sooner or suburb, you’ll want more

tao feb 19 15

My Darling My Hamburger. It’s the name of some book they made the special ed kids read in Dangerous Minds before Michelle Pfeiffer came in, kicking ass and taking names.  Sometimes, it’s a line I end up saying aloud.  I’m chilaxing with the lineman, and suddenly, I’m overcome with the need to noodle him.  I belt out, "My Darling, My Hamburger!"  His little bean head turns to the side.  He has to be thinking, "She’s gone ahead and lost it again.  Let me lick up her nose and find it."  Then we make out. 

Tonight, there’s no making out.  Tonight, there’s Nigella, which in my world, might as well be porn.  Batter.  Fingers.  Licking.  Savoring.  Yeah, throw in the saucy British accent and close up shots of honey.  Yeah, yeah, those creators of Nigella Bites were onto something all right.  The "bites" bit is dead on baking accurate, like a leveled measuring cup. Nigella makes us crave, even after we’ve unbuttoned. I want to eat, but I’ve just come from a trendy sushi dinner that cost too much for me to still be hungry.   She’s licking things again.  Savoring.  I’m naked, in this chair, only mildly hating that I’m here alone, craving.  A man.  A hamburger.  Deep fried celery.  Mostly I’m into the hamburger.  The man part, it’s on its way.  Sometimes, patience pays off.  I’m all about the soufflé.   

Arriving home alone isn’t a big deal normally.  It means I can sleep on my stomach, fanned out across the mattress.  Alone and hungry is completely different.  Arriving home alone, hungry for a hamburger and a love life, does indeed bite after a night of dinner with single women.  Nigella keeps saying "wobbly."  This is my reality; it kinda bites.

Don’t roll your eyes. No matter what you think is going on, bottom line, coming home alone, to a dog who craps on your floor, and makes the whole place reek of vinegar and ’rhea, in a word—bites.  Those creators, I’m tellin’ ya.  They’re so not home alone watching her lick those fingers and trace a lone finger on a wet wooden spoon.  I promise you, they’ve got lives.  The kind where bites means sex.

Yeah, I had dinner, and you know what, it was rice with raw fish and pink mayonnaise, okay?  And, yeah, I’m still hungry.  I want ketchup.  57.  Old school.

I can’t order in for one past one o’clock.  It’s gotta be a rule in some Cinderella Dating handbook.  Instead, I’ll fall asleep imagining what I’ll eat tomorrow night, in public, while I have my chance.  It’s so going to begin with a hamburger. I might just have one for breakfast.  A power meal. 

There’s nothing as comforting to me as a cheeseburger and fries.  It somehow makes me feel loved and safe.  It’s my childhood on a plate, and it’s a memory no one can pull from me.  The diner with my parents and sister.  Banquette seating.  A bread basket with pull apart rolls.  Medium rare.  Dad got a hamburger.  I got a cheeseburger.  It was all that mattered.  Heinz ketchup, well-done steak fries.  So much of our lives is lived in meals.  I need to eat more of mine with the people I love.  I need more brunches, lunches, and Sunday dinners where lazy is encouraged and dessert is always ordered just because.  I miss that life, that refrigerated, rotating, pie life, behind glass doors.  It’s safe and promised, like the suburbs used to be.  I miss what used to be. 

That ride home, in the backseat, my head against a wedge of window, watching traffic lights and the faces of drivers along side me.  I miss that place of being taken care of, in a moment, knowing you’re safe there.  Even if you weren’t, you felt it, and that was enough.  I miss that.  It’s why I order in now, alone.  Medium rare.  And, you know what, somehow, that’s okay too.  I’m Positive, capital P, that sooner, rather than suburb, I’ll be ordering in soon, for two.

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COMMENTS:

  1. "So much of our lives is lived in meals. I need to eat more of mine with the people I love."

    Too true. I've never thought of it like that.

  2. "There’s nothing as comforting to me as a cheeseburger and fries… It’s my childhood on a plate…"

    Love that line.

    Just stumbled across your blog. Great stuff.
    Ever try fried dill pickles? They are yummy!

    Cheers.

  3. Man, now I'm hungry. Jeesh.

    Hot sweet potato fries. Mmmmm. Cheeseburger….

    Maybe what you miss never actually was. It was only your perception, which has now changed. "You know the good ole days weren't always good but tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."

