Sin of the Month • Abby Bardi
	Crabs

I had decided I wasn’t going to eat crabs any more. But when I passed my doctoral exam, I felt the need to celebrate, and until a few months ago, crabs were my favorite food and I had eaten them every chance I got.

For years, I had gone with a large group of friends every week to a truly terrible seafood restaurant, a restaurant so bad that a review in the Baltimore Sun gave it 1 1/2 stars ("Poor"), but which served dollar crabs and dollar beers on weeknights. The price was right, and the crabs were often okay, though sometimes they smelled a little weird, and the atmosphere was, well, as the Sun review points out, "Fair or uneven" (two stars). But the service was friendly, if sporadic, and the management put up with my friend Bob, who has a tendency to stand on his chair and yell in restaurants.

You will recall that Bob is the publisher/editor/writer/delivery boy of The Main Street Gossip Rag, the newest news source in my town. Despite his radical commit-ment to vegetarianism, Bob could always be counted on to attend Crab Night, and though he bemoaned our carnivorousness, he sometimes brought a few pieces of crab home for his cat, to whom he considers himself betrothed.

A few months ago, the seafood restaurant suddenly closed down. We still have no idea why–it was a dump, but it had been a dump for years, so who knows what happened, but one day in August I drove past and saw that their sign no longer said "$ Crabs $ Beers," and in fact said nothing at all.

"You see," Bob said when I told him. "There is a God, and He has finally punished them for killing all those innocent crabs."

"Shush," I said. We were in the café on Main Street where we hang out, and I knew that he was likely to start shouting, "Repent! Repent!" For some reason, Bob finds organized religion extremely comical, and he once attended Crab Night dressed as a monsignor.

I made several attempts to find other crab sources. Over the years, the Crab Night regulars had dwindled, and it was now just Bob, Chrissy, occasionally my husband, when he was not doing something political, which he usually was, and me. Chrissy’s boyfriend Billy had gotten busy in his recording studio, and all the other regulars had gotten tired of the 1 1/2-star food.

I should explain why Chrissy is called Chrissy. It’s because ten years ago, when Bob met her, he asked her, "So, what do you like to be called? Chris? Christina?"

"Anything but Chrissy," she said.

Despite the fact that most Maryland souvenirs have crabs printed on them, it’s harder to find crabs than you might imagine. Their season gets shorter every year in efforts to conserve their waning population; in 2002, female spawning was at its lowest level since the collection of data began. I knew that a lot of "Maryland" crabs were flown in from Texas and Louisiana (two states not known for their environmental consciences) and at some point during my quest, it occurred to me that Bob was right–that eating crab really was an evil thing to do. It was bad for the environment, bad for the crabs themselves, and also, it began to occur to me, probably not the most healthful practice.

At that point, I decided to do an internet search for "blue crabs" and "toxins," and numerous articles spilled onto the screen confirming my worst fears: that crabs were full of dioxin, DDT, PCBs, and a host of other scary chemicals that had taken up residence in our waters.

The problem was, I really loved crabs. For the weight-conscious individual with a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, crabs are the perfect food. They take a long time to eat, so you don’t consume many calories, and you spend hours just picking away at them, pick, pick, pick. Eating crabs is a ritual–you have to know where to crack the shell, what parts not to eat. Maryland natives have shown me how to position my knife on the claw and strike with the mallet at precisely the right spot, and how to cut off the ends of the crabs with a knife and deftly scrape away the lungs. I have become a connoisseur of bay seasoning, and it takes me two seconds of lifting a crab to figure out if it’s a good one or not.

But after reading about all those toxins, I found that I no longer craved crabs. In fact, I began to find them kind of disgusting.

"I have given up crabs," I announced to Bob and Chrissy over a decaf chai at the café.

"Finally, you’ve seen the light!" Bob said.

"No, I’ve seen the toxins," I explained.

"Well, we’ve all got to die from some-thing," Chrissy said when I had finished.

"No," I said. "I’m never going to die."

"You’re giving up crabs? You, Crabby Abby?"

"Yep."

"I’ll believe it when I see it," she said, rolling her eyes.

It wasn’t until a month later that I saw Chrissy again at the café, where we had gone to play music, along with my husband and Bob, calling ourselves The Velveetas.

"Long time no see," I said, as we climbed the steep stairs with our guitars. "I’m used to seeing you every week. This is weird."

"You’re the one who wanted to give up crabs," she said.

"Surely our friendship is based on something more than crustaceans."

"Nope," she said. "It’s all about the crabs."

So this is how I fell off the crab wagon. A few weeks later, I called Chrissy and said, "Okay, here’s the deal. I will go back to eating crabs. But from now on, I will only eat them with you."

"That’s as it should be," she said.

Which is how we found ourselves at a famous crab restaurant outside of Balti-more to celebrate my passing the doctoral exam. It was just Chrissy, Bob, and me–my husband had gone to a county budget meeting, and Billy was in the studio.

"I’m sorry," the hostess told us as we asked for a table. "We don’t have crabs tonight."

"What do you mean, you don’t have crabs?" Chrissy asked. "Is this not a famous crab restaurant?"

"No one has them this week," the hostess said in a tired voice, as if she had been explaining this all day.

"There is a God!" Bob shouted, adding a few "repents" for emphasis.

We contemplated getting back in my car and driving around Baltimore all night, searching for another Famous Crab Restaurant, but thought better of it and decided to stay. I had a soft-shell crab that was so deep-fried that I could barely locate it, and Chrissy had Crab Fluff, a ball of inedible goo. Bob had a baked potato, mashed potatoes, lima beans, and a salad. All evening, Bob raved about the lima beans, and was still talking about them several days afterward.

When we were not discussing lima beans, we talked about the events of the day, to which Bob had evidently not been privy.

"You haven’t heard about Michael Jackson?" We were incredulous.

"I got rid of my TV," he said.

"Why?"

"Doesn’t it seem weird to you that people all have jobs where they work the same hours as everyone else? Then they come home and watch TV, and that’s their reward. Then the TV tells them what to think–it tells them what they’re supposed to like, and be like, and how to dress, and what’s cool, and what’s not cool."

"HBO is good," I said.

"No, no," Bob said. "HBO is not good. HBO is part of the problem. You buy HBO and you think you’re opting out of media control, but it’s just as bad. You listen to NPR and you think you’re getting better news than the networks, but on NPR tonight, they didn’t even mention the protests against Bush in London."

This was true; we had listened to NPR news on our way to the restaurant.

"The news just tells you what they want you to hear. It’s all part of the huge mind control project going on in this country. I want to escape from it–I don’t want any part of it."

"Is that why you write The Main Street Gossip Rag?"

"No."

"Why, then?" Clearly, it was not for the money. The Rag costs him 80 cents per copy to produce and has a cover price of a nickel. Last week, he clipped a dollar bill into each Rag, though someone ended up stealing them all. We think it was a guy we know who lives in a tent in the woods.

"I don’t know," he said.

As I listened to Bob talk about media mind control, even though it was the kind of thing I had said myself a thousand times, I suddenly saw it as even more vast and sinister than I had imagined. It seemed to me that although I had tried to avoid it, Media had seeped into me and made me think that Michael Jackson somehow mattered.

I suddenly saw Bob as a revolutionary, a visionary, a true patriot, and I wish I could tell you that I then stood on my chair and yelled, "I have seen the light! I have repented!"

Instead, I said, "Let’s try again next week. I’m sure somebody, somewhere has crabs."

"Definitely," Chrissy said.

Bob looked at us with infinite sadness, but also, patience and hope. Some day, perhaps soon, when I find crabs again, I know he will be there.