Yesterday in New Orleans, I ordered a shrimp po’boy. You’re probably wondering what kind of tone-deaf, narcissistic, entitled dingaling starts an article with Yesterday in Nola, I ordered a shrimp po’boy.
Who does that? Why am I writing this? Don’t I have a job, a family, or a dog to walk? Do my dishes clean themselves? Does my car fill its own tank? Who has time to sit around contemplating their shrimp po’boy when the world is in ruins? Moi. C’est qui.
And that’s only the beginning. When I ordered my shrimp po’boy, my husband groaned. You’re gonna hate it, he said. It’ll be dry or they’ll be something wrong about the remoulade, but it won’t be good enough for you.
Quoi? Moi? Never before had my love mentioned my disdain for the shrimp po’boy. His comment blasted the remoulade right off my self-perception sandwich. Who was I? Who ordered something over and over again and was never satisfied?
My sweet patient husband had waited years to tell me this, and he was correct. I was chronically disappointed by my shrimp po’boys. Those warm, toasty, southern, seafood sandwiches infuriated me. I had not been delighted with one since I was in my twenties, but I’d kept ordering them.
Why? Why had I kept ordering them? What was wrong with me? Was I a glutton for shrimpunishment? Was I an unsatisfied female seeking a disappointment to hinge my shrimp boat on?
Why had my husband finally spoken up? What had changed about us as a couple? Did this mean our relationship was better or worse? Was he finally not fearing my wrath? Had we been married so long it was all truth from this point on? Did that frighten me?
What was it, specifically, that made me hate decades of shrimp po’boys? I had to know. I needed to contemplate, alone, in a clean well-lighted sandwich place. I left to sit in my car and turned on the seat warmer. I wondered if this was how a reheated shrimp po’boy felt.
I pondered while my ass burned. Was it the warm European french bread that caused me malaise or mayonnaise? Was it that crispy soft crust, that luscious tangy Venetian pink sauce, that sweet sweet shrimp, or that je ne sais quoi seasonings? Why did the shrimp po’boy always leave me longing?
It made me think about sex. New Orleans has that effect on people, I’ve heard. It’s cause of all the beads, bare chests, heat, and music. What if my first sexual experience, I wondered, had transpired with Timothy Olyphant?
Would every man who followed be blemished by comparison? Would Timothy Olyphant have set the sex bar too high, like Icarus’s sun, leaving my body plummeting in disappointment for all who followed? It made a woman think about her first shrimp po’boy.
My, thus far, unrivaled shrimp po’boy was like if Timothy Olyphant had been a sandwich. Every schlub who came after him would have caused me to say, “Blech. I’m never ordering that again. Well, maybe this one more time. Nope. Still, blech.”
What in the Timothy Olyphant had happened with my first shrimp po’boy that had left me so damaged? Had my first po’boy, eaten in New Orleans circa 1996, been too delicious, too Olyphanty?
Had that po’boy been made with love and lust like in Like Water for Chocolate where the emotional intensity of the cooking caused the lovers eating it to dissolve into sex until they set aflame? Had I eaten that kind of shrimp po’boy?
Or had I enjoyed a shrimp po’boy steeped in centuries of tradition, created by a family recipe now long lost? That sweetness I’d tasted from generations left all my shrimp po’boys that followed lacking, historyless. Could that’ve happened?
All I know for sure is Timothy Olyphant ruined po’boys for me. He might not know it. He might not own up to it, but we know. You and me know. On the other hand, I might have been stoned the day I tried my first shrimp po’boy. I’ve heard that alters perception.