Don't Kill the Birthday Girl (7 page)

“To Kristen and Fireman Bob!” we toasted.

The next day I would call the bar and learn that what I had ordered was not a round of Lemon Drops but a round of St. Maarten's Signature Lemon-Drop Shooters, in which the vodka is accented with a dash of sour mix. Commercial drink mixes, as any student of chemistry or cheap margaritas might tell you, contain a boatload of ingredients that separate rather unappealingly over time. So a milk derivative is added as a binder. It may be way down there, fifteenth or sixteenth in the small print of ingredients, but it's there.

In that moment in Maarten's, I knew none of this. What I knew, as soon as I set my drained shot glass back on the table, was that my esophagus was on fire. What on earth? Vodka, lemon, sugar: I wasn't allergic to any of those things. What was I missing? Had the glass been dirty from someone else's Buttery Nipple?

This cannot happen
, I thought. This was Kristen's night, and the point of coming to Charlottesville was to show that I was excited for her. It would not be an auspicious gesture to toast her new life, then vomit.

I tried to be nonchalant as I excused myself to go to the restroom, a two-stalled cave that smelled like a bachelor party. Making a bad situation worse was the fact that unlike with a typical reaction, I had not stopped after a trial bite. I was at the mercy of the full shot, my entire throat coated. After a few minutes, I staggered out to our table.

“Um, guys,” I said. “I'm gonna need your help.”

The night was supposed to be my treat, but someone else must have paid the bill while I waited outside, head resting against my knees. We walked what seemed like an eternal four blocks back to Dave's apartment. I refused Eric's offer to carry me. I refused to go to the hospital, hoping two Benadryl would be enough.

“Damn it,” I said, stumped, “I didn't even
eat
anything.”

When we got inside, I dashed to the bathroom. My friends watched TV on the couch and took turns coming to check on me. I had started the night with a shot, and I ended it curled up around Dave's toilet, worshipping the feel of the cool tile against my skin. A quintessential night of college drinking, minus much actual drinking.

If I'd been by myself, I would have said, “Can you check with the bartender on the ingredients?” Or I would have taken a test sip, then waited a few minutes. But this was not a drink; this was a toast. To question or hesitate violates the ritual. It's like going to a dinner party and salting your host's dish before the first taste. It's a matter of trust.

Rituals trump our usual food inhibitions. Oktoberfest? Sure, I'll cool myself off with a full pitcher of Hefeweizen. County fair? Bring on the deep-fried Oreos. Seafood feast? Why, yes, slurping three-dozen oysters in ten minutes
does
sound like a good idea. This is what happens when you cross rites of consumption with mob mentality.

Some foods carry such heft of tradition that their preparation or serving becomes the focus of the day. Spaghetti Mondays. Chili cook-offs. Domino's delivery. Even my parents, on some nights when they rented a movie to watch, couldn't resist ordering in pizza. I was given the sacred duty of sprinkling
the red chili pepper, performing this rite with an enthusiasm that must have scorched the roofs of their mouths.

Eventually, my mother gave in to my begging and fixed me my own faux “pizza”: salt-and-water dough that couldn't raise a proper crust, layered in tomato sauce straight out of a can and a few sautéed onions. We grimaced our way through three slices. It was bad, but not quite so bad as when I would run hot water out of the kitchen tap, dump in salt and pepper, and sit by the fireplace to eat my “soup.” Sure, my mother sometimes made broth, but I wanted to be like those kids in the Campbell's soup ads. I wanted to pretend I was having cream-of-whatever, complete with all-natural flavors, hydrolyzed proteins, and whatever it was that equaled “tasty” for everyone else and “deadly” for me. I never made it past a couple of spoonfuls before admitting that this was nothing like what I'd seen in the commercials.

All the rites of eating I've ever envied have been secular—defined by pop culture, geography, or my era. But in scenarios where the ritual is religious, and strictly codified, those with food allergies or other dietary restrictions experience a more profound exclusion. Around 2001, a controversy arose when Boston's Roman Catholic Church (seconded by the Archdiocese of New York) affirmed its decree that rice-based wafers were not an acceptable substitute for wheat-based Communion wafers—even for those unable to ingest wheat.

