Nama Gomi

Lest you think less of me, let me start this off by emphasizing that in general, I’m not a squeamish person. I don’t have an issue with spiders or snakes or blood. I’ve been called on to perform emergency evacuations of cockroaches and bats. In college, when the light was out and my roommates complained they could hear mice, I’d usually sleepily roll over and ask what they wanted me to do about it.

There is one thing I’m terribly squeamish about, however. In Japanese, there’s a word for it: nama gomi. Nama gomi (lit: fresh or live trash) is the food that winds up at the bottom of your sink drain. The food no one wants to eat. Think about it: all the potato peels and chicken skin and green bean ends and yogurt curds becoming slimy together and intermixing with soapy water. Now, this would be all very well and good if the nama gomi was mixing in a trash bag or a compost heap. But no. The problem with nama gomi is that you have to reach in and pull the slimy out of the sink drain with your bare hand and then dump it into a bag.

It’s somehow somewhat acceptable for a woman to ask a man to kill a spider, or for someone to pale at the sight of blood. However, asking someone to take care of the nama gomi comes across as just plain spoiled. I also know it’s a silly fear—I’ve met people who’d probably be thankful for my nama gomi, who’d rinse it off and recook it and make it into something approaching delicious. This isn’t anywhere near as gross as the fact that we waste enough food for it to be someone else’s meal.

I still can’t get over my gag reflex though, so prevention is the best defense. I try very hard not to let nama gomi wind up in my sink and usually scrape plates and peel potatoes into my trash. The only good nama gomi is no nama gomi. However, when preparing a feast with several other cooks, there’s no legitimate way of saying “I’m sorry, I’m afraid of potato peels in the sink. Can you peel into this full-to-bursting and inconveniently located trash bag instead?”

We decided to put yesterday’s cleanup off till today, and I went to bed with a sinking feeling, envisioning the nama gomi that awaited my hand in the sink drain. Whole pieces of chicken carcass, plastered with apple seeds! Lurking orange pulp mixed in with squash peel! I was nominally tempted to open one of the bottles of wine our guests had brought over before approaching the beast, an occasional strategy for cleaning up other people’s vomit, but then Brett pulled out handfuls of nama gomi when he was filling up the sink and bagged it before I had to touch it. Now it’s safely outside of my apartment! One day, I'll grow up, but till then, back to prevention. I'm happy there's a word for it.