the office.  I have a stir fry planned for later, minced garlic and peppers and cabbage, chicken and graced with a duck's egg at the last.  Which is why it came as an unpleasant, hilarious sort of surprise when I went to crack open that extra-extra-large white oblong egg and found the sharp rift pulsating with ruddy afterbirthage.
Rushing the thing to the sink for fast inspection, an embryonic duck flopped out amid yolk and runny white.  It was horrible, hysterical.  I couldn't stop laughing.  The checkout gal had said they were ducks, not ducks'.  One by one, I pass the others in front of the overhead light.  Cloudy, every one.  Fertilized to the last.  Bugger.
I did a bit of research, the odd wiki page and a question or two to an old friend.  These are a specialty, balut in the Philippines.  Supposedly a proteiny snack and aphrodisiacal booster steeped in folklore and local culture.  It seems barbaric, disgusting; I must try it, if only to pit myself against my blander inclinations.
Day next, I've boiled four for a solid ten minutes (as per an instruction I found in an online Q&A column), the lime juice, salt, and an emergency glass of Polish vodka at the ready on the dining table.  I run an egg briefly under the tap, to a holdable cool.  I'll try at least one, and if it doesn't work out I'm okay with throwing the rest out.  Hesitantly, gingerly, I crack and unroll the shell, catching what flumps lifelessly out into a small bowl below.  Knife and fork in hand, I take it to table with impending dread.

It's veiny, grotesque.  I don't want to eat it, would feel terrible doing so, can't even look at it directly.  I poke at it with my knife - it feels soft, like organ meat or an overdone Spam.  Gradually I fork up a bite, half of a meaty embryo and a bit of golden yolk solids.  This first bite is surprisingly good.  Yolky, yes, but past that there's a subtle crunch of feather and bone, and the overall flavor of liver.  Yes, by all the gods, it's good!  I press on, ironically only unable to eat the familiar white, which is as hard as a stone.
I'm back to the kitchen for more, shelling and seasoning and consuming the other three with an awful sort of relish.  They're good, better than good.  As the feelings of guilt and disgust slip away I'm overcome with a feeling of triumph, that I can accomplish anything now.  I can overcome any fear, prod myself past any discomfort.  Eating balut is more than just an exotic meal; to do it once is to dethrone God himself, to push one's sensibilities and sympathies to a backseat and embrace an entirely new sort of existence.  It's an abortion of finickiness, and I feel liberated at having undergone the venture.

"Morning of the Day Off"

Ven lies naked to one side of the bed, habitually he realizes as he notices Marji is already gone to work.  With a relaxed sigh he spreads out toward the center, pulling the sheets from around his knees up to his shoulders.  It doesn’t matter what time it is, that glorious axiom of the day off.  Ven slips in and out of light dreamy sleep as the rays of morning brighten, pale, and again thin with the oncoming rain.

It is the pleasant tattoo of raindrops against the window that finally rouse him up from bed, making a straight dash for the bathroom.  Slowly the mind starts to jostle itself up, beginning the abstract jumble of disassociated garbage and internal dialectic that will continue well into the early stages of sleep.  The mind is a bizarre, wonderful thing he thinks as the last bit of urine ekes itself into the bowl.  Three-gallon-fueled flush.

He looks at the reflection of himself in the mirror, a same-old sight of five or six times every day for as long as he can remember.  But how Ven has changed! from infantile smallness to this lumpy, stoutish figure now naked before him (yet not, actually).  He winces even at thinking himself ‘stout’ anymore, and he wonders if he’s lost weight or if it’s simply a positive reaction to familiarity.  Ven brushes his teeth, less out of concern for dental hygiene than because his body habitually needs that minty morning clean-mouth flavor.  Otherwise the entire morning will feel ‘offish.’  Maybe that’s why people are so particular about their toothpastes, they’re like a drug for the palate.  Marji has her Aquafresh to one side of the sink, Ven his Colgate mint with the baking powder bite, pink toothbrush, blue toothbrush, and he wonders if they aren’t being a bit sexist and proprietary.  Maybe they should simply share a one toothbrush, or would that be unhygienic?

Questions, interminable questions running through his brain as he fetches some pyjama clothes from about the floor, some stripey pants and a grey college tee he vaguely remembers once passing out in a pool of vomit in.  The fraternity still sends pledge letters, once in a while.  “Brother Vetter,” they still call him, and it makes him feel tingly and good and young again and Ven wonders what it takes to join the Freemasons.  Marji wouldn’t go for that any, but then it’s supposed to be a secret society, eh? 

He heads for the kitchen and puts the kettle on.  Unlike toothpaste, tea is an ever-changing whim.  Does he feel like a rooibos, a black, a green, or dare-I-say-it a white?  Flavored, unflavored, spritzed with lemon or touched of milk, the world is his tea soggy oyster.  He feels like having boring old Earl Grey, but a look in the cupboard and they’re out so he opts for a Chai Spice instead.  Interminable questions and an endless array of choices, useless choices.  Far from empowering, it’s at times the opposite; masters of discretion enslaved by inherent finickiness. 

“And yet,” Ven says to himself with an ironic grin as he inserts a slice of Rudy’s organic all-grain wheat bread into the toaster.  He feels like eating a boiled egg with his toast and tea and grabs one from the bowl they keep in the fridge, overladen with sauces and spices and juices.  A dusting of Lawry’s, a sip of tea, and Ven takes a bite out of his egg.  Or tries.  CRUNCH it goes, unsavory like a malted-milk ball. 

“Hollyknockers!”  Spitting the stuff into the sink, Ven inspects his teeth with his fingers to make sure nothing has been damaged, likewise inspecting the uneaten half of the egg in his hand with his eyes.  The white is normal and rubbery but the yolk is a cratery hardened yellow center, actually very much like a malted-milk ball.  He grabs the bowl from the fridge and begins slicing the five remaining eggs in half on the counter.  All completely normal with soft crumbly yolks, how bizarre!

“How bizarre!” he says as he continues to look the egg over.  It weighs about the same as the others, it was boiled in the same batch, been in the same fridge in the same bowl.  But then the toast pops and, losing interest in the egg, Ven pushes it down the disposal and wonders what to do with the ten other halves laying about the counter.  Most importantly he wonders what sort of jam would best complement a Chai tea, again swept away by the tide of unrelenting choice and unanswerable questions.