Sleepwalk With Me_ And Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia [54]
Sometimes when people find out how much I love pizza, they’ll give me a wink and a nod, maybe pull me aside and say something like, “I understand. I’m a foodie too.” A foodie, if you’ve never heard the term, is a trendy word for a gourmet or a food connoisseur. But I’m not a foodie. I wish I were. Being a foodie implies that I have good taste in food, which I don’t. Foodies are interesting and open to trying various dishes to diversify their palate. That’s not me. I want to eat the same thing until I pass out.
I’m a binger. I love the act of eating. I love world-class pizza and I also love pizza from a gas station, provided the warming bulb is working. I will eat anywhere.
I particularly like chain restaurants. They completely understand mass consumption and have amazing offers for people like me. For starters, bottomless soda. I just like the word bottomless. I like the implication that maybe this meal will never end. And combining it with soda, which is a nutritionless but flavorful beverage, makes for a sexy phrase for bingers like me.
Get me some bottomless nothingness! And make it fast. I’m living over here!
When it comes to eating I have no self-control. I simply can’t drive by a Cheesecake Factory without stopping. I love their chicken sandwich the size of a soccer ball and their piece of cake as large as an entire cake. I love the Factory’s generous portions. They’re like, “We could sell grilled cheese sandwiches for a buck fifty, or we could stuff a loaf of bread with three pounds of mozzarella and call it the Mozza Mountain.” And hey, if the Factory says it’s one serving, who am I to question them? They’re making this stuff to factory specifications.
Sometimes I’ll go somewhere exotic like P. F. Chang’s, the pan-Asian staple of Chainville city, USA. Though I won’t use the chopsticks. I don’t like chopsticks because I can’t get food down my throat fast enough. It’s almost like those pan-Asians don’t get it.
I’ve spoken to a lot of dieticians over the years, and most of them will say, “You can eat hamburgers. You can eat pizza. You can eat fried chicken. The key is that you don’t binge.” And I’m thinking, That’s my move. Bingeing is the best play I have in my book.
Even now as I type this, I’m sitting at a chain called Starbucks, a quaint local coffee shop that does a decent blueberry muffin. Actually, the thought of food makes me want to get up and order some food, even though I ate lunch an hour ago and the Starbucks offerings today don’t look particularly fresh. I’m considering the cinnamon swirl muffin or the banana bread. But I’ll probably go with something healthier. The fruit and cheese plate. I will devour the cheese and crackers and then slowly insert pieces of fruit into my mouth as punishment.
They say bingeing stems from the self-perpetuating idea that eating a lot of food might fix something or fill some void that needs filling. I’m not sure what void they’re talking about, but man, does that make me hungry.
I actually still have The Promise of Sleep in my backpack. It’s beat-up and weatherworn. I still haven’t finished it, though I have skipped around a bunch. Maybe while I was obsessing over my addictions to vibrating phones and mind-numbing cable news and sleep-pillow-shaped pizza, the other kids with sleep disorders . . . read the book.
SLEEPWALK WITH ME
I’m going to tell you this one last story. This one is particularly personal. It’s actually the most terrifying thing that ever happened to me. It’s one of those very rare moments in your life where in retrospect you’re like, “What the hell?” But at the time you think, I guess I’ll continue living. It’s like if you went to the dentist and he asked you to take your pants off and you say to yourself, Um . . . He’s got a degree . . . But I’m gonna