Parting Glances
They slide down so neatly; 75 calories per quickie. I find myself indulging in the delectable savoring of one, two and sometimes three of what in the greasy spoon trade are called "sliders": small hamburgers with cheese slices, fried onions, kosher pickles, and garnishes of chili, mustard, ketchup. Yum.
I toast these juicy grillers with Creme Soda, and feel effervescently happy that my tab is under $10, including a generous tip. (As a kid I'd wolf down a half dozen 12-cent White Castles with a cherry coke. And had room for a chocolate ice cream dessert.)
I'm fastidious these days and do sliders only when the forbidden treat lures me onward to gluttony. It's an indulgence – junk food supreme – that, if done too often, loses mucho gusto. That's why I find a guy like Donald Gorske – holder of a Guinness Book of Records title for eating 25,000 Big Macs over a 20-year period – to be something of a gastronomic monomaniac – maybe a burger basket case.
(The two-a-day Big Mac habit for the 6-ft, 250 lb, 58-year-old Gorske translates – Weight Watchers take note – into 900 heads of lettuce, 1020 onions, 2100 whole pickles, 863 pounds of cheese, 200 gallons of special sauce, 8,250,000 sesame seeds, 20 once-mooing cows – presumably: 50 cases of Pepto Bismo – and frisky, musically windy visits to the loo.)
Like every preprogrammed consumer I have my own monomania. Actually two. Both have petered out on me of late: coffee and x-rated videos. Of the former, I was drinking six cups a day (8300 over a 10 year period). No more. Down to one. Of the latter, well, let's say, I've Peeping Tom'ed enough DVDs and xxx-websites to be a TV talk show maven on this lowbrow pastime of male (and some female) crotch potatoes.
I'll refrain from sorting the x-rated cinematic genre by content, as I have so thoughtfully itemized the Guinness record consumables. Suffice it to say, as far as visual trash bagging of an estimated 90,000 x-rated sites goes, I've been around the proverbial block more than a few times – on a variety of leashes.
I palm off my x-rated fascination as "inspiration". The naked, suntanned, well-oiled biped in its undressed state appeals to my artistic sense. (Yeah, sure, Mary.) It started in fourth grade when I came across a mythology book illustration of a Greek youth standing buff in front of a temple altar. I looked at his buffer in the Burton School library with keen aesthetic interest during many, many, many library visits.
Now the improbable – but inevitable – has happened to me: boredom. I've discovered to my chagrin that xxx's are – yes, I reluctantly admit – humdrum. Predictable. Repetitious. Anti-climatic. And, heaven knows: overexposed, in more ways than one. Nothing left to the imagination. Assembly-line GNP (Gross National Product).
Ho hum, and a Big Mac yawn. Been there, done that. Well, some of it.
Back in the mid-60s, with nothing but posing-pouch, 50-cent magazines, a furtive newsstand glimpse of well-stuffed stocking was something shocking. Now, heaven knows, everything shows. After fifty-plus years of First Amendment censorship go-ahead, the porn-o-biz bankrolls millions of bucks, hundreds of glossies, thousands of vids, reams of wackadoome stars, x-rated awards nights, and plastic, autographed replicates that, on the whole, I'll admit intimidate me no end. (Cucumber isometrics revisited.)
I don't know: maybe I'm being too hard on myself. (Or, too soft?) Maybe I need a breather with my Creme Soda. Hey, if it works for greasy-spoon sliders, why not bare-bottomed shleppers? Hold my pickle! Griddle my buns!
Too much of a good thing's never enough; but these days who bothers to count?
