Slices of Life: Pictures, Portraits, and Profiles

by Asha Veal

My mind masturbates to the memory of a giant burrito.

Mystical Frisco! I want to scream his name. That beige skinned lovah’ used to have me panting. Fronted like he came from South of the Border, but really was made in Queens. The whole-wheat warmness. Rice and beans stank sticky, all steamed up between tortilla folds. Pico de pleasure, making me drool like a fool with the added benefit of blasting the sinuses clear.

Frisco’s direct number to deliver a booty call remains stored in my cell phone. Even though it’s been an entire year now since a passionless doctor announced that I’ve “become symptomatic of Celiac’s disease.” In layman terms, Celiac means “Skinny Bitches Who Can’t Eat Wheat.”

Messing with the good stuff is over now. It’s like everyday, as my “system works over time to find a balance,” there’s some new restriction on what real-life taste pleasures I can’t have.

Mr. Peanut will knock the wind—and quite possibly the life—out of me.
Whole Wheat, that gym rat, makes my skin itch. And his cousin crew, Oat Boy, Rye, Spelt, and Barley, also give me the creeps.
Even Penis Cillin, a generally reliable freak, got real nasty one time and bugged my whole body out into hives.
Tomato, Potato, Rice, Orange, Corn, Eggplant, and Dairy. They all do it to me so good that I can’t sit/walk/breathe straight for a week.
Even Rice. Who can’t get down with rice?
The same girl who can’t even get down with latex.

This digestive drama must be punishment from the pleasure gods for a life spent roaming grocery store aisles like a nympho to taste. Stack of cornmeal pancakes with syrup? Gimme some! Challah bread French toast? Let’s cross colors! My little tummy is hungry.

GIVE ME FOOD!

Like chicken curry made by the West 3rd Street Baluchi, all smothered rich with tomato and almond and starch. Cuchifrito comidas in the LES, deep-fried batter and oil, white flour and corn. Some sweet potato pie. Some sweet potato sushi. Beer. Chocolate ice cream. A good damned tamale.

I want the Mr. Pink pizza slice from Two Boots on Bleecker to one morning rise overhead like the sun and drip molten greasy cheese all over my lavalicious naked body.

Ooooh. Aaaah, all oral decadence aside, back as a kid who ever thought there’d be a day when I couldn’t wait to be able to safely eat a carrot?

–
Researchers estimate that approximately 12 million Americans suffer from food allergies. Be glad if you’re not one of them. And please, stop rolling your eyes in disbelief at those of us that do.