The Grim Burrito

You might be snuggled down into your luxurious couch, sunk deliciously into a ploppy pillow, comfortable in your newly washed, super soft sweat pants and a favorite t-shirt, sipping a mug of fine brewed, aromatic coffee, feet propped up beside you, feeling at one with the universe around you. At that moment anything is possible. Problems? No problem at all. Everything is karmic. Everything is achievable. Harmony with the world around you is yours.

Until the commercial break. Then all hell breaks loose in your velvety, cushioned, perfectly balanced world.

Because you are reminded. You are not good enough. Why did you eat that sandwich and a handful of potato chips for lunch? Ladies are supposed to eat a small, fat-free yogurt and smile while doing it. What's more, we are supposed to emerge from this feast, full bellied and satisfied and perhaps moderately orgasmic from the experience. This keeps our digestive tracts in optimal working condition and allows us to be supermodel skinny, which everyone worth their salt knows, is the most important prerequisite to finding and keeping a man. And what would any of us be without a man? So put down that sandwich, fatty, and repent. And you sigh, because you don't particularly enjoy yogurt, despite its obvious benefits. And you have always viewed it as more of an appetizer, or a snack between meals. Or maybe breakfast. But now the guilt has its tentacles tight around your mind and you vow that tomorrow, you will buy a yogurt.

Or at least you will only eat half of that ham sandwich and omit the chips altogether.

But before you can get too depressed we've moved on. Some other lady is trying to sell you some fitness equipment that will "get rid of those love handles nobody loves". Because, fatso, how is anyone ever going to respect or love you, if you don't have zero body fat? Ladies, you have to get that man, remember? Did you already forget the grave message of the yogurt commercial? You don't work out nearly enough. You walk to and from work each day and you play badminton twice a week and sure, you jog three times a week, but it's not enough, you gluttonous, unfit wench!

You sigh and put down the coffee, lamenting the two spoons of sugar you melted in there earlier. It's not so enjoyable now. It's mocking you. And before you can contemplate it further, some glowing, airbrushed sally is administering yet another grave warning. Wrinkles. You can get them. You will get them. In fact, you probably already have them! Even you there - young, pretty, 22 years old, fresh out of college, full of optimism and youth, you need to start thinking about preventing those crows feet. It's never too early for a good moisturizer and some sunscreen, but you need the right moisturizer.

As for you ladies over 30, you don't have to look so haggard and old. There's still hope. Buy this product and your wrinkles will magically disappear. You will look almost human again. You can go out in daylight without making men cry. Because no one wants to look at someone who's spent the past 30 years laughing. You're supposed to look like those models on the front of magazines. If you don't use this product you will be worthless, loveless, pointless. This is airbrushing in a cream, ladies! If you don't want it, then I feel sorry for you.

While you're thinking about it, use our ageless body wash and our full line of cosmetics too. Remember that man we told you about earlier? He doesn't want to see lines. If you can see lines, you have failed at life.

By the time the show recommences, you have two choices. You can be ashamed of your food eating, fat, wrinkled self or you can say, fuck it. I'm normal. I'm alive. You can take our insecurities and blow them up to billboard size and shove them, along with those millions of mythical men who are demanding a perfect android for a girlfriend.

We are beautiful and we are revolting.

People try to talk to me, but words are impossible. They're swimming around inside my skull but they can't find a route out into the world. I try greasing them up with coffee. Hard and black and sultry. But still they tease me by swimming back into the dark recesses where they can't be uttered.

I like coffee. That dirty, dirty slattern. That bewitching harlot of the dark.

I also have a Club Soda because I'm hot, it's pure and the fizz is tantalizing.

Today I'm feeling good, despite a buzzing in my head from too little sleep. I have a lot of things to sort out and today I will make only a tiny dent, if any, in them. Imagine trying to claw your way out of a quarry using a spoon? That will be me, trying to un-grim the burrito. But I will not be thwarted. I have steely will, I have desire!

I have coconut gelato in the freezer...

There is nothing that cannot be accomplished.

We lounged at the river's edge, bulky plastic tape deck by our side, blasting the latest Duran Duran album and announcing which band member we intended to marry. Or rather I did. Cissy was unimpressed with their angular shoulders and pretty burgundy tinted hair or lilting English accents.

And possibly it could be. But not in this case. It is merely a bad metaphor for life. Life is a grim burrito. Maybe it's fattening and bad for your heart? Perhaps it's too hot or it's icy in the center? It may be that the spices sting your tongue like a thousand tiny, red hot bees? Sometimes it is just right, tasty to a fault. The correct blend of just what you need. And other times...it is not.

I'm an optimist. I don't really believe life is grim. I believe it can be. I believe it has temporary insanity ingrained into its very genes. I believe there are monsters and evil and dissolving black shadows. But those are passing demons. Unlucky happenstance. Mostly I believe that life is full of possibility and wonder and beauty and emotion.

And sometimes I actually experience it. Even though right here, right now, the burrito is a few days old, not quite rancid and possibly savable, sort of like a Twinkie, filled with nasty preservatives and still edible after three years buried in a shoe box in the garden.

So if you're reading this, hi. And if you're not, well.

It hardly matters does it?