Category: satire

Entenmann’s Junkie

We start our lives with no bad intentions.

None. Nobody comes from the womb full of bigotry and hatred. Nobody.

Along the way through our lives, though, we get snagged. Different things jump in front of us, challenging each one of us in different ways. We discover our weaknesses, and we are easily overwhelmed by them. There are too many things to fight, so much misery around us. We get bogged down. Burdened. None of us is above the other. We’re just different.

Flaws, weaknesses, vices, it doesn’t matter. We’re not immune. An old quote attributed to Sokrates goes something like, “Always be kind to others; you have no idea what they’re going through.”

That’s a nice quote. I like it. There’s really no way of knowing whether Sokrates said it or not. Most quotes attributed to him bear little evidence to know if he, in fact, said them.

Sokrates was known to be a bisexual, and though he was married, he and Alkibiates had a very close relationship. Well. Until the latter became a traitor and sided with Sparta during the Peloponesian War. Then Sparta exiled him.

But Sokrates had a much better reputation than his lover. Unless, of course, you didn’t care for men who didn’t wash, walked the streets unshod in filthy garments, and who was known for publicly debating and humiliating politicians.

So far, not exactly a villainous guy.

Except, I can’t prove a thing I’ve just written. Ancient history is often recorded in a “dramatized” fashion, after all. Take Herotodus, for example. He was a historian who included the mythical in his writing. We can’t discount everything he wrote, but we have to take most of it with a whole box of salt.

My battles have been, to me at least, epic. But none of what I’ve written can be exactly experienced  as I have experienced it all.

Self medicating is a weasel expression that defines certain coping disorders after trauma. Addiction is what comes to mind when we hear it. It’s drugs and alcohol abuse mostly. Or smoking. I don’t think bath salts are high on the list. Or sniffing Testor’s glue. But yeah, they happen.

One of the most prevalent coping behaviors has to do with food. Eating too much, not enough, or eating lots of junk food.

Here’s one of my weaknesses: Entenmann’s cakes, cinnamon buns, and donuts.

It wasn’t always like this; it used to be fried chicken and Big Mac sandwiches. But somehow, all that changed. I was up to the Harris Teeter almost every day. I could go through a dozen Softee donuts in a day, easy. I don’t like their chocolate chip cookies, but I can tell you, everything else was fair game. Coffee and Entenmann’s cakes and donuts and everything.

The store rarely closes. Except at night, when the county comes to roll up all the streets. If I awake in the middle of the night and there’s no cakes, I’m in big trouble. That happened a few weeks ago. Something woke me up. Call it a perfect storm. Pain, plus a loud sound like someone knocked hard on my window (I’m sure nobody did, but it woke me up anyway. I think they call this “Exploding Head Syndrome,” a type of sleep disorder. And why not, I mean, I have every other sleep disorder!)

In the middle of the night, I awoke. I used the latrine and decided I didn’t really want to go back to sleep because if it happened again, I would not call it a sleep disorder. I would have to say that the backyard had a ghost and that it hates me. That’s when someone hapless as I am gets carted over to the psych ward for 72 hours of not having any fun at all. Or any Entenmann’s.

I went out to the kitchen to make some coffee. That’s when I remembered that I was out of Entenmann’s. NO! I can’t be without coffee cakes from Entenmann’s! No donuts. No cinnamon buns. I had nothing!

I didn’t look at the clock. I laced up my boots and got my jacket and hat and, of course, my cane because my leg arteries have been accumulating fat, sugar and nicotine for a half century, and I headed out. I didn’t even notice how dark it was. I walked all the way to the store only to find it closed.

A horrible panic invaded every cell in my body. But mostly in my head.

WHAT NOW? I screamed. I thought that I was only screaming to myself.

I wasn’t.

I was in front of the Harris Teeter screaming bloody murder. I didn’t notice that I was sobbing in between screams. Or that I had fallen to my knees.

“QUIET!” a voice said. I replied “SHUT UP! I’M IN A CRISIS!“

The homeless man on the bench around the corner isn’t the worst guy in the world, but he’s not very nice, either. He went quiet.

