Intermittent Fasting
I’m thinking about a Facebook post about intermittent fasting while slicing English cheddar for a towering ham sandwich.
4 days a week, posts a Friend, I only eat during a 6 hour window. Combined with regular infrared saunas and a weekly coffee enema, I’ve never felt better, or more optimized.
I went to grade school with her long ago. In 5th grade, she wore boat shoes with socks, excelled at floor hockey, used marker to list the names of the boys she loved.
Now, there’s a picture of her in a weight room looking cadaverous but smiling, eyes shining with wolfy hunger, each rib countable. A filter has been applied to her teeth. Between her lips, a solid block of sparkling ivory.
Bitchily, I picture a different scene: Blood dripping from pointed canines, eyes the color of sulfur, tail flagged, mange. (I know her husband.)
You too can thrive! she advertises in cursive pink across the flat canvas of her abdomen. PM me for packages and special rates.
Fucking crazy, I think ungenerously, annoyed that my sandwich suddenly seems indulgent, the punishing art of calorie restriction ubiquitous, glamorized, shaming my honey baked ham from the screen of my phone.
Lawd Jesus, I’d starve! one woman quips to everyone’s delight. She follows her comment with a selfie, a jar of fun-sized candy cradled in the crook of her arm.
The fasting woman responds: Lol! I eat clean when I’m not fasting. And I’m never hungry when I fast. 😉
There’s a collective roll of the eye. A wave of collective shame. We suddenly feel our asses in our chairs, gingerly finger the rolls of our neck, crave Mountain Dew.
I toss a crumbling piece of cheddar in my mouth, the alchemy of fat and salt opening the sluice of dopamine.
Cheeeeeeeese.
*
My friend, Anna, improvises charcuterie when I visit. We kick back in old lawn chairs, rest our feet on the wide cedar planks of the garden bed, and share hunks of marbled salami cut with a pruning knife wiped clean on the leg of her jeans.
Try this, she says, and pops a ground cherry from its paper husk. It glows yellow in my palm, tastes sour and tropical. Check it out, she says, rubbing leaves of Korean mint between her thumb and forefinger, filling the air with the scent of licorice before mashing it between her teeth.
I crack the tab of a skunky IPA, 16oz split between two mugs brimming with foam, the back of our necks reddening in the sun. Chickens aerate the soil, gobble the scratch we toss in front of them. Tiny dinosaurs, Anna remarks, and wonders if we’d run from them if they were suddenly the size of trucks.
We identify wildflowers, walk for the sake of walking, talk about mothering, our fathers, fathering. We eyeball traffic, count how many people drive by while staring at their phones. We talk about our ongoing affairs with various technologies.
I tell Anna about my daughter’s favorite book, a story about Baba Yaga, a witch of Slavic lore famous for her repulsive nose. Her hut stands on stilts made of chicken legs, and her black cat salivates while she cooks up children she’s stolen from warm, safe homes.
Anna snorts, matches this with her son’s favorite book - a Russian tale about a nose that flees a man’s face and makes a life of its own. Noshe! her toddler requests, nauseating her every time she arrives at the part of the story where the nose is discovered in a loaf of sourdough.
We talk about men’s noses, how beguiling they can be. We talk about disappointment, bird behavior, the five flavors, our hatred of the winter wind.
Back inside, Anna clears a spot on the kitchen table and shares a pop-up book she’s made by hand, each snip of her scissors dimensionally dizzying, terrifically precise.
We eat olives, bread, share another beer. When it’s time to leave Anna gives me a hug. I drive home, neck warm.
*
I turn off my phone.
In addition to English cheddar, I add romaine, stone ground mustard, salted tomato, bacon. It’s three stories and tilts to the left.
I take a bite.
What washes over me can only be called sandwich joy.