return to decadence

Seth and James got me to drive them to Costco, and I decided that this was it. If we were living in the richest country in the world, it was high time that we acted like it. This was the first time I had left the house since Friday night--I had been in my bedroom office filling out forms and answering emails for two days straight. While we wandered the aisles, passing the open-air fridges of ribbon steak wrapped around spinach leaves and feta cheese...and the forty-foot tall shelves holding up thousands of five-pound bags of Doritos...and the freezers filled with stacks of salmon burgers and spring rolls and enough preservatives to render refrigeration obsolete...it happened. I knew what to do. We got the hell out of there and drove down rte 16 to JOHNNY's FOODMASTER and bought every goddamn thing in the store. Cheese logs, lettuce, frozen pizzas, cranberry juice cocktail (five for a dollar), steaks, pork medallions, barbeque sauce, hamburgers, chives, steak seasoning, everything but the hot cocoa I've been after. I drove home like a madman and before everything was put away I had a bloody steak in my left hand and I was pounding seasoning into it with my right. This was it, bloody dead cow. No more waking up on Saturday (and Sunday) morning just to do paperwork all day. No more chinese takeout and loneliness. There would be steak and barbeque pork every night this week. There would be regular sex. I would play music again and write again and drink my bourbon again. When the [delicious] steak came off the George, I served it over romaine lettuce with feta cheese, dried cranberries, and balsamic dressing. I ate and loved it, and then I went back to work.