  4. I improvised.

    Toasted Bialey. American Cheese. One egg, over easy. Lettuce. Tomato. Ketchup.

    It was an egg burger. Oh my Goodness. I need a room.

  5. My local meat market has hit on infusing portabello mushrooms and swiss cheese into their ground sirloin burgers.

    UN. BE. LIEVABLE.

  6. and for dessert we have fried chocolate covered oreos with confectionary sugar and a seriously cold glass of milk.

  7. Writing???? Hell I come back each day hoping against hope she'll post naked pictures. Ok in case sarcasm is lost on any one – it is the style, the content, and most of all the things that from time to time fly completly over my head and have me thinking all day about them.

    Now I had a burger to kill for at lunch – with bbq pork, bacon cheese and bbq sauce on top of it with those pickles that are sweet and spicey all at the same time. Now time for my post lunch nap.

  8. Writing???? Hell I come back each day hoping against hope she'll post naked pictures. Ok in case sarcasm is lost on any one – it is the style, the content, and most of all the things that from time to time fly completly over my head and have me thinking all day about them.

    Now I had a burger to kill for at lunch – with bbq pork, bacon cheese and bbq sauce on top of it with those pickles that are sweet and spicey all at the same time. Now time for my post lunch nap.

  9. MEAT IS MURDER!! But I swear I'd KILL for a good burger. I totally have to walk over to Corner Bistro this weekend to get one now. Thanks for the craving! Mmmmm…burrrger.

  10. mmmm meat!
    i came home alone and crying the other night. in my case, coming home to 2 kittens, craving the ex. which only made it worse. and now i want a burger too!

  11. Fried pickles are good, I'll give you that. But fried green tomatoes are god.

    Now I want a hamburger. Damn.

  12. Nothing is better than mopping up the hamburger juices that consist of bits of melted cheese, tomato sauce (… sorry I just can't say ketchup!) and the juice from the meat and fried onions, with fries…

    My favourite ingredient to my hambugers is is the typical Australian addition – beetroot. Whenever I mention this to American's they truly shudder!

    Even McDonalds here has 'McOz' which is a burger with beetroot and fried onions.

    Oh gosh… I need one now!

  13. Did you ever read it, "My Darling My Hamburger" that is? Good book.

    Oh Stephanie honey, baby, sweetie pie, etc when can I come over for one of these portobello … cheesburgers?????

  14. I think Nigella may as well be porn too. I was thinking that to myself for a while…and on another show featuring an Asian-Australian, Kylie Kwong, on PBS (right down to the bow chicka bow bow music).

  15. stephanie…

    my new favorite: pineapple sandwiched between two burger patties and grilled to perfection. add some grilled green pepper strips and a tangy teriaki sauce and you're ready for the summer burger of your life.

    loved it.

    natalie

  16. nigella IS hot. some of the things i eat alone in my apartment, coming home alone, alone and hungry, i would never eat in front of someone else. olives out of the can standing in the doorway of the kitchen watching larry king. a fudgesicle followed by peanut butter scooped out of the jar with the popsicle stick…it's a sickness. :)

  17. "I miss that life, that refrigerated, rotating, pie life, behind glass doors."

    Effing brilliant!

    Reminds me of late nights in HS @ the diner. Cheese fries with gravy, our waitress 'Sandy' and listening to "I'm a Hog for you Baby (And I Can't Get Enough of Your Love)" on the crappy booth jukeboxes.

    Why are there no "real" diners outside of the tri-state area?? :(

  18. Whatta' bunch of crap! Come on, give me a break!
    Are all you readers of "Greek Tragedy," (Gee, that's catchy)so bored, so lonely, get your kicks so vicariously…that you actually do believe that this writing is GOOD? I mean, get a life! Personally, when I was her age, I wasn't into reading what a screwed-up "honest" writer-chick was putting down in words! If I wanted a dose of that, I could always visit my older brother and talk to his red haired wife! I was into DOING IT, not reading about it! I mean, really, if you want to get laid, what's best?
    Reading about it, or DOING it yourself!
    The biggest spoof for all you blog affciandos,is that you are "hooked," on what a 29 yr old, (self confessed) ex-fat chick, divorced, girl who has alot of emotional baggage thinks about her urban environment! I mean why doesn't she walk across the Sahara desert and tell us about that experience, instead of all this NYC, East coast malaky? Answer: Cause that would require too much effort, and why should she, since she has fools like you avid readers "eating out of the palm of her hand." "trendy sushi dinner," my ass!