By now, I was sweating and shaking uncontrollably. I retched, but nothing came up. My stomach had never felt so empty.

By chance, my cellphone fell onto the sidewalk. The jolt made the screen light up. The time it showed was impossible: 02:15! That meant I had awoken around 01:15. What the heck was I doing out here?

That’s when a police cruiser pulled in parallel to the curb, and those blue lights started spinning like a ball in a disco. No, wait. They weren’t spinning like that at all. Why would I compare two such different things? It’s ridiculous; forget I said it.

I was driven to the hospital in handcuffs. Sweating, cold, shivering and shaking, I stared a mile away. I drew a blank when some intern asked what had happened. Some minutes later, I whispered, “…cake.”

“Entenmann’s…”

“Dough…”

“…nuts.”

“Crumb…crumb…”

“…cake.”

I could hear them at the nurse’s station: “…ever seen a case this severe?”

I tried to talk louder. It was nothing but a hoarse whisper: “Entenmann’s!”

They heard me!

“I know we keep a bottle for keeping patients from DTs, but are there any Entenmann’s?” asked a nurse.

“You know that the strongest thing we have is morphine,” another said. There was scorn in her voice.

“We can’t help him here,” the doctor said softly.

Instead of an ambulance, I placed in a truck

and taken here: the Bimbo Bakery.

I was going to emerge a reformed addict, they said.

They denied me donuts.

I couldn’t have coffee cakes.

No cake.

Nothing at all but these:

But once was enough. After three days, I couldn’t even stand the smell of cake. I was released after losing 10 pounds and lowering my A1C by fifteen percent. I was still an old man.

But I felt brand new…

So please, remember to be kind. You never know the battles someone’s going through.

Peeves

Name your top three pet peeves.

There are things that get under our skin.

Germs, parasites, even insects.

Pet peeves are a subcutaneous invader also, sometimes more irritating than the above.

Maybe you just can’t stand the way your partner chews. Or how he’s preoccupied with your breasts during foreplay; you want him to put his tongue to better use and just leave the mammies alone.

Some women, on the other hand, love to be licked and kissed and sucked on. I once dated a girl who had orgasms that way. And, no kidding, she was by no means a freak. Everyone’s different.

And maybe you hate this person or that person because they smell funny or support nutty doctrines like that of the late Pat Robertson, who, for the record, was an extremist religious nut bag.

Like saying Donald Trump was “God’s chosen” and “to be against Trump is to be against God” despite the unashamedly hateful personality and spouting of bizarre bullshit during the 2016 campaign. Or maybe you were “against God” before that, thinking, as he had so often proven, that Trump was a scammer and a big talker who was full of himself.

Which he was, and still is. Not to mention being nutty as a scrotum hanging between a bull elephant’s hind quarters.

Or maybe you don’t pay attention to politics anymore and mostly avoid the news as being the mental poison that it is. Let’s say you get irritated waiting for the weather report because after 10 commercials, he or she says what the current conditions are, then, “…full forecast coming up” which is followed by ten more commercials. And the ads themselves are irksome, shamelessly telling you you’re stupid, ugly or too fat, you have to get medicine for a limp dick, or your breasts are too small or too big, you need a new blender, a new car, a TV, a particular drug. And you need insurance — in bundles.

And then — then you get a fast, vague forecast, and have to turn to something else because if you don’t, you’re going to break a bone or get electrocuted kicking in your fucking TV screen, which is 50-90-inches at a diagonal and cost you over a grand because you got all the bells and whistles.

Or you could hate that phrase, “bells and whistles”. In which case, I don’t blame you. I hate myself for having just used it and I need to shower, do penance and say a rosary, I feel so filthy.

Sometimes a pet peeve can be very petty, yet still be huge to you. You’re pissed when it rears its ugly head. When I see someone write or say, speaking of politics mostly, “I’ll try and suss it out” or worse, “let’s try and parse out the meaning” of a particular news development.

