June 20, 2004

When I was little I was so convinced the reason we bought processed cheese, instead of Pecorino Romano like all the other middle class Italian kids in my neighbourhood, was that my mother was so easily manipulated—and of course the bright packaging and scintillating and dazzling words across the lid were obviously ones which would so quickly manipulate an easily-influenced shopper.

The perfectly-squared orange cheese has left an imprint on my mind, not unlike the skid marks I leave on the intersections at every unexpected red light. From the oily sandwich of paper, which I used to peel the cheese out of, to the image of how it gooed and oozed its way between the white bread of my close-faced grilled-cheese sandwich, cut into triangles with no crusts, please. Maybe I’m a bad driver but I’m not a bad sandwich maker, unlike my dad who can’t cook for shit (and I don’t need to use other condiments to make them appealing).

There are a lot of things in this city that remind me of my childhood, to say the least. The cumulus clouds remind me of the mountainous peaks of cool-whip which me and my sister used to lick from the arms of the electric beater after the majority had been spread on kiss-soft angel food cake for one of our birthdays. The cool-whip cake was a special delight, like our birthdays—we each got it once per year and it was so filled with sugar we were certain we felt the growth of cavities erupting on our twelve-year-old molars.

My love affair with the idea of detailed dishes then consumed all of me and caused my dating life all throughout my years to then become difficult. I did not subconsciously create a list of pros and cons of my potential partner, as most do. Instead, I tasted and indulged in them, like sweet delicacies or rich south-eastern dishes; I peeled men apart like my teeth peel the crunchy shell of a chocolate-covered ice cream bar, and dissected their personalities like my meals in my 16th year when other happenings were, simply... well... more important than the act of consuming food. I either lost them to gorging down with too predatory a ferocity or a simple loss of interest in their same boring and unvaried taste day after day after day, and rid of them in an almost bulimic sense.

Seeing couples walk across the crosswalks today reminds me of the pairings of spiced beef tripe and cottage pie, gala apples, and the bluest and creamiest of cheeses —inseparable pairings that cause me to long for my childhood and also detest the very thought of it. Apples as red as the nearest stop sign, cheese creamy like the bird shit on my taxicab windowsill.

I suppose it’s unfair to lead you on with the idea that I have an obsession with the highest class foods. I mean, I do, I guess, but when growing up, that wasn’t the end of the stick that my parents provided me with. I ate packaged oatmeal with the consistency of thick water and canned fish the colour of cat puke day after day. For dinner we’d have the blandest Chinese takeout in probably the whole world, which felt like glue in the back of my throat; but on good days we’d gobble down McDonalds that my mum would bring home after her evening shift at the local hospital like hungry pigeons crouching at the corner of each park bench. Plum sauce and chicken nuggets so greasy they’d make your fingertips glow, or Double Big Mac meals that that came in square boxes with flimsy paper crowns we’d use to play dress-up. Nasty, disgusting, oily but don’t get me wrong—Happy Meals were one of the few things that did make me happy.

Well, that’s all for now.