It seems like it’s a lot to ask from a bagel. In fact, there are a lot of things this bagel doesn’t have on it — paid vacation, better shoes, a apologetic phone call to my father for his missed birthday (not entirely an accident, I am forced to confess)…
That’s the thing about putting your expectations on external objects: it never ends well. The bagel looked so inviting in the cold case, it’s poppy seeds twinkling, sesame winking seductively. Eat me.
Once it’s out of the waxed bag on my desk it seems rather Less Than it did. Just a sad, pale round of mass-produced dough, tarted up with stale sprinkling of seeds. I still ate it, of course, those same seeds wedging themselves between my teeth as if to save themselves from digestion. It tasted like cardboard and glue, and I wanted another one almost immediately. It makes no goddamn sense.
Sometimes, I think it’s the chewing. I feel good when I am chewing — I don’t think about errands or failure or my unbalanced checkbook. Of course, when I chew it’s at breakneck speed, as if eating were a race to the finish line and I am the Dale Evans of the Esophageal Highway. I want to always be eating, and yet when I eat it’s as fast and as mindless as possible. Yeah, again: it makes no goddamn sense.
Flash-forward Tomorrow: The self-flagellation I already plan for myself over the B-B-Q ribs that I am going to be eating tonight at my good friend’s birthday party.
