Confession of a m-man

I wish to congratulate The New York Times and Mimi Sheraton for the thorough embarrassment they caused me, and I am sure many other men, with their Travel section on Sunday.

It was a brilliant idea, to begin with, to turn the lead travel story into a food piece, thus targeting the male reader. Women more than men are attracted to travel sections, but not this one, with a color photo in the upper left corner of a golden cutlet of Veal Milanese so big it covered the plate. A color photo of the Taj Mahal? Psh. Left-hand pile. Veal Milanese? Pull out the section, fold it under my arm.

I must also protest, at the same time, the obvious glee with which Ms. Sheraton composed the following paragraph, and making it the second paragraph in the story, hitting a man in the chops before he is ready:

“But of all culinary trademarks, the most elegant is the winey, saffron-gilded risotto Milanese, the short, wide-grained vialone rice from the Po Valley, creamy with butter and marrow then etched with grated Parmesan, whether as a course in itself or as an accompaniment to the spoon-tender braised veal shank, osso buco.”

With those 51 words, Ms. Sheraton got even with every male who ever slighted her in any way, all the way back to junior high school, and with every male in general, on general principles. I deeply resented her, wherever she was Sunday morning, looking at us in her mind’s eye, chained to breakfast nook chairs halfway around the world from Milan and its most elegant culinary trademark, saffron-gilded risotto Milanese, creamy with butter and - .

The m-word! She used the m-word! Sprung it on me in the second paragraph. That is where the first cry of protest rose in me. Cruel and unusual - unprecedented, in this case – using the m-word on a man with that weakness before breakfast. I uttered a low wail of anguish, which my wife heard: “What’s the matter?” she said.

“Listen to this,” I said, and read her the paragraph.

“Ick,” she said.

Well, exactly. Ick food! The best! No shame, I admit it. I love marrow. Write me up, report me. I am a registered marrow lover. Have been since I was four, and my Texas grandmother was putting prurient slices of fried ham on the table, bone-in, with its little button of browned marrow. I can still court a fix, at certain San Diego establishments and private homes where they know what osso buco is. But please. To read: “creamy with butter and marrow, then etched with grated Parmesan . . . as an accompaniment to spoon-tender braised veal shank . . .” Where is the decency, even for me and my kind?

Now I am inflamed. If Mimi Sheraton has no decency, I shall have none. When I am apprehended in the wheel well of a Milan-bound jetliner, or in the Po Valley marshes, rooting for wide grains of vialone rice, or in the back of a delivery truck easing through the narrow Milanese streets stacked with butter, saffron and veal shanks, I will say it was lust causing it, loosed by words and images published by The New York Times and its provocateur Mimi Sheraton, your honor, who possesses the morals of a Larry Flynt. And on a Sunday morning! “Spoon-tender braised veal shank.” Guilty, my God, guilty. When Ms. Sheraton wins the Pulitzer for that paragraph, my teeth are going to grind.