Popcorn, Day Old, Seattle Center, 2009
The hummus tasted good at the time, but now he had a craving for something, maybe something sweet, that might eliminate the thick, smokey aftertaste it had left in his mouth.
It was late, 10:30, almost time for bed, so the practical thing would have been to simply brush his teeth and call it a night.
But then he got to thinking....
He reasoned that a piece of licorice, which is what he had after dinner, was not dessert. Not in the classic sense. Not that every dessert had to be a true classic, of course, like pie or cake or peach cobbler or a thick slice of fudge. But one small, bite-sized, semi-sweet piece of black licorice does not produce smiles and ahhh’s when eaten. It is almost like taking a pill, really.
In his mind a meal has three components:
1. A salad.
2. An entrée.
3. A dessert.
Tonight he did not have dessert, a real dessert, so the meal felt incomplete. He felt incomplete. This is what he reasoned.
And this is why he got out of his pajamas and back into his clothes and walked four blocks to the Seven Eleven to find some real dessert so that the meal could be completed--in the classic sense--before he retired for the night.
He headed straight to the freezer in the back of the store and eyed their rotating selection of Haagen Dasz and Ben And Jerry’s ice cream. He was in the mood for something slightly--slightly--more decadent than plain vanilla or chocolate or strawberry.
But every offering seemed to include four or five different incongruous flavors in one pint. Peanut butter with marshmello and Oreo chunks and cherries and cookie dough and chocolate covered jelly beans and pretzels and banana pudding and raspberry swirls and cotton candy and M & M’s and Cap’n Crunch and cinnamon sticks and graham cracker crumbs and….
The freezer door was fully fogged now. The clerk behind the counter cleared his throat loudly and said, “You pick now?”
He had to make a choice. Or did he? He could walk away from the store right now empty handed and go home and go to bed and everything would be just fine in the morning and he did not need a classic dessert and who was he fooling?
He selected Chunky Waves of Grain (butterscotch ice cream with candy coated bread crumbs and dried apple shavings). “Now, that’s a dessert!” he joked with the clerk who handed him his change and said nothing.
Back home and in his pajamas he sat in front of the TV and scraped away at Chunky Waves of Grain, determined to eat only a quarter of the pint, at most. “This will be my dessert for the rest of the week,” he promised himself.
The syndicated crime scene investigation program was very compelling, and by the time it was over at midnight he had eaten the entire pint, despite his best intentions.
Now he did not feel well at all. He felt bloated.
He did not feel complete.
His sister once told him that eating licorice helped alleviate nausea. So he ate a piece then went to bed.
Warning Sign, Abandoned Building, Westlake Avenue North, 2009
