Category: barf

La crise de foie

Since arriving in Paris I’ve jettisoned all of my crunchy California eating habits (quinoa! burly greens! tofu!) and become a veritable boozing, animal-fat consuming machine. Another bottle of wine? Of course!  Charcuterie for dinner? Yes please! Would you like a cheese plate? Don’t mind if I do! I decided to give myself carte blanche on the eating while I was here, cholesterol be damned. There are only so many times in one’s life when one can eat foie gras with reckless abandon, especially since the ban goes into effect in California in 2012. We can’t figure out how to save the public university system, provide health care to every citizen, or allow same-sex couples have basic legal rights and privileges regarding the people they love and share their lives with, but man, it’s the dawning of a new fucking day for ducks and geese on the West Coast!  I digress. Anyway, this self-granted “freebie” coupled with my scheme to remind A of all the best parts of Western civilization has resulted in my eating and drinking all kinds of wonderful, health-threatening delicacies like a fiend lately. I’ve been hitting it hard, friends, and honestly, I’m starting to feel it.

The French have this concept of crise de foie, which literally means “liver crisis.” I think it is technically meant to describe the sluggish feeling you get from having consumed too much fat. I take it to mean the sense I’ve been having for the past week or so that all my internal organs are raising the white flag and crying out “MERCY! HAVE PITY ON US! NO MORE BOOZE! NO MORE CHEESE! NO MORE SALAMI, BUTTER, AND CORNICHON SANDWICHES! FEED US KALE! DRINK SOME WATER FOR CHRISSAKES! TAKE A VITAMIN MORE OFTEN THAN ONCE A YEAR!” I think I’ve gotten especially bad about consuming too much white bread and refined sugar, which I’m sure Oprah has explained to you is the equivalent of committing a cell-holocaust. A tiny voice inside me protests “But the baguettes!  And the croissants!  So delicious!” But that voice is getting fainter, because it is literally too weak from malnutrition to lift its head to speak.

Seriously, is it possible to get scurvy with a modern diet? What if that modern diet is almost entirely devoid of vegetables and fruits? Does pesto count as a vegetable? What about pickles?

The madness stops tomorrow. It’s time for a detox. I’m going to be as disciplined as Gwyneth fricking Paltrow this week. I actually consulted her website when looking for detox ideas and wrote down some recipes for cold green vegetable soups. Before I can report back on the GOOP phenomenon, I’ll have to stop puking in my own mouth. Obviously, this won’t be any crazy Master Cleanse. I got out of Orange County before I started subscribing to that sort of lunacy. But I am going to stop eating all refined sugar, white bread, alcohol, meat, and cheese for a while. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal to all of you intelligent adults out there who are able to practice super-mature things like moderation, but again:  SALAMI, BUTTER, AND CORNICHON SANDWICHES! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT A GREAT COMBO THAT IS?! I suspect I’m going to be cranky as hell, so I apologize in advance for any rants I may or may not post this week. Black coffee and Morbier-withdrawal will do that to a girl. Tomorrow, over a meal of green tea and raw spinach, I’m going to convince my friend B that THIS IS THE WEEK HE NEEDS TO QUIT SMOKING. That way, we can be cranky together as our bodies slowly heal from the havoc we have wreaked upon them. HEAR THAT B? SOUND LIKE A PLAN? IF IT DOESN’T, THEN I MIGHT CONTINUE TO WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS UNTIL YOU AGREE! LOOK, THE LIVER CRISIS HAS TURNED ME INTO KANYE WEST! HELP!

What the hell do they know anyway

(Vampire Weekend comes on my iTunes Genius mix)

Me:  Did you know these guys have the number one album in America right now?

A:  (lip curled in visible contempt) Who?

Me:  Vampire Weekend.

A:  What do they do?

Me:  Uh, I dunno.  I guess they are these snarky East Coast / Ivy League boys that have a kind of laid-back, Afro-pop thing going on.

A:  What do they sing about?

Me:  I don’t know.  Being privileged.  How they don’t give a fuck about the Oxford comma.  Guys that wear keffiyahs that don’t care about Palestine.

A:  I’m so sick of 22 year old boys singing…about…

Me:  Their lives?

A:  Totally.