  19. I completely agree with the above comment.

    That this trite, insipid, third rate material ever got a book deal is beyond my wildest imaginings! And more than one publisher was interested? This crap makes me long for QUALITY of the Penthouse Forum!

    That blog-people are getting half a million dollar book and TV deals only further indicates the collapse of civilization as we know it.

    I am not surprised that it was mentioned in the New York Times which has become a paean to mediocrity itself – a joke with hack writers who invent sources and stories and haven't a shred of integrity above tabloid reporters.

    And the photos here of completely average looking, dull, drunken women with severely over-plucked eyebrows who are supposed to be living this fabulous New York life? This is what masquerades as entertainment? Reading about other people's drunk and tacky sexual escapades?

    And the author here is PROUD of this – as if it is some kind of accomplishment? Your father reads this bile? Your parents cannot wait to tell all their friends that their lovely daughter is the PAM spray girl?

    You are fortunate to be living in a time that rewards the documentation of an utterly empty and deeply shallow life in a second-rate greeting card like writing style.

    I fail to see why anyone would PAY for this garbage in book form except that they might actually be living emptier and more deeply shallow lives than you.

    Nothing against you personally except – well – you embody everything that I rail against on a daily basis and why ultimately feminism, equal rights and the right to choice will eventually be discarded in this country.

    It's women like you with your priorities straight – getting wasted and on a perpetual man-hunt and then writing about your "hot-sex" that are dooming the rest of us with intelligence, self-esteem and good gravy: DIGNITY, to approach living "The Handmaids Tale" for real.

    Thanks for that.

  20. i love it. the pissed off, rant-and-rail-at-the-world types have nothing better to do than rant and rail at someone kind, caring, hilarious and honest. it's poetic, really. somehow, stephanie's life would be more acceptable to you if she were blogging about a walk through the Sahara?!?! are ya kidding me? you pretentious a-holes. get off this blog and go rail and howl and whine and slam someone or something else. you NYT-slammin' whiners are the problem with society today — not stephanie. you judge and you moan and you rail and you complain and you pontificate and, if you happen to visit the Sahara yourself, you would believe yourself to be a better, deeper, more rounded person. you're the shallow ones. the rest of us are just being honest about how hard it is to find someone to love, and to be loved by. love … you may have heard about it. it's this feeling most of us strive to find, one that actually makes life worth living. you all probably wouldn't know it if it bit you in the ass. you've probably never felt it, and that's why you're so pissed off at the world in the first place.

    or maybe it's because you can't get your own freakin' book deal.

  21. i love it. the pissed off, rant-and-rail-at-the-world types have nothing better to do than rant and rail at someone kind, caring, hilarious and honest. it's poetic, really. somehow, stephanie's life would be more acceptable to you if she were blogging about a walk through the Sahara?!?! are ya kidding me? you pretentious a-holes. get off this blog and go rail and howl and whine and slam someone or something else. you NYT-slammin' whiners are the problem with society today — not stephanie. you judge and you moan and you rail and you complain and you pontificate and, if you happen to visit the Sahara yourself, you would believe yourself to be a better, deeper, more rounded person. you're the shallow ones. the rest of us are just being honest about how hard it is to find someone to love, and to be loved by. love … you may have heard about it. it's this feeling most of us strive to find, one that actually makes life worth living. you all probably wouldn't know it if it bit you in the ass. you've probably never felt it, and that's why you're so pissed off at the world in the first place.

    or maybe it's because you can't get your own freakin' book deal.

  22. Fried Pickles… excellent stuff. Available at Hooters. Comes with horseradish, but ask for ranch… yeah, I'm from Texas…

  23. I agree with Laura!
    The mere fact that you come here and follow Stephanie’s life to such detail that you can use more than four adjectives to describe is unbelievably hypocritical. Nobody asked you to come to this blog; why are you here? If it pains you SO much to read this, why do you do it? Deal with your own life and quit judging and bad-mouthing people you don’t know.

  24. I agree with Laura!
    The mere fact that you come here and follow Stephanie’s life to such detail that you can use more than four adjectives to describe her is unbelievably hypocritical. Nobody asked you to come to this blog; why are you here? If it pains you SO much to read this, why do you do it? Deal with your own life and quit judging and bad-mouthing people you don’t know.

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