Pearls, clams, and roast beef sandwiches
Yes, they all have their place in this story.
Some days the words for this blog are too sticky and sour to make it to the page.
I don’t believe in petty excuses like writer’s block. I just think sometimes writing can be like trying to start an old, janky car. Instead of a post humming as it should, it coughs and splutters and spews out dirty exhaust while I try to ride it home like a skint teenager pushing the limits of the fuel gauge.
Today is one of those days.
In fact, the last few weeks have been one of those days.
I’ve opened 16 blank documents at various times since my last post—on weekends, early mornings, on my phone, while Maala’s napping, at Irish pubs, at playgrounds. There’s nothing but a Rolodex of aborted posts to show for it.
John Denver crooned about how some days are diamonds, others stones. But Jerry Garcia surmised the struggle as best one can when he said, “you go diving for pearls, but sometimes you end up with clams.”
I think the trick is making good use of the clams. And so that’s what we’ll do.
Except instead of clams, the culinary lead for this post is a roast beef sandwich. And the focus isn’t so much on the sandwich itself, but the way some of my friends choose to describe it.
But first, context.
A lifetime ago, in 2016, when the skin under my eyes didn’t resemble the squirmy tracks of a hiking trail, I went on a trip to upstate New York.
I went with friends; 18 or 19 unhackneyed companions filled to the brim with pre-summer energy like champagne glasses at a wedding. We loaded up into a battalion of rental cars and sped up the highway to escape New York City for Memorial Day weekend.
We ate, we drank, we laughed, we cried, and laugh-cried; we lit fires, shared stories, played games, threw frisbees, balls, and cornhole bags; we cooked, lit more fires, yelled, sang, danced, and at the end, we checked each other for tics.
It wasn’t the first group trip we’d taken and it wouldn’t be the last, but it proved to be one of the most memorable. So memorable, in fact, that the Whatsapp group chat we created for the trip remains healthy and alive today, with a heartbeat of messages from all over the world pumping life into the thread every other day.
One of my favorite things about being in a group chat is the contentious debate that emerges on occasion. And on this thread, the friendly fire comes in thick and heavy like an Alabama accent.
But no discussions have been more impassioned than our recent back and forth about roast beef sandwiches.
It started innocently enough when Ducky, the resident Texan with a big hat and even bigger ambition, shared a meme detailing the differences between bread in Australia and bread in the US. She asked if the sentiment of the meme was true: Was Australian bread really that much better than American bread?
Spoiler alert: Yes, it is. In fact, the contrast in quality is stark but the white space of this blog would be turning moldy and grey by the time I detailed all the reasons why.
Ducky’s question sparked a bigger conversation that moved beyond bread and into the merits of sandwiches. Who does them best? What are your favorites? What fillings taste best? Etc. etc.
I raised a hand for the stacked American subs and hoagies which I’ve come to love. Someone piped up about the simple flavor of prosciutto sandwiches in Italy. Others shared their affection for Italian sandwiches prepped in New York delis. Breakfast sandwiches had their fans, French Dips, too. Someone even shared a photo of a sandwich covered in cheese and gravy from inside a British pub.
“Wow, what is THAT?!” Someone chirped in awe.
Like a flower bed in spring, the chat was alive, pollinated with sandwich-induced fervor. Messages buzzed through the thread like bees in a honey pot. That was until the Britons air-horned their way into the conversation with a proclamation as ghastly and obscene as a tabloid headline.
“Roast beef sandwiches here are really refreshing!”
We barely had a chance to register who sent the message before Mirza, moving at the speed of a freshly lit firecracker, pounced on the use of the word ‘refreshing’ to describe a sandwich.
“Heresy!” He proclaimed. “Heresy on all counts!”
And yes, that is how Mirza speaks.
The British laughed through emojis with tears in their eyes. One can assume their dainty accents and colonial charm made it all the more relishing as they sipped on tea served in fine china.
But to the rest of us, it was no laughing matter.
Alishba, an American ex-pat living in London, but a Briton for the sake of this story, pleaded her case, laying claim to the quaking message.