Ready to surrender

I’ve been indulging in a lot of behaviors lately that make me grateful to live alone.  If I had a domestic companion, they would have surely notified the Adult Police by now. I’m pretty sure that 27-year-olds are not supposed to pass out in crumb-filled beds at 4 a.m. after watching eight episodes of The Wire while eating Special K Fruits Rouges directly from the box. 27-year-olds should wake up before noon, brush their teeth at least twice a day, and write their dissertation prospectuses in a timely manner. I’ve been doing none of these things. I like the idea of a S.W.A.T. team-style entry into my apartment in which shouts of “Adult Police! Hands in the air!” are met by my bewildered face, illuminated only by the glow of my laptop and with a dehydrated strawberry stuck to my cheek. After reading me my rights I’m dragged, hands in cuffs and wearing the same dirty Bob Marley t-shirt I’ve been rocking for a week, to the re-education center where I am forced to relearn good eating habits and reestablish a sleeping schedule. Graduate school and its attendant ocean of unstructured time can be perilous when there is nobody around to shame you into getting your shit together. It’s times like these when one of you who cares about me needs to turn me in, for my own good, even though you will be likely be wracked with guilt that you had to turn to the authorities instead of keeping it in the family. Or maybe I’ve just been watching too much of The Wire.

It got me to thinking about how exactly people do manage to cohabitate. I’ve lived alone for nearly five years now and I don’t know how I ever managed otherwise. People joke about their “secret single behavior,” but it always is something cute and manageable to do while living with someone, like plucking the odd hair or eating pickles straight out of the jar.  I feel like I have an entire secret single way of being.  As anyone who has stayed in my company on my turf for more than a few days can attest, I start getting jumpy.  My best friend, upon learning that her week-long visit was on the tail end of my mother’s two week trip to Paris, gleefully cackled and said, “Oh man!  Three weeks of constant contact!  That is going to drive you NUTS!”  I can’t even imagine how I could possibly have someone around when I’m one of the manic work-binges that I have to enter ever few months to stay afloat in my ‘career.’  Don’t significant others disapprove of significant lapses in hygiene? Wouldn’t a domestic partner disapprove if all three meals a day consisted of coffee and microwave burritos?  How about if the “work” area spread like cancer over the dining room table, couch, living room floor, and bed?  Or do people quit doing these things when they are real adults?

Photo courtesy of the bounteous M. Starik

The Puke Story

As anyone within hollering distance (and Skype gives me a wide fucking radius) might know already, I was recently and unceremoniously dumped.  It sucked.  These things never get easier.  I won’t bore you (likely again) with the details of the relationship or its demise.  But what happened next is actually starting to be funny.

I’ve always been an emotional vomiter.  When overwhelmed, stressed, heartbroken, or otherwise at wits’ end, my physical recourse is always puking.  After the long-distance breakup conversation, I immediately threw up.  Following two long, tear-soaked discussions with my mom and my best friend, I threw up again.  I went to bed, only to lie sleepless all night as my elbows were mysteriously aching.  I finally dozed off at six a.m. and slept through my alarm, which was problematic as I was supposed to be giving a final exam to my students at eight a.m.  I awoke and in a frenzy tried to make something of my pukey, swollen face.  I was starving, so I pounded a raspberry smoothie.  Bad idea.  By the time I was scurrying through the frozen streets to my métro stop, hazy recollections of the breakup conversation came swimming into my head and I was overcome with nausea.  I ran to barf on what I thought was a pile of trash nestled underneath one of the support beams of the Centre Pompidou.  It was only after I had begun throwing up that I realized that I was puking on a half-frozen homeless guy who had taken refuge under all the trash.  Horrified, I tried to back off and apologize, but I was still throwing up.  As I staggered backwards, I proceeded to puke PINK BARF all over my peacoat, jeans, and shoes.  Finally finishing up and mortified, I thrust a wad of cash at the poor guy, who was totally confused and upset by this rude awakening.  Realizing that I was already late for class, I then made the incredibly dubious decision to CONTINUE GOING TO WORK COVERED IN PUKE.  If you think that the French are ungenerous in their stares on the métro, try going on the train covered in pink vomit.

Thankfully the class I was proctoring was a loveable bunch I call the Tuesday Six, a bright and articulate group of kids who look like a Benetton ad for a fresh-faced multicultural future.  Aghast at my appearance, one of my students inquired as to what had happened to me.  Asshole that I am, I managed to whip up a story about how I had been spontaneously puked on by a homeless man in the métro station.  It’s a good thing I don’t believe in karma.

Later, my friend B walked me home from work and high-fived me when we passed the frozen pink puddle that I had made earlier in the day.  It was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in a long time.