I love lobster. It was love at first bite.

I fell over a “surf and turf” dinner at a Chicago steakhouse on a generous business expense account. When I was finished only the shells of the surf remained though my turf was mostly untouched. I was 28.

The culinary adventures of my childhood didn’t include lobster. For starters, I grew up in Western Pennsylvania; you don’t find many lobsters in fresh water lakes. If it didn’t grow in the garden, get handed out by the government, or go on sale for less than two bucks a pound, we didn’t eat it. The fancy restaurant two towns over had a big sign out front with flashing white lights advertising their Sunday night surf and turf special. But we weren’t fancy eaters; surf and turf would remain a mystery to me for two decades.

I’ve often wondered if my love at first bite was in my head or my mouth. Perhaps it had more to do with the notion of dining on something so exotic to the Midwestern palate. Or maybe just knowing it was expensive, and thus rare, made it taste so good. I’ll never know. Today my love is easily defined by a simple bowl of melted butter and the freshest of lobsters, bright and shiny sitting on a platter before me.

Bird loves to eat lobster too, but Bird is deathly afraid of live lobsters.

New Year’s Eve, 1999.

Bird and I decided to stay in for a quiet, romantic celebration in spite of the fact we could finally “Party like it’s 1999.” We had suffered our share of expensive dinners where we were crammed into a too small table inches from the noisy kitchen and hurried through our overpriced meal, which we’d chosen from a limited menu designed to assist the restaurants with the hurrying and the cramming parts. We had also outgrown paying $75 a head for parties where you stood in a long line to pee with a bladder full of well drinks. Instead, we started a new tradition of spending our hard-earned money on a delicious, home-cooked meal comprised of something rare and decadent and fitting of once a year dining.

I immediately thought of fresh lobsters - what could be more decadent? Bird agreed. The lobsters arrived without much ceremony in a nest of coolers and cardboard boxes. When we found our way to the lobsters, I was too excited to notice any reaction Bird was having. We had ordered “live Maine lobsters”, but the live part was questionable at best until I caught a glimpse of a slow moving claw. The inside of the box was extremely cold, which I later learned explained why the critters were so lethargic. We replaced the lid and stowed the box on the back porch to keep cool until dinner.

We filled our biggest soup pot with water and waited for it to boil. I brought the lobster box into the kitchen while we waited. At last it was time to cook our lobsters. I wasn’t excited about the whole idea of killing my supper, but I felt I’d be a hypocrite to stomach the meal without being able to stomach the kill. I pulled the lid off the lobster box. The Maine lobsters were very much alive and out of their freezer fog.

“I figured we’d each cook our own,” I said to Bird as I grabbed mine from the box. When I stood up ready to snap the gumbands from his flailing claws, I realized I was alone in the kitchen.

“Where are you?” I called to Bird.
“In the living room with Dick Clark.”

“But it’s time to cook the lobsters,” I said. Killing a lobster with the one you love isn’t the most romantic way to spend an evening, but I had had romantic notions around making dinner together –sipping wine, feeding each other bites of Manchego cheese with quince paste, a kind of culinary foreplay if you will. And there I stood, alone with a wriggling lobster in my hand.

“Are you at least going to cook your own?” I wanted to know.
“Would you mind cooking mine?” Bird asked. His voice was off.

Something bigger than Dick Clark on New Year’s Eve was going on in the living room.

I watched the lobsters boil thinking about Bird, disappointed that our collaborative culinary adventure had gone awry.

Maybe Bird was a bigger softie than I thought and couldn’t bear to see them meet their death in the pot.

Maybe he had heard that they scream when they go in the boiling water. (Ours lobsters resisted albeit silently.)

When we sat down to eat my kill, I returned to the obvious.

“What’s the deal with not wanting to help with the lobsters?” I tried hard not to sound hurt or bitchy so as to ruin the nice, but oh so messy and labor intensive meal we were enjoying.
Back and forth.
Another question followed by an incomplete answer.
Another question followed by a mumble.
I was unrelenting. At last Bird conceded, “I’m afraid of lobsters.”

I’m not one to judge the fears of another – my own include driving on highways with more than two lanes and bugs with more than six legs.  I did, however, laugh my ass off.

Bird is 6’-0” and consistently weighs 175 pounds. He’s in excellent shape for his age – for any age really. If it were Bird versus the lobster, my money would always be on Bird.

Today

Bird is still very much afraid of lobsters.  Fortunately, his fear is easily managed given the scarcity of lobsters in the Midwest. We’ve continued our New Year’s Eve lobster dinners, and as with most couples we’ve grown into our roles – I kill the lobsters, and Bird kills the bugs.

So when we went to Maine in August to visit my college friends, I had all but forgotten Bird’s lobsterusphobius in spite of the ubiquitous signs for fresh lobsters, lobster rolls, and all things lobster that populated the road sides. Lobsters were hardly special in Maine. (A local told me they were once so abundant they were considered parasites of the sea and subsequently considered a poverty food.)

On our second day, we were invited to join our friends on their boat – it was time to check the lobster traps. The ever-curious epicure, I was the first in the boat. And then I remembered – Bird! I didn’t want to throw him under the bus or the boat so to speak and embarrass him in front of our friends. Although who would believe that a man that can bench press 225 pounds is afraid of a little crustacean.

Come on baby…don’t fear the lobster.
Baby take my hand…don’t fear the lobster.

Bird climbed into the boat and looked at me with a self-assured expression that made me wonder if he had overcome his fear without telling me. He strode confidently onto the boat and took a rear seat. Never taking a seat of my own, I bounded from bow to stern wanting all the details of lobster trapping:

• Which ones do you throw back? And why? (The small ones, any female bearing eggs, and the big females that are considered breeders, which are identified by a notch in their tail. Their size is measured from their eye socket to the beginning of their tail. Most lobster trappers have a special gauge for quickly measuring their catch.)
• How do you tell the boys from the girls? (The pair of tiny legs, called swimmerets, closest to the lobster’s head are very soft on female lobsters and hard on the male ones.)
• What kind of bait do you use? (Herring.)
• How many traps are you allowed? (Five per Maine resident.)

I was in heaven - at last catching a glimpse into how those New Year’s Eve “live Maine lobsters” began their journey to our New Year's Eve table. Bird snapped pictures and took it all in – from the rear of the boat. No one suspected a thing.

That night, my friend’s brother did the lobster cooking for our family-style lobster fest; Bird dodged another bullet.

Bird didn’t get over his fear of lobsters on our trip to Maine, but he did learn how to shell a cooked one in under 60 seconds including the claw meat. So in addition to killing the bugs and doing the highway driving, Bird agreed to always shell my lobsters.