“Yes, Mirza, refreshing!” She beamed through broken text. “The iceberg lettuce, the horseradish. The crrrunch! Don’t you see?! There’s no other word for it but refreshing!”
Mirza didn’t see it. He lay dormant in the chat, presumably with his hand clasped on his forehead, face stretched in bewilderment.
Ducky, the one who started this mess, pressed send on a cattle prod of a message that stung like lemon juice in a paper cut.
“He just doesn’t get it, Alishba,” she said, in perfect grammar.
Kat, a Brit with teeth too perfect for this world, shared her allegiance with Ducky and Alishba.
The lines had been drawn.
Abbas, notably, was quiet. The ring on his left hand tied him to Alishba’s refreshing roast beef religion. His silence reminded us why there’s nothing more terrifying for a man than being torn between wife and reason.
“What the bloody hell is wrong with you lot?” Chortled Hamish, the Australian with an Egyptian tomb of frequent flyer miles. I think he was in Lisbon, Portugal. But he could easily have been in London, with Alishba and the twinkling smiles of the Brits. Or Sydney. No-one knows.
He picked the side of Mirza, in a roundabout way. He wasn’t against a sandwich being refreshing, but he believed there were more qualified candidates than roast beef. He voted for a chicken salad sandwich.
Katie, another Texan but with hats of regular sizes, tried to keep the peace when she said any sandwich eaten with a cold beer could be considered refreshing. That’s the kind of welcome philosophy that would rattle the nonsense out of any normal group chat. But in this chat, with these heathens, in this climate, it only greased the wheels of baseless opinion.
Ducky: “A BLT is also refreshing.”
Mirza, awakened by a burning rage, fired off a list of all the things he considered refreshing. It had something about Russian baths and cold beers, and maybe a mention about showers, but nothing of sandwiches. Certainly, no sandwiches hiding roast beef between its breaded bookends.
Rob, another Brit, also with perfect teeth but teeth framed lusciously by a whimsical mustache, shared a video of himself in a football jersey at a football game singing football chants while football fans walked past.
He would catch up on this sandwich business later.
Messages flew back and forth like side glances in a group of housewives. Everyone had their take, and everyone picked their side.
Alishba, sensing she’d cracked a San Andreas-sized rift in the group, tried to change the subject by sharing something relatable about an HBO show. No-one bit.
By now the thread was vibrating with heat. If the chat had veins in it, the blood that coursed through them could boil an egg in under two and a half minutes.
Jimmer, missing the point of the whole exercise, snuck into the conversation like a cat burglar to share with the group a rather benign vote: “Movie theatre popcorn!” Before sharing Google images of some Puerto Rican food. No one quite knew the meaning of his contribution but the mention of Puerto Rico pulled Hamish, the jet-setting Aussie, back into the conversation.
“I’ll be in Puerto Rico next month,” he quipped.
But Jimmer had already left so the message met no response.
Perplexed by Jimmer’s sidebar, and desperate to get the argument back on track, Mirza pleaded for reason. He was now at a bar, staring at the bubbling bitter of a tall beer and probably dehydrated from the anger coursing through his vital organs.
He shared a photo of his frothy vessel as it stood valiantly backdropped against a bright American sky. A picture of bliss; of points both made and proven.
Seizing the opportunity granted to him by differences in time zones, he marched unopposed up the hill he was prepared to die on while his British foes slept sweetly in their Monarchal beds.
“Now, this… This cold, crisp glass of lagered beer, is what one calls refreshing! No sandwiches, roast beef or beast of any other breed, come within a bee’s whisker of it!”
The recipients on the thread, those still awake and interested in the meandering soapboxing (me), imagined Mirza proud and triumphant as he sipped his amber liquid.
But before Mirza could find a confirming reply to sound the whistle on his glory, Mikey, the big city romantic, harpooned the chat with a life update that skewered the roast beef debate right in its tender rump.
“We’re engaged!” The diamond ring in the accompanying photo almost blistered the phone screens on which it was displayed.
And so with cheers of congratulations and bursts of joy, the thread surrendered from the roast beef battleground. Because that’s what friends do. And that’s how sandwich stories should end.
All this is to say that Jerry Garcia was right about the clams, and John Denver about the diamonds. But that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.