Poultry as Passage

Discreetly wrapping up your first pair of blood-stained panties and burying them at the bottom of the campground dumpster…

Getting your first pocket knife and carving your name into a picnic table… Hearing, for the first time, that giving birth is like squeezing a razor blade-adorned watermelon through your throat…Writing your first poem and reading it to a mirror… Divulging, on your knees, your first Jaegermeister to a receptive porcelain ear... Boarding a plane alone, for the first time, to a foreign place… Learning to finger unknown Beethoven movements on your own smooth corpora cavernosa glans… being poked in a sensitive zone where no pocket knife has been before…

These are true Rites of Passage.

And, well…, I thought since I’d spelunked these passages before, I was pretty much done with the Coming-Of-Age ritualistic nonsense.

I mean…, What other silliness could there really be left?

I’ve already ridden without training wheels, navigated my first munchies, slept on cardboard boxes, signed soul-claiming contracts, and braved the consumption of VeggieMite…

There couldn’t possibly be more ticket-checkers, waiting to negotiate my passage into adulthood, could there?…

Yes, there could.

I learned yesterday, that there is a dude (who also works minimum-wage security at the rio of Stix border) standing at the gates of Adulthood, checking to make sure that all United-states-of-Americans have cooked their own Thanksgiving meals (without the help of their families).

I learned that if you are a USA passport-holder and have not yet a)burned a witch, b)been a CIA snitch abroad or c)baked a bird bitch for the holidays, you will be denied passage to the Land of Grown-Upedness.

Fearful that we wouldn’t make it past the frontera and would remain perpetual stag-party brothers of Peter Pan, Mr. E and I decided yesterday to roast an innocent winged beast, stuff her with tasty potions, and give her company on the plate.

After six hours, our meal turned out great (despite our many outspoken exclamations of “What the hell is this globby thing?!”, “Are her legs supposed to be limply flailing like that?!” and “What?! You have to cook a casserole?!”).

We are both ecstatic.

But…,

Both of our Visas are still mysteriously pending at the border…