I’ve Become What I Ate—An Ode To Crispy Bacon

Can I have some bacon with that? Could you make it extra crispy?

I want bacon so crispy that when other things touch it, they become crispier themselves. I want it so crispy I forget I’m eating because it feels like taking hard drugs. I need this to be the crispiest of all possible worlds.

I want it so crispy that the rest of my life becomes an unfruitful search for a comparably crunchy experience. Years from now I’ll weepily thumb through photos of my fragile beauty, my breakable bacon baby, the crisp that got away.

That bacon should crackle as loudly as a spree shooter’s gunfire. I want Foley artists to use this bacon to replicate sounds of supremely crunchy things in movies. I want them to win “Best Bacon Sounds in a Movie,” a new Oscar category created just for this bacon.

Make that bacon so crispy that I forget everyone I love will die someday.

I want it extra well-done, almost burnt, but please don’t put charcoal on my plate. Fuck it, just go ahead and burn that shit.

I want it to look like Kevin Spacey in Pay it Forward. I want it crackling and crumbly like Paul Walker’s skin. I want it to look like a little kid who died in a drone strike. I want it crunchier than Lisa “Left Eye” Lopez’s left eye.

And please, for the love of all things salty, it better not be that microwave stuff. But if it is, I’ll take it anyway. Bacon-adjacent is still better than no bacon.

I want bacon so good it spawns its own hashtag causes. People will tweet #BanSoggyBacon and #YesAllBacon. Obama will bring this bacon up in the State of the Bacon Address. Lonely girls will write LiveJournal entries about this bacon, realize they’ve forgotten their passwords, and cry while holding down delete keys.

Slow-fry it in a pan for me. Fry it on heat so low you can barely see the flame. When it’s done, wrap the brittle bits of heaven in an entire tree’s worth of paper towels, then feed me a splintery mouthful of salty joy. Then feed me the towels.

What’s that you just said? This is a vegan restaurant? That won’t stop me. Nothing can stop me.

Give me a pile of soy bacon so high that all the vegans in the room start farting just from looking at it. Fry those succulent strips of soy in olive oil. Fuck it. Deep-fry them in olive oil. Pour the olive oil all over me. Get it all in my balls. Now give me that delicious fake bacon.

I want that soy bacon so crunchy I get weird looks as the sound reverberates in a Bacon Anonymous meeting. I want it to crunch like a skull getting hit with a cinderblock. I want it to snap like a grandmother’s hipbone as she crashes down the steps.

I don’t care what kind of bacon it is. Back bacon, front bacon, side bacon, bacon bits, bacon cheeseburgers, Cobb salads with bacon, Beggin’ Strips, Baconators, and Kevin Bacon. I want it all. Even the Canadian bacon.

I’m off my diet, fuck it. Fuck diets. Fuck it all. I want bacon.

That’s how crispy I want it.