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I was in a bit of a pickle, because I had originally wanted Chick-fil-A, but time had become so meaningless that I forgot it was Sunday—and that’s when divine intervention in the form of a holey orange roofed institution shown through—I remembered that I had yet to try the face of God which was supposedly found in a painstakingly lab created sandwich.
Like waiting for a movie to come out on DVD, I kept my eyes on the prize, swallowed my pride, and stuffed down my monoculture FOMO until my face was warped worse than a beak mouthed Momo’s, as I crouched down on my overstuffed couch and Joe Bidened my time for the perfect moment to pounce on the social media momentum marketing campaigned spicy chicken sandwich from Popeyes, which was aggressively pandered to African-Americans, and went viral a couple months before the outbreak of the pandemic.
Some say to strike while the iron’s hot, but I’m a J. Wellington Wimpy-like late bloomer who likes to strike while the olive oiled pan is cold.
I wanted the chic status symbol that the internet breaking chicken product brought, but without breaking my back, or the piggy bank—like people were doing on the black market—as some of the sandwiches at the height of the hype were being sold for stimulus checks.
I had waited this long for the cholesterol curve spiking sandwich (which was supposedly to die for) because people were literally out there getting stabbed to death for fast food while trying to cut ahead in all-day wrap-around lines.
I was not interested in joining the rest of the sheeple that were being led to slaughter. I decided instead to take a page out of the red herring orangutan’s voter suppression book by staying in my White House.
So I figured I’d get the home-cooked pop culture community taste from the comfort of my couch (#alonebuttogether), and let some sorry DoorDash delivery guy do battle with the non-figuratively poor front line employees of the chicken wars.
Before he set out across town and into the Louisiana “food swamp,” he texted to see if there was anything he could do to make the experience more memeable.
He must have known that this was my first time.
I thought about putting on some CeeLo to set the mood. Does that make me crazy?
While he was on his way to Popeyes, a woman called from there to tell me that they had sold out of the sandwiches, but that she’d be more than happy to sell me a tender meal made with love, and encouraged me to bring my own bread to the table.
So I called her a sell-out, and said, “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hun.”
I think she was just teasing me for foreplay purposes, because she eventually gave in and said that she had found a sandwich in the back.
I checked the contactless delivery option on the app and gave special instructions for my man to leave it outside my entrance (#popeyesgate), but he texted back, insisting on giving it to me by ungloved hand.
He must have been lonely.
When he came through, the sodium-rich sandwich delivery driver was in an Uber Black Mercedes Benz with a Buckethead face mask on, and as I came out of my quarantine cage, I started getting turned on. I could smell the fun cayenne pepper cajun sauce, and became more than hot & bothered.
I brought it in, sat down in my Sunday best, put on some Black Sabbath, took off its tinfoil hat, and when I put the buttermilk breasted think-piece of meat to my pouting mouth to take the first bite, I screamed, “Sweet Dixie Kitchen!”
Even though the overly crispy breading was like biting into the bark of a cypress tree, the 2-piece chicken sized patty’s juiciness was like that of Omar Epps’, and the brioche bun was so fluffy that I decided to save a piece of it for later to be turned into a pillow for my ninth nap of the day.
It tasted like my grandma had made it. That is, if my grandma was black.
The sweet and sassy flavors coalesced perfectly, like that of Popeye’s pale male founder and ebony female mouthpiece. A perfect Deep South Darth Vader voodoo melting pot cauldron concoction.
When the bird hit my belly, it was like my solar plexus had been suplexed by flavor, which is how I’m sure the woman who got body-slammed outside of Popeyes felt.
Although, it had enough salt in it to choke a chicken.
The sauce made my tongue tingle, and the overall mouthfeel was that of numbness, like the drumsticks of an overworked chicken war entrenched employee.
The bottom line is, as always—the bottom line—and is a line in which my buttcrack will cross if I keep eating deep fried chicken sandwiches which I send people across the town’s roads to get.
So, even though Annie the Chicken Queen’s sandwich may be king, if y’all looking for a non-homophobic, non-racist, non-capitalist, spiritually wholesome sandwich on any given Sunday—look no further than Church’s.
About Charles March
Charles J. March III is an asexual, neurodivergent Navy hospital corpsman veteran who is currently trying to live an eclectic life with an interesting array of recovering creatures in Orange County, CA. His various works have appeared in or are forthcoming from Evergreen Review, Atlas Obscura, Litro, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, Lalitamba, 3:AM Magazine, Fleas on the Dog, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, The Recusant, Taco Bell Quarterly, Storm Cellar, Harbinger Asylum, BlazeVOX, Blood Tree Literature (prize), Bareknuckle Poet, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Beatnik Cowboy, Points in Case, Stinkwaves, The Writing Disorder, Literary Orphans, Otoliths, Oddball Magazine, et al. Links to his pieces can be found on LinkedIn and SoundCloud.
