Beaten, Seared, and Sauced by Jonathan Dixon Page B

with? You wonder how you could have sunk to doing it. It’s not so dissimilar to the feeling of seeing your masks dismantled and getting a good glimpse of the sun-deprived skin underneath.
    I had a neighbor in New Hampshire, an older guy, whose lawn I used to mow when I was a kid. Once, he said this to me: “Jonathan, never try to teach a pig to sing. It frustrates you and annoys the pig.”
    I was wondering if there was any point being in this class, any point being in school. Exposure to knowledge, to technique, did not mean you were going to pick it up, be able to put it to any use. There might be no point in trying to teach me to sing. But I still stayed after class was over, in the library, looking up the answers to the study questions and writing them down in minute detail. It was hard to write; my hand was killing me.
    The next day, we took a break during lecture and everyone left the room except me, Alyssa, and Viverito. She asked him: “What do you do when you aren’t teaching?”
    He looked irritated, then, all of a sudden, he didn’t. “I don’t know … I try and teach myself something every day. I work in my garden. If Ihave nothing to do, I’ll spin a globe and stop it with my finger, and if I don’t know anything about the culture and what they eat where my finger’s pointing, I’ll look it up. Sometimes, I go and see music.”
    People started coming back into the room. “What sort of music do you like?” Alyssa asked.
    “I used to follow the Grateful Dead around, but, obviously, I can’t do that anymore. But I went and saw RatDog a few nights ago.”
    RatDog: Bob Weir’s solo project. I couldn’t help myself. “You saw RatDog? Were they good? Do they do original stuff, or is it all Dead material?”
    “All Dead stuff. And Dylan. You a Dead fan?”
    “Yeah. I never followed them around, but I’m pretty fanatical. I always loved the Dead, and they were great when I saw them. But I came of age listening mostly to punk stuff.”
    “Really? I grew up in DC, and I went to a lot of punk shows. I used to listen to the Bad Brains, Black Flag.…”
    “So did I … I still do.”
    “I saw the Rollins Band, Fugazi—”
    “Me too …”
    “Jane’s Addiction in a tiny club. Back in the late ’80s. They were amazing.”
    “I saw them in a tiny club also. And they
were
amazing.”
    He looked at me for a second.
    “Yeah—I’m old,” I blurted out. He kept looking, then shook his head, as if he was trying not to laugh.
    “Okay,” he said to everyone. “Let’s get back to shellfish depuration.”
    And there he was at my shoulder again, just as a fillet came free from the side of a haddock. I put the knife down. He picked the fillet up. Then he picked the bones of the haddock up and ran his finger over the big scraps of meat I’d left clinging.
    “Poor thing,” he muttered as he put the fillet back down. He made a scratch on his clipboard.
    During lecture, Viverito stopped what he was doing and asked us, “Who’s going on Chef Sebald’s chicken slaughter this afternoon?”
    About five of us raised our hands.
    “You should all be going,” he said. “I don’t need to tell you that chicken doesn’t originate wrapped in plastic. If you’re going to eat it, which I assume most of you do, you need to see what it’s really like to take those chickens down.
    “Man, I have to tell you—chickens are dirty, filthy, disgusting animals. Those of you who are going will find out. But you’ll definitely learn something. And Chef Sebald—he might look like an old man, but when you see that guy maneuvering half a steer carcass, you know he’s no joke.”
    A FTER CLASS, WE ATE lunch and scattered for an hour or so. We were to be in the parking lot at 1:00, at which point we’d meet Sebald and carpool into New Paltz.
    I had changed out of my uniform into the grimiest, most ripped jeans I owned and a T-shirt I’d used all summer to paint in. I’d brought an extra, just in case I got