Day 6 - I'm an American Goddammit!

This is going to be a short one because Penny and Alex are coming over for dinner, and I’m going to get ba-fucked up. Why? Because I earned in the form of facing down one of my biggest demons: fast food on an empty stomach, when I am pressed for time.

            So, I didn’t eat a thing all day, and then I got to the end of the day where I would normally be ready to kill people because I was so hungry, and I finally left the office. The car had no gas in it – seriously, the miles to empty displace registered “0” and I’d already driven a couple miles beyond that – which is a thing that drives some of my friends crazy, but I really hate stopping for gas, so I’m always pushing it to the very limits. The problem with this is that to get gas, and because I was running on vapors, I would need to go to the nearest station, which is right next to Taco Bell and McDonald’s and I’m a HUGE excuse maker, particularly when I’m jonzin’ for some delicious buckets of, “for the love of all things good and right in this world, don’t do it Dave!!” or as I like to call it, sodium fat bombs. You know, cheeseburgers, or Taco Bell burritos.

            I justified it all the way to the gas station: I’d been good for a few days; I could still have a salad; the whole point was to eat what you would normally eat, but also eat a salad. I mean, I had my head around this one, so when I pulled up to the pumps I had a plan. I would fill up the car, swing into Taco Bell for some of my usual – and you’ll have to wait for the next post to see what that means, but it is REALLY fucking bad – and then I would jet on up the highway to make a big pasta dinner for Allison, Penny and Alex.

            You see what’s missing there is that it doesn’t matter if I don’t eat all day, I still have to eat the salad. Those are the rules. If I only eat one meal a day, it MUST be a salad. If I eat more than one meal a day I can eat anything I want, provided I exchange one meal for a salad. This is science motherfuckers, and the rules must be followed. The experiment can’t be tampered with.

            I knew this.

            I understood it in my soul.

            Yet, the pumps are so close to Taco Bell that you can smell the food. You can smell the grossness of their food, and I could almost feel the fat on my tongue. You know what I’m talking about? Like when you’re so hungry that it’s like when you haven’t eaten in a long time. Like when you say you’re starving, but at the same time you know what starving really looks like because they show it on TV all the time, and you feel a little bad about it, but you’re an American so you’re ‘starving,’ and that’s all there is to it. Like that.

            You know what I did though? I pumped the gas and drove the fuck away.

            That’s right: I bought my American gasoline, acquired through divine conquest and sheer will of the American fighting forces; got in my American car, built on the blood, sweat, and tears, of American, union workers, raped and pillaged by CEOs who earn 475 times what their labor force earns, who were bailed out by those exact same people, when they had totally fucked up their companies, all the while talking about free markets, and the capitalist American way; and headed right the fuck past McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and even the delicious gas station hot dog. (Yea, you know they kick ass. Especially the ones on the roller grill, that look like hot dogs, but are actually cheeseburger tubes, and you slather them in free chili and even more cheese, and have to eat them with a fork because the bun is so totally soaked with grease and plastic cheese. Go ahead, say you don’t know what I’m talking about, but if you do, you’re a liar, and you’ve never been on a three-day Bourbon bender anywhere near a 7-11 at two in the morning. Hell, you’re a lesser American. You don’t know how much our boys have sacrificed for you to be able to eat that shit. You should be ashamed of yourself for turning your nose up it. Hell, I’m ashamed to know you.

            The thing you’ve got to understand is this: eating like this is at the core of my identity, so breaking away from that is no small thing. It’s in my muscle memory, and the taste receptors on my tongue demand fat, and lots of it, and I’m more than willing to oblige.

            For fuck’s sake, what I’m saying is, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE, bacon. And not just in some Williamsburg Hipster with a low-rider Schwinn bicycle, skinny jeans, and facial hair designed to compete in the next World Beard and Moustache Championships. I love bacon like a person who fathered six, apple wood smoked, pounds of it, raised it from infancy as a single father, working two jobs to pay its way through college, and will be proud upon my death to bequeath to it all my worldly possessions, including the homestead that’s been in the Williamson line for three hundred years.

            That kind of love.

            So, with every bacon festival that springs up, with every new shirt that shows the cuts of a pig all labeled bacon – fuck it man, I’ve got one, it’s funny – I die a little inside, because at the same time I appreciate the love bacon has received, particularly as of late, and by late I mean the last ten years, bacon is like family to me. One hates to see family behave the way bacon has been recently. I’m a Williamson after all, and we don’t act like that. It’s as if my beloved bacon has suddenly turned into Justin Bieber, and well, that just doesn’t suit me.

            But, you see what I’m saying, right? It’s not the same for me as it is for others, and when friends suggest I might want to up my game a bit and cut out the carbs while I’m at it, or train for a 5K, or maybe do a couple sit ups, I just don’t think they can even comprehend the level of eating I do.

            How much do I eat?

            Well, my next post will detail where much of the following calorie count comes from, but I sat down and figured out that for the last five or so years, I’ve been consuming between four and five thousand calories a day!

            I drove away from the Taco Bell.

            It was a big, fucking, deal.

            I headed for Dutton’s Farm Stand, where I bought the makings for Allison’s favorite dinner: fettuccini with fresh tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella cheese. While doing so I was eyeballing the potato chips like a Heroin junky who’s seriously needing to “get right,” and again I resisted.

            Want to know what I did?

            I did the most sensible damn thing I have ever done: I bought a snack for the ride up the hill to my house. Mind you, it’s only 8 miles, and I was getting ready to cook a huge pasta meal with friends, so it’s not like I couldn’t make it. I hadn’t eaten anything all day, what would another two hours be? Normally, I would have swung into McDonald’s for a couple double cheeseburgers, but on this night, I bought a small bag of cashews and a banana.

            I drove up the hill and, at the snack, made the pasta, found my stomach had shrunk or something, so I can only eat half my pasta, and got drunk as shit on Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey.

            It wasn’t hard, after all, I’d hardly had anything to eat.

            Also, the cashew nuts and banana? Yea, that’s today’s salad. Anyone got a problem with it can bite me.