The Communion tradition is grounded in the story of the Last Supper, at which Jesus ate unleavened wheat bread and shared wine with his disciples. This meal is re-created during Sunday services, when Catholics accept into their mouths bread that has been consecrated as the body of the Savior, as well as a sip of wine that embodies His blood. Eastern
Orthodox churches typically use unfermented grape juice and cubes of leavened bread cut from a
prosphorá
loaf, referred to as the Eucharist. Westernized Christianity, including Roman or Latin-rite Catholics, use unleavened wafers referred to as the host. The Church takes this transubstantiation very seriously—Martin Luther's questioning and ultimate denial of this principle was one of the primary catalysts of the Protestant Reformation. First Communion is a particularly elaborate ceremony, during which family and friends gather to watch as a child recites verses signifying an allegiance to God before accepting the host for the first time.

The Catholic Church's Code of Canon Law suggests that those who cannot tolerate the traditional host should opt for a “low-gluten wafer.” The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) even goes so far as to recommend a specific supply, developed by the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, Missouri, and endorsed by the magazine
Gluten-Free Living
, which can be mail-ordered from the Congregation's Altar Bread Department. When you consider the reaction I had to an infinitesimal fraction of “nonfat milk powder” in that shooter, it's hard to imagine even the lowest of low-gluten wafers feeling like an option for anyone with allergies or severe celiac disease. Throwing up the toast to my friend's engagement was a party foul; throwing up the body of our Savior would be straight out of
The Omen
.

For some Latin-rite Catholics, taking the wine (the Precious Blood) alone might carry its own complications. The chalice of wine, if communal, would be quickly contaminated by the mouths of everyone else who has taken the wheat-based host. The faithful might have an intolerance to alcohol. As a last
resort, the Church states that a bishop may grant permission for someone to receive
mustum
, a wine with minimal alcohol content. If you can't take
mustum
, the Church shrugs its papal shoulders.

“There is little else the Church can do except to recommend that the person make a ‘spiritual communion,' ” says the FAQ answer issued by the USCCB's Committee on Divine Worship. “Why? Because the Church believes that it is impossible to consecrate anything except wheat bread and grape wine.”

In many parishes, there is now leeway in the form of pastors who quietly supply nonwheat bread, wrapping the portions in foil to mark them as safe among the rest. But that's the exception, not the rule—and in fact, it is in explicit defiance of the rule. It's not as if the Vatican has turned a blind eye to the issue. In 1994, they issued a set of dictates for bishops that included this specific decree: “Special hosts [which do not contain gluten] are invalid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist.” The author of this statement was the then cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who has since ascended to become Pope Benedict XVI himself.

Or, as the pastor of Our Lady Help of Christians Parish was quoted as saying during a 2001 interview with the Associated Press at the time of the Boston controversy: “We many are sharing one bread and becoming one with Christ. We can't make different flavors for different folks and maintain that theological reality.”

Explain that to those Catholic children affected by wheat allergy or celiac disease who have faithfully spent two years of Sunday school training with the other kids, when their studies lead up to getting their own little odd-man-out serving of wine
and watching from the side as friends line up, hands cupped to receive the wafer.

Everyday practice concerning Communion has grown greatly more flexible in the last five years and will probably only continue to grow more accommodating. But there is still the issue, at the end of the day, of how the Church's chief philosophers have reconciled this “theological reality” with the post-Eden realm. Embedded in the Vatican policy seems to be the suggestion that allergies are a challenge to willpower rather than an absolute barrier; that those of true devotion could surely manage just one bite and one sip, just once a week. If the Church doesn't believe that, the alternative is what? That some of its followers are not biologically designed to be Catholic?

