The lobsters never knew what hit them. They'd been languishing in their tank, perhaps exchanging the occasional urine-laced greeting (see It's All About the Sex), when they were yanked from their cold water paradise and plopped in the pot. Suddenly it was all hot water and darkness, and for once, no one heard them scream. (Too much kitchen noise.) Minutes later, their tender flesh had been diced, mixed with mayonnaise and scallions, and dabbed onto split buns. Alongside the lobster rolls were arrayed other horrors, like lobster corn fritters -- the chef's latest invention. Perhaps the lobsters' hard feelings would have softened had they known that a hated competitor had suffered similar humiliation. The menu also included crab mixed with cucumber on crackers. (For readers who guessed that the lobster's hated competitor was the cucumber -- or the cracker -- let me recommend my excellent book, THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS.)

It's my fault. The occasion for this murderous brutality was my recent book party, sponsored by Harvard Book Store. If the New England seafood universe has a center, the party occurred close to it, amidst the lobster-blood-splattered revelry of Jasper White's Summer Shack in Cambridge, Mass. In the Summer Shack's main hall, boisterous diners crowded around picnic tables. The cracking sounds of lobster shells punctuated their chatter, and crustacean juices dribbled down their bibs, staining their pants and dresses. But in a cordoned-off section near the back, the revelry was augmented by a deeper appreciation for lobster life -- and lobster death.

About forty of us were corralled back there, and our evening began with a pair of live lobsters on a video screen, dancing in a combative embrace, accompanied by the civilizing strains of a Viennese waltz. This intimacy was the perfect accompaniment to our consumption of the aforementioned rolls and fritters, composed, communion-like, of our hero.

Which makes me wonder if there isn't a lobster-crucifixion scene somewhere in the movies, because I have come across other lobster scenes that are nearly as strange. It was with a few of these movie clips that I kicked off the evening's formal festivities. And what struck my guests and I was how primal are the urges that this animal evokes.

A few days earlier at my local video store, I had posed what I believed to be an impossible question to the staff. Placing a teetering stack of videos on the counter, I had challenged them to guess what the films had in common. My pile contained "Flashdance," "Crocodile Dundee 2," "Annie Hall," "Splash," "Little Mermaid," "Finding Nemo," "Summer Rental," "Leonard Part 6" (a sci-fi flick starring Bill Cosby -- so bad that the proprietor tried to shout me out of the store for renting it) and "Multiple Maniacs" (a pornographic freak show by John Waters). The nautical theme is obvious in several of these, but the staff struggled to tie in the outliers, and no one guessed lobster. Then, to my surprise -- and great annoyance -- a voice piped up from the back. "Lobsters!" I was especially annoyed because he was cheating; earlier, he'd fielded my request for a movie called "Lobsterman from Mars." (They didn't have it.)

"Lobsterman from Mars," which I'm sorry to say I have yet to view in its entirety, contains a scene in which a beautiful young woman, mud-stained and tousled after some sort of tussle, shouts, "Okay, you win! Come and get me, lobster!" I'm tempted to envision the circumstances under which, say, Linda Greenlaw might mouth those words, but I shouldn't -- she very kindly blurbed my book. Indeed, if you've ever witnessed the lobster scene John Waters' "Multiple Maniacs," you'll know that "come and get me, lobster" are words to be avoided at all costs -- unless, of course, you actually want to have sexual intercourse with a six-foot lobster. Near the end of her ordeal, the human victim, her face the very vision of ecstasy, screams, "Oh, lobster!"

So you can see what primal urges were aroused among us at the Summer Shack. Having just consumed gobs of lobster, my guests and I had a hard time staying in our seats during the sexually suggestive meat-sucking scene (that's lobster meat) from "Flashdance." Then we nearly touched off a brawl, inspired by the quarreling over lobster dinners that occurs in "Crocodile Dundee 2" and "Summer Rental." And we wept, at least inwardly, over the fate of the ill-fated lobsters handled with such insecurity by Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in "Annie Hall." (As a former commercial fisherman, I was confirmed in my suspicion that what Woody Allen needed wasn't therapy, but a job.) After all this primal trauma, the lobster-eating scene from "Splash" was the perfect antidote.

And, ultimately, eating lobster and enjoying it -- though perhaps not with the carnivorous gusto of Daryl Hannah -- was the purpose of the evening. For me, and I hope for my guests, the enjoyment of the food was augmented by the fascinating details we learned about the lives of lobsters. It's good, I think, for us to know more about our food. Death entwined with life. For me, it really is a kind of communion.

Not all would agree. After my guests had gotten their books signed and had departed, our chef, Jasper White, a man of imperial stature, girth, and reputation, lowered himself into a chair with a sigh. In tune with the evening's primal undertow, Jasper recounted the rage he'd once unleashed. He'd been on TV, filming a cooking show with Julia Child, when it came time to dispatch the lobster. He'd done so by plunging a sword-sized kitchen knife into the lobster's head and splitting the animal down the middle, the act broadcast to perhaps millions of viewers, accompanied by a fearful crunching sound. The anti-cruelty community mobilized immediately. They mounted protests against the gruesome lobster murder.

They were unaware, perhaps, that a lobster has no identifiable pain receptors, and a nervous system similar in complexity to that of a housefly or mosquito. That's not to say that lobsters might still feel something akin to pain; we just don't know. All the more reason, though, to plunge a sword-sized kitchen knife into the lobster's head; that is by far the quickest and most humane way to dispatch the animal. Certainly, the death is gruesome. But may I go so far as to suggest that like the primal nature of communion, witnessing the death of what you eat can be spiritual? Those lobsters gave their lives for us. I'm not necessarily suggesting that, instead of boiling them, we should crucify them. But if there were a lobster crucifixion scene in the movies, I would watch it.