The night before I completely neglected my god-given gifts of taste and smell, my boyfriend made bear loin and feral boar bacon from Savenor’s. The meal was unbelievable ‘-‘- crispy smoked strips of pork paired with the gamey, complex flavors of bear in a pinot noir and rosemary braise. Although it was definitely what I would demand from the state before a lethal injection, the meal was not a smart choice in hindsight. The next’ day, Sunday February 22, 2009, I would be embarking on a colon-clearing cleanse diet akin to a gerbil’s.
It was my roommate Joe’s idea ‘-‘- a three-way cleanse-off. Fellow MUSE columnist Charlie and I would detox using conventional ways for, well, as long as we could, while Joe chose a liquid juice diet. Charlie sort of improvised and I decided to follow in the footsteps of Morgan Spurlock (‘Supersize Me’). After polluting his body with saturated fats and complex carbohydrates during a month-long binge at McDonald’s, his vegan wife planned a diet prohibiting animal products, white bread and rice, sugar, caffeine and alcohol. I knew it was going to be an uncomfortable transition, but how hard could it be?
Day One: 2:05 p.m. ‘-‘- I sluggishly order a Venti green tea at Starbucks, secretly hoping the stash was surreptitiously caffeinated by someone at the tea-bag company. As I sit at the Udon bar at the GSU, trying not to imagine the cheesey foccacias and savory ryes smirking at me through the glass window at Charles River Bread Co., I peer over and spy Charlie the Cheat at Loose Leafs. I immediately call him over and he justifies his behavior by explaining that it’s ‘still raw’ and ‘only oil’ is to be his dressing. I wag my finger at him, then walk over to Jamba Juice for a slimy shot of wheatgrass juice, necessary to wash down the Natural Cleanse Complex dietary supplements that are part of my regimen. Every day I must down eight of the massive horse tranq-sized pills, which use marshmallow root, slippery elm bark and other natural ingredients to function as a natural laxative ($15.99). I also take a milk thistle supplement to metabolize my liver, which is clouded with delicious toxins from my destructive addiction to red meat and wine.
Day Two: 4:30 p.m. For ‘breakfast’ I had POM juice and a banana with some decaf green tea. I was starving but felt bloated as my stomach gurgled with acid reflux. I began to feel guilty for my incisors ‘-‘- that I wasn’t using my teeth to their full potential. I would daydream about the pleasurable feeling of tearing through a ribeye with my bicuspids and molars. I justified my new diet by telling myself my skin looked better, but it was meaningless because of how jaundiced I felt inside.
About an hour later, I found myself cross-legged on my living room floor, watching a Karl Lagerfeld documentary, shoveling Upper Crust’s veal parmesan pizza into my mouth. A complete and pathetic relapse; I simply wasn’t thinspired enough. Supposedly Joe was successful in completing his cleanse and Charlie suffered the same fate as I. The moral of the story is: don’t cleanse, eat cheeseburgers.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
