I Shudder Page 9
Before I could answer, someone had shoved one of Abby’s books into my hand, while someone else had grabbed my wallet and removed $49.99. The next thing I knew, I was back out on the sidewalk. I opened the book in my hand, to see what Abby had scribbled on the title page. It said, “To that kooky old guy—You got gabby with Abby!!! Live and Love, Abby McA!!!” At first I allowed her a certain measure of respect, for resisting the preteen impulse to add tiny hearts or smiley faces to her signature, but then I saw the rubber-stamped addendum, in shimmery purple ink, reading “Yumbies 2 U!!!”
“Oh, Shabar,” I said the next morning, as I sat up in bed, relishing my ice water and my bowl of Alpha-Bits. I consider Alpha-Bits to be a classic cereal, as the quarter-inch, sugar-drenched letters not only taste scrumptious but, arguably, provide most Americans with their primary reading material. “I wonder,” I asked Shabar, “is this Abby phenomenon perhaps entirely acceptable? Is she simply a hardworking, unassuming, totally adorable great American, can-do success story?” Shabar thought this over, as the white tiger cub now perched on his shoulder playfully swatted Shabar’s cheek with his paw. Shabar, whose face was now a vivid plaid, smiled with all of the unreachable allure of a worthwhile hallucination, and he handed me the remote.
My remote has at least thirty buttons, of different shapes and sizes, for changing channels, playing previously recorded programs, or muting that rollicking children’s show about a young girl who’s an ordinary high school student by day and a wholesome rock star in a heavy, cheap, blond wig by night. I turned on the set and watched as Abby began to demonstrate how to create her Sizzlin’ Super Bowl Sunday Supermix, by taking a large plastic bowl and stirring together microwave popcorn, mini-Triscuits, Gummi worms, and tiny plastic footballs. As she grabbed a handful of this multitextured treat and opened her mouth Sizzlin’ Superbowl Sunday wide, I pointed my remote at the screen, and just as I was about to eliminate Abby electronically, something extraordinary and deeply satisfying occurred.
Abby began choking on one of the tiny plastic footballs. After a suspiciously long moment, crew members rushed out onto the set and an assistant director tried to Heimlich Abby, followed by a cameraman giving her mouth-to-mouth. But they were too late. Abby lay inert on the laminate pine floor of her Tuscan kitchen, a wiggling Gummi worm dangling from her drooping lower lip. This Gummi worm lent Abby the stature of a long-rotting cadaver, as if the happiest, jewel-toned maggots had been munching on her for days.
Abby’s death was the subject of a prime-time tribute special, a quickie paperback called Abby: The People’s Person, a second investigative cable program called Tiny Plastic Footballs: The Quiet Killer, and, a year later, a made-for-TV biopic in which Abby was played by a has-been sitcom star, who told TV Guide that “I grew up on Abby. I ate Abby. I loved her.”
But on the morning of the day after Abby’s death, I was pleased to turn on my television and see the return of Martha Stewart’s face, with her trademark barely disguised impatient sneer. I’m not completely certain, but I believe that during the closing credits Martha looked directly into the camera, right at me, and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
Good Enough to Eat
The strangest things can upset people, and I’m not talking about grinding poverty or global injustice, but about the mildest social behavior. I eat my breakfast cereal dry, with a spoon, without adding milk, and I sometimes empty sugar packets into the bowl as well, for a nice, sweet grit. This can cause public outrage. Total strangers have approached me in coffee shops and asked, “Aren’t you going to put some milk on those Wheat Chex? How can you eat it like that? It’s like eating dirt!” These food critics seem not only confounded, but angry, as if I’ve ruined their day or shattered some Judeo-Christian cereal commandment. I’ve never understood this response, so my answer is always, “Watch me.”
An unlikely number of people, and particularly my family, have always been obsessed with my diet. This is because, since I was born, I have never had the slightest interest in eating any sort of meat, fish, poultry, or vegetable. I wasn’t the sad-eyed victim of some childhood trauma; I was never frightened by a malevolent tube steak or a rampaging halibut. A greasy-haired stranger never lured me into his van and forced me to stroke an ear of corn, while he took photos. I don’t have what daytime talk shows and the Healthy Living sections of newspapers call food issues. What I have is a sweet tooth which has spread to all of my other organs. I probably have a sweet appendix.
