Josh Nissenboim

cosmopsis: • Saddam Hussein, brutish even in his selection of food (boiled chicken, rice and hot water with honey) • Ted Bundy (he declined a special meal and was given the traditional breakfast) • Timothy McVeigh, obsessive to the end (two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream) • John Wayne Gacy (a bucket of KFC original recipe chicken, french fries, a dozen deep-fried shrimp and a pound of strawberries) - I think I would have to go with foods of the Thanksgiving variety. And fried oysters.

** This is a critically important question. I ask myself often, “if I could eat anything in the world right now, what would it be”? And then I struggle more than if I just asked myself “what would you like to eat right now?”

I often arrive at some mysterious breed of mushrooms that I never will buy loose. You never know what these are really like. They are rarely central to a restaurant meal. It’d be good for a restaurant to offer a mushroom tasting to simply give someone the opportunity to taste all compartively and try to store the differences in memory.

But more importantly the question at hand: last meal?

I doubt the answer is fixed. If it’s impulsive in a death-row sense, then do you regret it when it’s served. Like did Saddam Hussein think “damn, i wish i had ordered female human calf.”

And at what point is a request absurd? “I want a billion grains of rice,” or something almost orderable “I want a Minnesota Loon, with 9 brussel sprouts from 9 different farms, each at least 500 miles away from one another.”

But really, think of your last meal. You won’t get to decide on most terms. Realistically you won’t get any special production or presentation. You’ll get canned hospital food, or simply an IV, or maybe a cornish hen that you don’t quite finish. Maybe you’ll make it yourself alone. Maybe you’ll burn it. Maybe you’ll undercook it. Maybe you’ll poison yourself and others on accident with it.

You probably won’t poop it or at least not all of it. Is your last bite of it memorable? What was that last swallow like? The last taste sensation. The last feeling of it moving down your throat. Is that general feeling of chewing, tasting and swallowing more releveant than what you chewed, tasted, swallowed?

What’s your last breath like? Your last heart beat? Last image to hit your eye? If your eyes are open, what’s the last image to hit your brain and where does the next frame of that image get clogged in your optical nerve?

Your last meal is like that, so in one of those unlikely instances where you physically order a last meal. I would consider asking for a piece of gum for dessert. When everything else is gone, you’ll maintain an oral sensation. You can chew it, hide it in your mouth, let the flavor go away and just have a texture to experience. A rubbery bland texture can be really satisfying. It can help ease the compounding stress of an injection or a switch. Something to focus on that isn’t necessarily god or heaven or guilt or fear. Maybe a pack of gum to wad in there. A package of Big League Chew. A roll of bubble tape.