Whilst on tour through the states with a buxom young Anglophile I met on a chat site for…read moresci-fi+Fantasy enthusiasts back in 08, we got to talking about the American-staple; the Philly Cheese Steak. I had always imagined a steak, full, raw and red, injected with cheese, perhaps even basted in it. "No baby, you're dead wrong," she whispered coyly, squeezing my quads and delts as she pulled up at Penn Station East Coast Subs. I looked up at the glowing neon sign, the vast, boundless fields with only highway connecting them on either side.
"Gosh, what a ... rough and rugged eatery!" I exclaimed, a pitch higher as her hands moved ever more adventurous across my body.
After we'd calmed down and entered the premises it was apparent that this place was closing, business was slowing, but the experience was there to behold. This was real America. Looking around me I could feel the ghosts of long-haul truckers waylayed by hunger in their mid-west hauls moving inside of me, then through me, to order from the counter that American classic. Philly Cheese Steak. As though possessed I too now made that same motion forward and danced this same, timeless dance. Oh, we knew the coroners would shake their heads, but did we spare a care for them and their bloated profession? Insurers be damned, we were going to live for ourselves, for the road, for spirit and country. Penn Station Subs also boasted of home-made Lemonade and home-made fries. Neither of these had blown my hair back in my home town of Cranbrook, Kent but here in true America, honest America, it made sense. My woman looked at me now, dead in the eye, "this is how we feed our men in America, this is how I'm feeding you tonight", maybe it was those same spirits of trucking men in transit that took me, but I took her by the waist, pulled her close in front of the cashier, and spoke soft, low and firm, "baby, you KNOW IT"
After allowing her to pay for this much needed sustenance, we returned to her Ford Super Duty, I unwrapped this hoagie and received the nourishment of the Americas. I took of fry, and drank of the lemonade and let philly cheese nourish my body, and my soul.