What the fuck is wrong with people? Are they speaking parseltongue like Lord Voldemort? They thinking about Davis Susskind? What? Those words are stupid fucking words. Stop it!

One that gets me was a buzzword back in the late 90s and the 00s. “Tout”. There’s a stupid word. Some corporate enterprise was “touting” the virtues of a new and revolutionary product which really was no more new than snake oil in a fancy bottle with cherry flavoring added.

They not too long ago “touted” all these beneficial features of Medicare. But the change just restricted what people qualify for, as in surgeries, cost reduction and general quality, which is downright shitty.

And I know it’s always happened, but in a throwback to more than 50 years ago, ambulance and EMT response times are too long. People are dying because of it. And once in the hospital, your chances of surviving a medical emergency get no better. And it’s going to get worse.

Maybe the dog next door pisses you off. Shits in your yard, and the owner won’t clean it up and never leashes the little fucker which would be comparable in size to a gerbil, but leaves piles of runny doodoo like someone up the street is playing Jumanji, and Jeff Goldblum is in the area, and a whole jungle of animals including rhinos, hippos and a dinosaur or two just cut through in stampede mode. And you just stepped in it.

Maybe you even slid in it and wound up flat on your back, the runny doggy doo making you vomit up your cantaloupe from breakfast and ruining a new Brooks Brothers suit and Gucci shoes you splurged for. Because you are not going to try cleaning doggy diarrhea off when it smells like that and is so wet that it went through your suit jacket, shirt and undershirt and you know it’s all over your back. And before you get to work, you have to take a Hefty bag to the bathroom with you, strip, throw your entire outfit away and shower, but realize that it not only got your back, it got on and into your wallet, covering your cash, cards and the pictures of your family including the one kid you’re sure isn’t yours because the tyke looks too much like that neighbor who lets his dog shit in your yard.

Before you start going out at 03:00 and pouring puddles of antifreeze or tossing Hershey bars into the grass, remember that dogs just do what dogs do. Or doo. And it’s the owner you must get even with. We can cover that at another time, but really, what sets you off? What are some things that get under your skin like poison ivy oil?

For me, aside from words like “suss”, “tout”, or “parse”, it’s always been the idiots like Michelle Bachman, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Kelly Conway and Sarah Palin. Women who have no sexual appeal at all, but who my weak, asshole character would love to hate-fuck, just because. My dick ain’t been hard in years, folks, and yet I know I’d get the boner of all time for these know-it-all bitches whose combined I.Q. would be that of a pitcher of lemonade. Mice with human “brains”, all liberals being barbarians, ready to summon the apocalypse with their gay and lesbianism and trans ways. These women are like Ilsa, the she-wolf of the SS.

Lizard shit comes from their mouths.

God damn, they’re stupid, intolerant, bigoted, angry, and did I mention stupid?

Thing is, mad as they make me, I’d fuck any one of them right now. Bareback. And not pull out, either. And since abortion is illegal, menopause or no, if Bachmann got pregnant, I wouldn’t care and there would be no child support because I’d go straight to the Supremes, the nine penises of the Potomac, and say “well ya fucked up, didn’t ya?”

Let Conway’s husband pay for that freak to grow up. And I’m sure the Palin family would welcome another brain around. At two, the little milksucker’d be smarter than his mother.

Went off the rails a bit on that one, sorry. But the taking of women’s rights is more than a pet peeve for me; it’s evil.

What does qualify as a peeve is the stupid, screwy, goofy, neurotic, loony bullshit conservatives said about abortion to get Roe overturned. I’m not gonna get into those because I’ll end up with a heart attack. But it was, is, and always will be some of the most incredible things humans have uttered since language became a thing.

So knock a republican up today and help them preserve the Bible, which doesn’t mention abortion, and let them take one for the old Dipper. Yeah, Dipper. The one in the sky at night. Because fucking outside is illegal if anyone sees you. But it’s exhilarating, and imagine impregnating Sarah Palin under the Alaskan sky at midnight. You could tell her as she’s having an orgasm, “Let’s have one for the old Dipper!”