My life hit a new low point last Friday.
I was at a club called The Park with a Vietnamese friend of mine who I call “Chicken Jon”. He earned this name after displaying, over a period of several years, a disturbing affinity toward fried chicken and red/purple Kool-Aid – especially for an asian person*.
Figure 1: Chicken Jon
Chicken Jon and I were on the second floor of the club (the only one that plays hiphop, if you’re thinking about going) when we noticed a pair of women behind us dancing at a table. Both of them were fairly drunk and neither of them was being very subtle about trying to get our attention, as they were both doing some weird strip-tease type dance on their chairs while constantly looking at, in particular, Chicken Jon.
Most heterosexual men in this position would’ve sauntered over to the table and started chatting the girls up with the intention of getting their phone numbers or even going home with them. Not Chicken Jon and I. No – we started making downright Byzantine plans to steal their juicy and delicious chicken tenders, which come free with cheese and grapes whenever you order a bottle at a table.
You heard it correctly: our desire to eat chicken trumped our desire for sex in a battle of internalized primal urges, and the contest wasn’t even fucking close.
Figure 2: Better than sex
Chicken Jon and I spent the next thirty drunken minutes off and on trying to figure out how to chat the girls up in a way that would lead to us getting their chicken. Of course, we were too drunk to actually decide on a course of action, and instead spent most of the time pointing and laughing at Indian people (they amuse Chicken Jon to no end, and for God knows what reason) and dudes wearing stunna shades. The night ended with the girls and their chicken disappearing, and Chicken Jon and I exiting the club both angry and hungry.
Some years ago, Dave Chappelle did a skit about black people being afraid or embarrassed to order chicken in the presence of white people because of the stereotypes involved. They’re even afraid to profess their love for it, as in StuffEBPLike.com’s claim that educated black people love baked chicken more than fried chicken – a claim which, with all love and respect to Charlee, is bullshit. Charlee even told me later that as she wrote the baked chicken post, she was gnawing orgasmically on a fried chicken drumstick like a half-starved badger**. All in all, our collective shame regarding fried chicken has never actually stopped us from eating it when we wanted it (which is all the fucking time), and has even prompted a few of us to eat it in inappropriate places out of spite.
The following is an abridged list of poultry-pertinent idiocy indulged in by my friends, family, and self:
- Snuck an entire box of Popeye’s chicken into a movie theater (my cousins and I)
- Walked along a beach in Spain eating a bucket of KFC per person (myself, Chicken Jon, and a friend we call ‘The Puppy’, see figure 3)
- Ordered $300+ table/bottle service at The Park twice, looking forward more to the chicken than the liquor (me)
- Swore loudly in front of old folks at a family gathering upon hearing fried chicken would not be served (my father)
- Sent his youngest son 20 miles away to buy three buckets of chicken upon hearing fried chicken would not be served at a family gathering (my father)
- Stormed into a tiny African chicken joint dressed in full native dance regalia and smelling like a stack of sweaty man-asses angrily demanding copious amounts of fried chicken (Admiral Furious and I)
- Bludgeoned her youngest grandson with a rolled up newspaper for ‘eyeing her chicken sideways’ (my grandmother)
- Demanded his friends take 20+ pictures of him downing, by himself, a 12 or 18-piece chicken box from Popeyes(?) (Chicken Jon)
Figure 3: You thought I was kidding…
Fried chicken makes us do stupid fucking things, and that’s why we hate it. We’ll pass up sex, risk getting kicked out of movie theaters, swear in front of family matriarchs, scare the shit out of unsuspecting Africans, and beat our grandchildren with heavy objects to get it.
It’s fried crack and we know it’s bad for us – but if you try to take it away, we will fucking murder you.
*This, combined with his love of old school hiphop, BBQ, Hennessy, Alize, Ben’s Chili Bowl, big-booty Filipina women and, notwithstanding the items above, a general hatred of everything, makes Chicken Jon legally black.
**This almost certainly did not happen.
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