From earliest childhood, I refused to eat anything I didn’t like, which meant just about everything. My parents were understandably distraught, especially regarding nutrition. They’d beg or coax or command me to nibble just an iota of hamburger or the slimmest slice of tomato, and, on extremely rare occasions, I might humor them, but then I’d immediately spit out the repellent cube of chicken or spinach that I’d briefly held on my tongue. I wasn’t being perversely defiant and I wasn’t the least bit concerned about slaughtering an innocent Elsie the cow or a blameless Sally the salmon. I just hated the stuff. Life would’ve been much easier if I’d pretended some moral high road and declared, “Until the American bald eagle is safe, and has been allowed to reproduce in sufficient quantities, I will only eat Mallomars.”
My parents tried everything, from tucking shreds of cutlet deep within a layer cake, to holding me down and trying to shove potato salad down my throat. My Aunt Lil was more savvy, because she favored bribery, offering me five dollars for one mouthful of veal parmesan. I still refused, especially because her offers stayed in the single digits; I was always waiting for her to hold up a drumstick and her checkbook and say, “Let’s make this interesting.”
I was eventually sent to a child psychiatrist, who gave me toys to play with while he asked leading questions. He seemed to assume that while I was distracted by a miniature train or a five-piece jigsaw puzzle I’d blurt out some deeply buried neurosis. There was no breakthrough, although I did want to ask him why all of the toys he provided were very basic, blond-wood educational playthings, mostly just rounded blocks with holes for little cylindrical people. If he’d stocked anything plastic that required batteries I might at least have come up with a juicy lie: “A year ago, when no one else was home, My Little Pony cantered into my room and touched me.”
As a result of watching far too many made-for-TV psychodramas, I did long for a repressed memory. In these TV movies, the heroine would lapse into a zombie-like state and hack someone to death, or a child would remain naggingly mute. An insightful therapist would usually hypnotize this leading character, who would then reveal multiple personalities, concocted because the character had once witnessed a human sacrifice, at an amusement park, or his mother having sex with his uncle. Once this memory was allowed to resurface, the character was cured. I didn’t need to be cured of anything, but I loved the idea of having seen something so gruesome and warping that I’d forgotten all about it. I begged my parents to tell me what I’d been through, and they’d think about it and say, “Gee, nothing really comes to mind. We’re sorry that your life is so boring.” The child psychiatrist did ultimately tell them that, for all my weirdness, I was well-adjusted, and that they should probably just leave me alone and see what happened. “Like a time bomb,” my mother later commented.
I was a physically healthy child, even on a diet of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, milk, and brownies; these were my basic food groups, and pretty much all I ate. Even now, as an adult, when I tell people this, they often insist that I’m kidding. “You only ate Wonder Bread and candy corn? That’s ridiculous, you must’ve eaten something else, your parents would never have let you live on crap. You’re lying. You’d be dead.”
There are two aspects of such a response that I find interesting and, at times, maddening. First off, the idea that I’m lying. Why would I lie about my diet? To nab a larger chunk of birthday cake? To seem more needy, or more accomplished, on Halloween? To irritate people as they slog through their yummy heaps of corned-beef hash? My im
minent death is the other real conversation stopper. When I was in college, I developed a deep and lasting fondness for Pringles. I realize that such potato chips might, in a stretch, be considered a vegetable, but Pringles are made from some unholy partnership of potato derivatives and maybe even newsprint or styrofoam packing pellets, stamped into identical chiplike shapes that nestle conveniently inside the familiar cardboard cylinders. And, I’ll confess, while I relish the searing chemical tang of Pringles, although never in the odious Pizza or Sour Cream and Chives flavorings, I also find the product to be aesthetically pleasing. Pringles are the snack equivalent of teakwood nesting tables, or low-cost modular housing. If a Danish architect had created Pringles, he’d have won international design awards. I’ve always tried to imagine the marketing prodigy who came up with the Pringles concept: “I know exactly what the world is waiting for—a food that stacks.”