Some families, when confronted with their Church's resistance to their children's needs, respond by leaving the faith. The Catholic Church's loss is the gain of the Methodists, Episcopalians, and Evangelical Lutherans, who do not have such restrictive policies. The Lutheran Church says as much in section 44C of “The Use of the Means of Grace”: “For pressing reasons of health … congregations might decide to place small amounts of non-wheat bread or non-alcoholic wine or grape juice on the altar. Such pastoral and congregational decisions are delicate, and must honor both the tradition of the Church and the people of each local assembly.” For these forms of Christianity, the meaningful substance of Communion is in the symbolic presence of Jesus, not the grain used in the bread or the proof of the grape wine.

Perhaps it is crucial that the rite use the same recipe handed down for centuries, in an unbroken lineage, just as Latin
phrasing is used to celebrate Mass long after the language has otherwise died out. I have never been Catholic. I can't judge. What I can do is speak to our own elementary-school sacrament: the birthday treat.

Every week without fail, it seemed, a different classmate would come to the front of the room and we would sing “Happy Birthday.” We would sit at our desks as he or she walked down each row, arms wrapped around a large Tupperware container. One by one each child would raise upturned palms to receive a cupcake. When the birthday kid got to my seat, there would always be an awkward pause. That would remind the teacher to open the supplies cabinet, the same one that held the glitter and the paper towels, and pull out the bag of hazelnuts that my mother had dropped off on the first day of school that year.

Twelve hazelnuts. Precisely twelve hazelnuts would be counted out into my cupped hands. I'd line them up in the pencil groove at the top of my desk and ask if anyone else wanted one. No one else ever wanted one.

I'd try to match the pacing of everyone else's treat. Three hazelnuts as people licked off the frosting; three as people took huge bites of the moist, spongy cake; three as people licked the baking sleeves clean, scraping the last of the cake off with their teeth; and three final nuts that I would grind slowly into a paste that coated my back molars as the teacher went around the room with the wastebasket to collect wrappers and napkins.

When my birthday came, did I go around the room with a bag of hazelnuts and count out twelve to a kid? Of course not. I begged my mother to make cupcakes from the Duncan Hines mix, even though I wouldn't be able to eat one. The point
wasn't what I could eat. The point was having my turn to walk around the room with that big box in my arms, the same as everyone else.

This was why I went trick-or-treating every year, knowing I'd have to give away everything but the lollipops, Life Savers, and raisins (I was probably the only child in Virginia who yelped in joy at being given raisins). This was why I sometimes taped Hershey's Kisses to my valentines, being careful to pick up only ones with perfectly intact foil wrapping. I wanted to fit in; I wanted to do it the same way everyone else did it. Any Catholic official surprised when a child is not satisfied by drinking the wine—while everyone else takes the host—has missed an essential point.

Is it inclusiveness that makes rituals valuable? Or is maintaining the ritual's integrity that matters, even if that leaves someone out? Maybe I should have glued boxes of raisins to my valentines, to make a point. But that's a slippery slope. Next thing you know, you're getting a
B Mine 4EVER
note taped to a roast chicken.

•  •  •

There are many ways of ritualizing foods. Communion imbues otherwise modest substances with an air of mystery. In the secular world, we have our own way of elevating the everyday to the divine: the secret recipe.

“Good lord!” you exclaim, licking your fingers at dinner one night. “This is delicious. What's in this?”

“Oh, that's something my great-grandmother brought over from the old country,” your hostess says. If you ask for the
ingredients, she'll just lay a finger to her lips and shake her head in silence, smiling.

As a child I was embargoed from the world of secret ingredients. My mother approached the nutritional-information label of every box with a magnifying glass. My father pop-quizzed chefs on preparation techniques.

But then I went to the University of Virginia. If college is the bridge between childhood and adult life, perhaps it's fitting that it is home to many artificial secrets. We want to sit at the adult dinner table come Thanksgiving, yet we're not quite ready to give up the oath that gets us admission to the backyard tree house.

So we create clubs. We make up secrets for the sake of having secrets to keep. UVA had its plethora of secret societies including the Zs, the IMPs, the Seven Society, and the Society of the Purple Shadows. They give out student scholarships, paint emblems on the grounds, and lay wreaths on each anniversary of Mr. Jefferson's death, but their rosters are never divulged. The only acknowledgment of a Seven's identity is after his death, when the university chapel's bell is rung out seven times on the day of his burial.