“Tastes Like Chicken”

The year is 1995, or thereabouts. Lunch is ending, we’re pulling into the parking lot of our high school, and the Grateful Dead are playing, as ever in those days, on the radio of my Bronco II. It’s “Sugar Magnolia”:

She’s got everything delightful
She’s got everything I need

Jimmy has a new girlfriend, and she’s a talker, one for whom the quantity of words are more important than the sense. For the sake of the song, and our sanity, we wait a moment before leaving the car and giving the lunch hour back to the gods.

Takes the wheel when I’m seeing double
Pays my ticket when I speed

“The Dead are so amazing,” the new girl says, gaining nods of agreement. “They always get it just right.” More nods. “Like that line, ‘Tastes like chicken when you’re on speed.’ It’s so true. Everything tastes like chicken on speed.”

No one nods now, nor do we look at each other, afraid (we tell ourselves) of laughing at her mistake, but also afraid (we do not admit) of how that flash of foreign knowledge had made our lives seem so small so fast.

(Photo: Trevor Paglen/New York Times)