I’m in the drive-thru at Chik-fil-a, which I always feel a little guilty about because they donate money to Focus on Family, and I really shouldn’t support that. But damn, those fanatical fundamentalists sure do make a fine chicken sandwich. I’m mulling over this quandary and looking forward to my waffle fries when the woman in front of me pulls ahead to the trash can, discarding a bag from Wendy’s, and another from McDonald’s.I’m left wondering if she’s conducting some sort of tour. If I followed her out of here, would she stop at Dairy Queen next? I saw a movie once where Meredith Baxter played a bulimic who’d go on drive-thru raids like that.
There are so many social problems I wouldn’t even know existed if Meredith Baxter and Judith Light hadn’t dramatized them for me.
Then, as I receive my own order at the window, I have to move an empty Burger King cup out of the holder. A quick look in the back seat reveals the evidence from my most recent late-night run to the Krystal on Moreland Avenue, where I’m willing to risk being assaulted just to have tiny hamburgers at two in the morning.
Shit. I’m just like the lady. Only I don’t even throw the bags away. So I’m actually worse than the lady, because I’m also a slob.
It isn’t as though I’m ordering every meal via drive-thru speaker, but it is disheartening to note the change in lifestyle that’s occurred since I got my driver’s license. When I was still a pedestrian, I ate at fast food joints only a few times a year, mainly because it was rare for me to even walk past one. They don’t market fast food to people who walk, because you never see anyone walking down the street stuffing their face with a triple bacon cheeseburger. That’s reserved for drivers, who sit in traffic and eat French fries by the fistful. Oh, and by the way, other people can totally see you when you do that. The image of a man in my rear-view mirror deep-throating a Moe’s burrito is forever burned in my memory.
One would think that my expanding waistline would’ve been enough to sound the alarms in my mind, but it’s actually the moment at Chick-fil-a that really scares the hell outta me. I get home and delay my lunch in favor of cleaning out the car. Every paper wrapper, every plastic cup, every little cardboard Krystal chick container, leave me feeling shamed.
I must destroy all evidence.
I tend to do that. Any physical reminders of an unpleasant incident must be completely eliminated. A photo makes me think of a bad moment? Gotta tear it up. The polo I was wearing the day I found out I had cancer ended up in the trash, because it would forever be my cancer shirt. I bought new sheets once on the day a boyfriend broke up with me, and eventually I had to give the sheets away because I felt rejected every time I opened the damn linen closet. I should let my fiancée know about this, so he’ll know to take me to an alternate location if he ever has bad news for me. Because if it happens at home, I’ll have to burn down the house to eradicate the memory.
My grandfather was an avid fan of Playboy magazine in the 1970s- he had the entire decade stacked on the top shelf of the guest bedroom closet. My cousin Nelson and I used to pull copies down and marvel at the centerfolds featuring women with frosted blue eye shadow and pendulous, pre-silicone boobs. Nelson was clearly delighted by what he saw, but I was always more interested in the staging of the photos. Who stands in their library reading Ivanhoe wearing nothing but garters and heels? Or, why was this woman standing naked in front of a blazing fireplace holding a poker? Wasn’t that dangerous?
Then one day, we discovered a promotional copy of Playgirl that had been sent to my grandmother in 1975. These men were sexy in the Burt Reynolds mode- big mustache, overly tan, a little thick in the middle, overgrown pubes the size and shape of a slice of Sbarro pizza. They lounged, on rocks and in hammocks, looking directly at me with a smirk that said, “Admit it, Topher, you like it.”
I stole it. I took it home and committed every page to memory, reveling in fantasies of these manly men and me doing… something. I wasn’t entirely clear on what, but I knew it was something very wrong and potentially fantastic.
The Playgirl had to be destroyed.
I cut every single page into tiny pieces, taking hours with the task. I put the resulting confetti in a paper bag, then walked six blocks to the Presbyterian Church and threw it in their dumpster.
And here we discover the flaw in my destruction-of-evidence plan: I still remember every detail of that macho man lying in repose on a rock with a boner. I vividly recall the cancer shirt and the rejection sheets. Getting rid of the actual objects didn’t make the memory go away. In fact, the ritual may have highlighted them in my mind.
Maybe the best way to learn from a shameful experience isn’t by trying to eliminate it- it’s facing it head on. With that possibility in mind, I try something new: I take one of those Krystal containers and tape it to my dashboard. We’ll see what happens.
