The Dessert Whore Day

A Non-Disappering Joyfest at Five Guys.

Another day, another dollar, another few hours spent working in my favourite Starbucks in all the world. Another day, incidentally, of meeting up with an old friend after work.

Today being her day off, d came with me, got her hair straightened, and soaked up some rays in the Welsh capital city. We met for lunch at a place that's new in Cardiff, but which has long been a staple in the States: Five Guys.

It's new, it's loud, and its food ordering system is reminiscent of the Starbucks way of doing things, but oh damn! This was not the place to go for a Disappearing Lunch.

Had a hotdog and a burger. Yes, two things. Ooooh, bad Tony! Gorgeous, fresh, tasty, the whole thing was a joy, frankly. I'd walked my usual five times round the local lake before setting off this morning, and all told have walked 5.4 miles today, burning 742 calories according to my phone's pedometer (anyone else notice how odd that word looks, written down? Looks like a machine that measures your propensity to be ickily attracted to kids). That's probably about three bites of hot dog, I should think. The point about having discovered Five Guys today though is that it really shows up the different mindsets of Disappearing and not-Disappearing people, even if those people are technically the same person. Now, I went in a perfectly ordinary Disappearer, and resisted the blandishment of french fries when d forgot I wouldn't be able to go near them. I'm reliably informed they were perfect.

Anyone got a cushion I can kick?

But what's worse from my point of view is the shakes. Oh gods, the shakes.
Now, it's important to understand that you don't get to be the size I am without putting some serious, probably quite messed-up, effort into it. It's actually almost as hard in its own way to put on my sort of weight as it is to start taking it off. Now - my name's Tony, and I'm a dessert whore. I have no discretion whatsoever when it comes to desserts. I want them half a mile high and covered in sparklers, with every slutty, calorie-rich invention you can imagine crammed into them somehow. If I'm going to have a dessert, I want it mechanised, I want it singing happy birthday and I want it gooooood.

Oddly enough, my dessert whore history came up in conversation later in the evening when we met up with our friend Karen, and d mentioned to her the kind of things I used to do.

Brief Dessert Whore Diversion
When you think of a bowl of cereal, what do you think of?

If you think of something like this...you're really not in the same league and I don't quite know how to talk to you. First of all, in my youth, I used to use a mixing bowl, rather than any of your paltry cereal bowls.

Then, you lay down a layer of halved Rich Tea or Digestive biscuits (Graham Crackers, Americans), to provide a kind of moist biscuit base.
Then you layer some Weetabix (I may lose some of the Americans on the way through this, just try and appreciate the quantities involved here), for a dissolving, thickened soupy consistency when the dish is complete.
Then a layer of dense but structurally sound cereal (for preference in my case, Shreddies).
Then you add a layer of broken chocolate biscuits - dark chocolate for preference, and I tended to favour Digestives for this layer too, though some of the fancier chocolate-coated biscuits - KitKats etc - would give a surprising bite of texture in this layer, as they'd be more resitent to sogginess when milked.
Then you start to build your flake layers - start with Bran Flakes, for that dark robustness and the laughable illusion that you're adding something healthy. Then add either standard Corn Flakes, or for preference, either Frosties or Honey Nut Cornflakes, for additional sugary joy.
Then, to almost complete the dish, add a puffed rice layer, slide a couple more dark chocolate Digestives on either side as textural out-takes for snacking, slice one banana and layer it carefully over the Rice Krispy layer, to help glue those demented little buggers down. Pour your full fat milk in at the side, allowing it to pool at the bottom, like correctly watering a plant, and ooze UP through the layers, rather than down. Then top with single or double pouring cream, to further adhere the Rice Krispies.

Voila - Tony's Breakfast Trifle.

All in all, it's a wonder I didn't die before I hit 20. I used the same sort of layering ingenuity whenever I felt like some ice cream at home. As I say, getting to be as fat as I am is not only a dark art form, it's a vocation.

Anyway, that was just a quick Dessert Whore Deviation. Oddly, the menu at Five Guys doesn't even have desserts, so why am I wittering on about them?

Because they have shakes, that's why. Shakes are simply liquid forms of dessert in my book, especially when, as at Five Guys, they're made with an ice cream base, and you're allowed to add in annnnnnny damn thing you like, for free - including the whipped cream that makes them properly desserty, and the bacon that makes them properly American.

d had a shake this afternoon, and went on to explain its deliciousness to me by through medium of mime. You remember that scene from When Harry Met Sally? Imagine that, but with the word 'Shakegasm' involved.

Seriously - cushion, anyone?

But again, when offered a sip of it, I had to refuse. Offering a sip of something like that to a dessert whore like me is like offering a drunk a shot of Johnny Walker Blue 'just so you can appreciate it.'
Believe me when I say we appreciate it. We appreciate it reeeeeeel good.

That's what I mean though about the different mindset of a Disappearer and a non-Disappearer. If we'd only gone to Five Guys a few weeks earlier...well, it would have been embarrasing, for a start - they only opened at the end of March, but assuming it had been there, and we'd gone two weeks ago, there would have been nothing that could have stopped me from piling in to those heavenly fries or diving face first into at least a couple of dessert whore shakes.

Today, I went, I ate, it was glorious, and after that, I was just watching the rest of Cardiff do the things I couldn't do. Now, I've always said, and always meant, that this is just the way with Disappearing - like recovering drunks at dinner parties, you don't get to bring everyone else's buzz down just because you personally can't indulge. That would be the behaviour of an anti-social idiot, and you don't have to be one of those just because you're going through some shit. But the point is, for all the Disappearing is necessary in my case, never be under any illusions that Disappearing makes you a better person, because in fact rather the opposite is true. I would have been happier, d would have been happier, and the staff at Five Guys would have been happier if I had gone in there today as a non-Disappearer, an embracer of life and calories and all the good things they had to offer. But no - on some fundamental level, Disappearing makes you the Calvinist at an orgy, a droopy, drippy, miserable figure while everyone else gets their foody buzz on. You can appreciate it all you like, but you can't partake, and to some degree that makes you the vortex of a downer. I'd almost forgotten how much to despise there was about my character when I'm Disappearing - not, as I say, that I was tutting at people or scowling at every fry they popped into their mouths - I ate what I wanted and thoroughly enjoyed it and the two of us had a wonderful day. It's just a sense of self, a comparison between the Ghost of Christmas Present and Ebenezer Scrooge, one laughing and jovial, the other, insular and cold.

Of course, there will be another day - that's what you have to keep focusing on in this Disappearing game. There will be a day when you're not actively Disappearing, and when the Ghost of Christmas Present will be you again, when you'll have worked hard, and achieved your goals, and be living a significantly less harmful life, when you'll be able to go in and enjoy everything, with the kind of joie de vivre that's more native to your spirit. In case that's not been clear, that's what I'm saying - I want to be able to throw open the doors and yell 'Hot dogs for everyone! Shakes all round and make mine a double!' That's the essential me. The Disappearing me is absolutely a lot less fun.

But we go on. There will be another day.
Another day.
Another day.