Tuesdays with Frito-Lay

Last night at a party -- the first one I have been to in ages – I learned that all Frito Lay products (so potato chips, Doritos, Cheetos, etc) go bad on a Tuesday.

I also learned the proper methods for shelving them (most popular products on very top and very bottom rows, because people will hunt for those; at eye level are the worst sellers and, in Mexican neighborhoods, anything with the word 'limon' or 'hot and spicy' in it.)

This I learned from some flannel-shirt-wearing 23-year-old visiting from Oregon who also told me he turned up to a wedding and gave the couple an oil portrait of himself out of spite because the wedding was two hours away. (I guess he was annoyed that they didn't, say, hold it in his house so he didn't have to make any effort at all.)

And then after 45 minutes I find out even this dude has a girlfriend.

***

Here is something I am learning, reluctantly, about bingeing: That even knowing why I want to do it does not stop the urge.

I don't know why I thought that being able to isolate the cause would allow me to rip the urge out at the roots; to cut it out like a cancer; but it does not. Presumably this is because I cannot do much about the underlying feelings that make me want to binge besides wait them out. How totally bloody obvious, of course, but I have only just made the connection. Which is this: You mustn't think, you must accept.

I binged last night, the first one in almost 100 days (98, to be exact). I'm here to report that it was totally unsatisfying, as I knew it would be, and that I was too full even to eat what I really wanted, which I also knew I would be.

That said, it was a most bizarre binge, at least by Beth standards.

I could feel it coming on for days, like the onset of a cold. I was thinking about food constantly; I was eyeing it up in shops. I kept thinking that I could not binge because the decision of what to eat in what order would just be too much. That is the truth.

Just a couple of days ago I looked at some cookies in a shop and thought: Yes, but if you ate those you would have to decide what else to eat and you would go crazy from wanting it all. That, too, is the truth.

As is this: Yesterday I knew I was going to binge. I had two events to go to, both of which would involve drinks, and I had been working absolutely nonstop. I'd stayed up until 3 am finishing a story, then got up six hours later and promptly filed two more. I've been quite sad lately about a couple of friends who are no longer in my life, something I can ascribe almost directly to the way bingeing makes me behave. And in a couple of days I have to fly to Miami to do some sorting of my grandmother's apartment with my sister, something I expect to be ugly.

I'd spent nearly a week thinking about both of these events I had to attend; how I really didn't want to binge at them but I sort of did.

But no, I really didn't. At least enough to call someone and spend 20 minutes talking about why bingeing would be a bad idea.

And then I went off to the first event without a plan for dinner.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I had a glass of wine. Dumb.

Another glass of wine. Dumber.

I eyed the blondies on the cake stand in the restaurant. I thought about what I would eat – really, binge on – when I left. I pushed the thoughts out of my head.

Then I had a breadstick with some hummus, which was very, very dumb. Because I do not graze. And grazing in my head usually is the prelude to, well, nothing very good. It says to me: You are eating in a way that is way out of the ordinary.

And then I left the restaurant and bought a cupcake. Not even a good one.

I thought to myself: You could call it quits now. A cupcake is not a binge.

But I did not. I passed Hill Country Chicken and spied biscuits. I bought two. I still was absent that frantic need I usually feel when I binge, but still, there I was doing it.

And then I had three cookies from the Subway, and two whoopie pies from somewhere else. The second one made me feel almost sick.

I walked into the second event and started eating cheese, caramel popcorn, nuts, dried apricots, some not-very-good cookies and blondies – even some gum drops.

I left the party and walked into a 7-Eleven where I perused the options quite calmly – again atypical – and selected a jelly doughnut. I had a piece of pizza. And then my taxi passed the Magnolia Bakery on the way home.

Of course I got out. Though I could barely finish ¼ of a slice of "van van," as the shop calls it – vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. And it tasted ridiculously sweet. (Is it possible I've lost my taste for it?) I threw it out on the way home, which was lucky.

All day today I thought about that ¾ slice of cake I left over, wishing it were in a trash bin from which I could rescue it.

And that also is the truth.