As an undergraduate, I not only consumed endless, tidy piles of Pringles, I also saved hundreds of the cardboard canisters and glued them together to form the base for a coffee table, and I dreamed of a World’s Fair Home of Tomorrow built entirely of Pringles cans, especially the thronelike armchairs and the undulating headboards. Someone who saw my hoard of Pringles containers told me, quite seriously, “Paul, you’ve eaten so many Pringles that when you die, the mortician won’t have to do anything, because you’ll already be embalmed.”
Pringles are one of those foodlike substances that offend high-minded people, but the treats that really bring out the frowns and the picket signs are another of my mainstays, the adorable Peeps. Peeps began as Easter-time, acid yellow baby chicks made of marshmallow, with sooty black eyes, and are now sold year-round in the forms of everything from thick, flat marshmallow jack-o’-lanterns to jolly, mint green marshmallow Christmas trees. Peeps are usually about three inches high, and they’re available in families of six or eight, attached to their siblings in a Siamese-twin fashion. While billions of Peeps are sold annually, whenever I eat them, fresh from their cardboard-and-cellophane homes, onlookers will do everything but vomit, and transmit picture-phone images of me to their friends, accompanied by the text message “GROSS!!!”
Maybe this is because Peeps represent the purest, lumpiest, most unashamed form of refined white sugar, dusted with additional sugar crystals. When I eat Peeps, I’m telling the world, “Yes, that’s right, I’m swallowing a hot pink marshmallow kitty, and I like it.” There was a cable-TV program that documented how Peeps are made, and it showed unlimited hordes of Peeps bouncing merrily down a conveyor belt, right toward the camera. I came.
After I left college, nothing changed, neither my specialized food intake nor the reactions. I lived, and continue to flourish, on bagels, Kit Kat bars, Frosted Flakes, toast, cashews, Yodels, orange juice, Ritz crackers, Oreos, Hostess cupcakes, and waffles. And I know what you’re thinking: Orange juice? That’s disgusting! Yes, I occasionally allow a fruit selection to creep onto my menu, if it’s been sufficiently depulped and artificially sweetened, and if it arrives in a clean, bright color, as if it were a melted and homogenized gardening clog.
A common question: Why aren’t I hugely overweight? Probably because I exercise, and because I secretly believe that people only pack on the pounds if they mix foods. A pork chop and a Twinkie will bulk you right up, but the Twinkie alone is practically a vitamin supplement. I know that this theory sounds improbable, but it’s no more deluded than the people who gorge only on dark chocolate because many years ago some obscure scientific study claimed that dark chocolate is slightly less fattening than milk chocolate, and that the darker variety is rich in antioxidants, or free radicals, or unregistered voters. This now mythic study is every lonely single woman’s mantra.
A corollary concern: What about my teeth? While I’ve had plenty of dental work, so has everyone else in my family, none of whom are addicted to sugar. So, while we’ve all had root canals, I’ve also had every known Keebler product. I win.
Another question: What happens if I go out to eat at a restaurant, or to a dinner party at someone’s home? The answer: I tend to have a perfectly nice time, while everyone else gets nervous. Eating out is a social occasion, and I enjoy the company and the conversation. But if a host or a dining companion doesn’t know me, they can grow anxious. When I politely refuse her bouillabaisse, a hostess will usually ask me if I’m on a special diet and require something kosher, salt-free, or nonalcoholic. To save time, I usually just tell the truth and admit that I’ve already eaten, or I ask if the chef could prepare low-sodium Tootsie Pops or some Milky Ways blessed by an Orthodox rabbi. And while I can sympathize with a partygiver’s wish to please a wayward guest, that partygiver really shouldn’t worry about me. I’m fine, and I’m a cheap date.
At a restaurant, when I listen attentively as a waitperson recites the specials, and then I don’t order them, that waitperson will often look wounded, so sometimes I’ll say that I’m just having dessert, without adding, I’m just having dessert as a way of life.
