How to Meat a Man in New Pork City
How does anyone meet anyone in New York? It seems so difficult. There might be eight million people just milling about, but it is hard to branch out and make friends without coming off like a weirdo in the subway or joining some sort of noxious childhood activity league, like for kickball. And let’s not even talk about dating. I said, let’s not!
But let’s say you were a single woman/man of taste and deportment. Or just a person looking for some violent, curious, and unmarried male friends? Wherefore to meet a gentiluomo? Well, I am going to tell you a secret: You should go to a pig butchery class at the Brooklyn Kitchen. It is literally stuffed with unmarried men gazing at a dead pig being cut up piece by piece by a butcher. It is the greatest place to meet a man since sliced bread.
I decided to take a pig butchery class on a whim, mostly because fish butchery was full and I had a great time as a fifth grader dissecting a fetal pig in my science class. Unfortunately, when I arrived, I was informed that I would not be butchering the pig myself. I was going to pay $85 to watch someone butcher a pig.
The class took place in an airy warehouse with lots of very industrial-looking skylights. All the students were instructed to get a beer and gather around a wooden table with a huge dead pig on it. This is when I noticed it! I was one of three girls in the room, not including the butcher. The rest of my classmates were men and only two seemed attached in a discernable way! A lot of the others were wearing glasses but I didn’t hold it against them at all. In fact, I liked their glasses!
The instructor started the class. She talked about the pig, which had been sustainably raised and killed. After the pig was killed, it was shaved and cleaned, and the skin around its eyes was cut off, because that is usually a breeding ground for bacteria. The pig, without its eyelids or hair or anything, was a bit of a ghostly sight.
Next, the instructor started cutting. She started with the head of the pig. The poor animal had recently been killed and its rigor mortis was so severe that she couldn’t cut its tongue out of its mouth (the jaw was too stiff), so she had to pull it out of the back of its head. She showed us the tongue. Apparently you can make pork tongue into jerky. After that she cut off the pig’s jowls and ears. The instructor recommended making a fried pig ear salad.
Then the instructor went through the several different kinds of cuts of pig. There were the popular cuts: pork belly (bacon), pork butt (which is really part of the shoulder of the pig), ham (the rear leg of the hog), and tenderloin. Since the basic body structure of the pig is similar to a cow’s there is also pig sirloin that you can buy and put on the grill. The instructor sung its praises it even though the thought of pig steak kind of grossed me out. Does it taste like pig plus steak?
The men asked the instructor a lot of technical questions about the meat. For example (and I am paraphrasing), “What is your favorite cut of meat?” Or, “If you were in a field and you got a whole pig delivered to you, would they include the lard?” The instructor answered every question in a cheerful manner. Throughout the class we all ate different pork products like a pork sausage and smoked pork meat. I was being a vegetarian (it only lasted for 10 days. I was on the Madonna diet) so I did not indulge, but the men dug in with gusto.
Now, I have a boyfriend, but I do consider myself an amateur matchmaker. And I must say I have never seen such a promising bunch of men in my life. Many of them were extremely obsessed with pig butchery in a way that seemed like they weren’t looking for a significant other necessarily, but truly, I don’t think that matters. It is the element of surprise that men consider charming and romantic even when it is a lie. An enterprising person could so easily sidle up to a man and talk about a shared interest with lines like, “Hey, why do you want that pig to be delivered to you in a field?” or, “I forget what lard is.”
After our instructor successfully chopped up the entire pig, she reassembled it and we all stared at it and clapped. This meant that the class was over. I left right afterwards, but people did linger and probably talked to each other. One of the girls seemed to know one of the men there and had been standing near him during the presentation. The other girl flitted on the side of the group, perhaps angling to be talked to now that the pig was properly put together and people had clapped at it.
For a single, what an embarrassment of riches! I mean, who could have wrapped their minds about the fact that men, men with beards and men without, would flock to this violent meat cleavering class in massive numbers? I wouldn’t have, but I am glad I now know! This is a place I will recommend to wide numbers of potentially interested acquaintances. Finally, a place to meet men! There is nothing like bonding over a plate of pig ear salad.
