As I’m trying to fry some eggs over-easy, a yolk breaks, and I yell: GODDAMNIT.
Anger of this sort—seemingly out of proportion to the situation—is a habitual affect of my own daily life, embedded in my body since childhood, growing up in a working-class rural white family where violent outbursts were constant…
There is already a certain literature which establishes how lower-class whites have a tendency to be “ornery” and thin-skinned…
I wonder how much of this kind of anger comes from my sense of entitlement—from a racist or sexist belief that eggs should be served to me perfectly, without any effort on my part, that the breaking of a yolk represents a slight against my status?
From a young age—I think like 8 or 10?—it fell to do me to do most of the cooking and cleaning for my parents and little sister. Usually I came home from school to find a list of instructions (fry this hamburger in a pan, boil water in this pot). When my parents came home from work, later, I set the table and served them. During dinner usually there were wild screaming matches and bizarre fights… total chaos and fear… I cleaned the table and washed the dishes… while my father continued to eat and eat and meanwhile to make cruel remarks about how I was a “sissy” and was “doing the women’s work.”
Actually tho one of my happier memories is my grandmother teaching me to crack eggs, and on my first try, an egg broke onto the floor… She smiled and found a towel and said that’s ok, honey, and handed me another egg to try again…
But I think what I mean to say is that somehow projected onto me and ingrained into me was a conflict around doing these chores, a sense that they are shameful for white men to do… a sense that rage always accompanied cooking and eating…
It could be that this morning I had intended to only cook some scrambled eggs but then my sweetheart requested eggs over-easy and it was to me somewhat stressful to cook two dishes and I do not feel confident with my eggs over-easy… I remember my mother often screaming that she was not a short-order cook and that she did not take any special requests… But if she happened to break an egg yolk, she always served that to herself, this was also a rule… that the cook would have to eat whatever was not prepared perfectly, that the perfectly prepared food was reserved for the man of the house…
I could see a chapter developing around this that folds in, for example, how in our town many people (e.g. my father) did not eat onions, garlic, peppers, because they considered this ethnic food, not suitable for white men, who ate (they said) “meat and potatoes.”