Which brings us to gourmet treats. People who almost believe me, and who have begun to accept that I’ll never be sampling the rump roast, sometimes imagine that I’m a candy connoisseur. They outdo themselves, buying me elaborately gold-foil-wrapped boxes of liqueur-filled truffles, or dense slices of flourless mousse. While I appreciate their efforts, they’ve still got it all wrong. I don’t just like sweets; I demand crap. I like old-fashioned, carb-heavy, American milk chocolate, labeled Hershey’s or Nestlé or Nabisco and packed with nothing more complicated than peanuts, caramel, and whatever is actually in nougat. Sometimes I feel like a hard-bitten gumshoe in a well-thumbed noir paperback, grunting, “Just the Three Musketeers bar, ma’am.” A friend did once go too far in proving that she understood my taste buds. She frosted an aluminum pan of just-thawed Sara Lee brownies with an additional layer of canned frosting and rainbow sprinkles, draping the whole thing with a strand of artificial pearls. I loved the gesture, but even I experienced sugar shock. And, by the way, I only speak a single foreign phrase, but it’s come in mighty handy: the Spanish for “rainbow sprinkles” is chespitas de colores.
My diet has led me to a certain knee-jerk empathy with other eccentrics. Whenever I hear the words “Oh, you’re just being silly,” or “Just try it,” or “Everyone’s staring,” I feel an immediate bond with whoever’s being picked on or pushed against their will, to dress more acceptably or calm down or play tennis. I can instantly side with any underdog, which sounds good-hearted until I hang around with people attacking Nixon or Lenin. I’ll feel a perilous urge to say something like, “Excuse me, but you didn’t even know John Wilkes Booth, so why are you judging him?”
My older brother, Evan, for example, was expelled from high school, in the sixties, for having shoulder-length hair. My parents didn’t understand why he couldn’t trim a few inches, just to get back to class and avoid all the controversy. I knew exactly why: it was his hair, and his business, and if long hair was also an effective “Fuck you” to a rigid high school principal, all the better. And when my folks tried to grab Evan in the living room and hack off his hair with a scissors, I was glad that he shoved them away. My parents weren’t monsters; they just wanted their child back in school. But they were wrong, and years later I grew my own hair longer, as a show of solidarity. Sadly, I looked like a dateless sorority girl in desperate need of a makeover.
Being different is often seen as being stubborn, or even spoiled, and I do agree that parents should encourage their kids to try new experiences, and even strange, brown foods. But sometimes parents worry too much. After about the first six seconds of life, a child’s personality is pretty much set, so a parent is off the hook. If your kid is going to grow up to be a criminal, like an arsonist or the vice president, it’s already a done deal.
Even today, my mother still frets, over what I’m not eating and, even more bizarrely, over whether I need to use the bathroom. This latter concern may be a somewhat Jewish fetish, because the Cossacks were notorious
for not letting Jews use the bathroom, or for only allowing them to use grimy Amoco station restrooms. My brother still has long hair, and I think that, deep in her soul, my mother still dreams that he might one day decide to head first to the barber, and then back to tenth grade. The first time she ever seemed a little more free was when, at some point in my early twenties, for some reason or other, my mother cursed at me, calling me a little shit. She’s not especially prim, but in some new way, she sounded both tickled and relaxed. We were both pleased, because finally I could be a little shit, and maybe it wasn’t all her fault.
And now, a beautiful story with the happiest ending. During my early days in New York I befriended someone who worked in a candy store. I asked him something that I’d always yearned to know: After Easter, what happens to the unsold chocolate bunnies? Maybe it’s because, as a Jewish child, I was denied these delicacies, but I have always treasured these bunnies, especially the hollow variety, the bunnies that the boxes call “Farmer Pete” or “Harvest Bob,” the ones that grow bulging, hard-sugar eyes and hold a bright orange, hard-sugar carrot. My candy store connection told me that the suddenly out-of-season rabbits were given to foster kids and orphans, and while I loved them dearly, I instantly volunteered to kill my parents. The guy took pity, and that year, on the day after Easter, as proof that Jesus had indeed been resurrected, I received two large shopping bags filled with unwanted bunnies. I lined them up on the shelves in my refrigerator, which then resembled a shooting gallery, and, day after day, I ate them. I always started with their heads, so they wouldn’t suffer.