“How many of you love to eat? I’m talking to the people who love to eat tonight. C’mon, how many of you love to eat? Let me hear you!” Barry asked the audience in Kalispell, Montana.
“That line never gets much applause. Most applaud politely and softly, thinking, ‘I don’t know where you’re going with this, but yeah, I enjoy eating a thing or two.’ Very few people leave their seat with, “EATING! YEAH! Sing it sista!” Yet, we have to eat food to sustain life. It’s true. Look it up. In your research, you’ll find that not only does eating food sustain life, it provides the protein and vitamins we need to maintain certain energy levels and strength, but that doesn’t mean that we’re going to rise up and scream at the top of our lungs to express our passion for it in an open forum like this one, because people are going to consider us a pig.
“But even those of you who were on a half-bun, ready to rise and scream your heads off about the glory of eating, won’t do it on the first date. It’s just … It’s not a good look. Most prospective lovers won’t mind hearing that we enjoy eating, as long as we do it in moderation. They don’t want to hear about our plans for massive weight gain. “You like what you see here, babe, because there’s going to be a whole lot more of it soon. Once you start to love me, and make me more comfortable with myself and my physical appearance, it’s only a matter of time before this,” Barry said loosely circling his belly, “becomes a big mess of Frito’s and Skittles. That’s right, this is only the beginning. I love to eat hon’.”
“Women don’t demand skinny, most don’t anyway, but they don’t want us to be all hooting and woo hooing about food either. They do it, though. That’s right, they don’t mind talking about how much they love to eat, because they’re all thin and stuff. They’re not afraid to share it with the world. “I love to eat!” They say it all the time. Really? You love to eat? I don’t think you do. I don’t think you love it near as much as I do sweetie. Here, here’s a rack of spare ribs. Prove it!
“Starting today! Right now! If you’re a little chubby, or planning to be, shout it with me. “I love to eat!” Shout it loud, shout it proud. I like sleeping, and sitting around, and do nothing for unusually long, unhealthy stretches, but nothing compares to eating.
“Have you ever had a friend say, “Let’s go grab something to eat, and then we can-”
“Wait, wait, hold on, hold on, there little doggie,” I interrupt. “For me, there is no and then. I don’t know what you plan to do after this meal, but the meal is the event for me, the night out, and the fun. I’m sure your other plans will be a blast, but I’m old, and keeping these beautiful curves ain’t as easy as it used to be, so I’m not into your and then. If I’m only going to be able to eat two meals a day now, and one of them has to be a light one, and you’re going to tell me to reduce my sugar intake and cut back on all those delicious, salty snacks that are probably going to lead to a painfully slow, premature death, you better bring your A-game if you’re going to ask me to have a meal with you. Use your words. Seduce me.
“Hey, I want to live a long life as much as the next guy. I want to live so long that someone at my funeral whispers, “Good God he was old!” and I know I’m going to have to sacrifice some to get there, but at some point, I’m going to have to sit down with a spreadsheet with one column titled, ‘How long do I really want to live?’ and the other titled ‘How much fun do I plan to have while I’m here?’ where I add, multiply, subtract and divide the quality of my life from a proposed quantity.
“Meals are the event of the day. They’re what we look forward to throughout the mind-numbing hours of inputting data into a computer. The meal is our reward for putting up with the family, home repairs, and the dog that we wanted so bad at one time. We do what we’re supposed to do. We drop the kids off at school on time, pick them up on time, and we work our tail off to crunch the numbers for Mr. Jamison to try to get one small smile out of him, and then we’re supposed to go home and eat a sensible salad with a side of broccoli? Screw that! I want meat. I want a steak. I want a big old artery clogging ribeye, with a side of mashed potatoes and a beer as my reward for putting up with all that.
“I’d love to eat all I want and be as slim and trim as you, so I don’t have to see all of my chins in photographs, but to do that they suggest that we might want to consider skipping a few meals, or at least think about mixing in a salad here and there. Have you heard this joke? This ‘Feel free to mix in a salad’ they say, or, ‘Have you ever heard of a salad?’ Yes, yes, I’ve heard of salad. Somebody, somewhere told me about how they ordered a salad instead of a steak at one of the finest steakhouses in our city, because he thought he could use a little more ruffage in his diet. He didn’t order it as an appetizer. It was his main course. He wanted to be healthy, and he thought it might help him live longer. You can eat salad with a side of broccoli all you want, to live longer, but I got news for you, brothers and sisters, you’re probably not going to outlive me as much as you think. I’m not going to live forever, I know that, we all know that, but while we’re here we should live like we’re going to die tomorrow, and a portion of that means I’m going to eat whatever the hell I want.
“If you don’t view meals as the event of the day, it’s because you’re not married. The first question the wife hits you with when the two of you arrive home from work is, “What do you want to eat tonight?” It happens so often, you should be prepared, but you’re not. “Ah, crap, I didn’t even think about it today, sorry.” It’s almost stressful.
“Then, when you do come up with something, she uses her veto power.”
“I don’t want to eat there, Henry. We ate there so recently.” Why is it so important to space out restaurants, because if we eat at the same place, in a too narrow a space in time, it will ruin the event of eating that particular meal. “Let’s try something else,” she says, “and I don’t want red meat tonight, and no more pizza, for God’s sakes Henry.” Ok, well, I don’t know where to eat then. You pick. “I picked last time.” This unlocks the dreaded ‘who picked last time?’ phase of the back-and-forth. Why is this important, because you both know your tailbone is on the line to pick the greatest place to eat every time out. She picked last time, and the two of you both know what an epic failure that was, and she can’t take the pressure of picking two times in a row, especially after that last one.
“Do you have these little, internecine battles with currents and undercurrents of tension flowing back and forth between your words? We all do, right? Eating is what we must do, and what we talk about nonstop. The what, when, where, and with whom are we going to eat tonight dominate all discussion topics. “I don’t want to eat at that place, because I hate their side items. The entrees are all right, I guess, but their sides are so ordinary and bland.”
“If you’re anything like me, you take such criticism personal. You have no stake in the success or failure of that restaurant. You don’t own any of the corporation’s stocks, but you love their food, and she knows it, and that agitates us, because she seems to reject everything, we hold dear. She doesn’t do it with that purpose in mind, and we know it, but we like that place so much that it’s kind of our place, and some weird part of us takes proprietary ownership of that place in our marriage to the point that any insults directed at it are personal. Yet, we abide her veto power, and we come up with another place. “I don’t want to eat there, either, the service sucks, and their bathrooms are dirty.” Their bathrooms are dirty? I’ve heard this more than twice. How did the cleanliness of a bathroom become a bullet point in this debate? What are you going to do in there? Exactly! You’re going to do your part to dirty that tiny, poorly ventilated room up. “Cleanliness of bathrooms, she says,” we mutter as the squabble comes to a close.
“Except, we don’t mutter that, because we know what starts out as a minor rebuttal can turn a back-and-forth discussion into a squabble, which can lead to a back and forth that can somehow escalate into an argument, and on rare occasions even a fight. A fight over where to eat? If that’s not a first world problem I don’t know what is. The larger point is that the two of you will never look back on the incremental progressions of this fight with a laugh, because it’s such a silly thing to fight over. You won’t, because you know that this is the meal, the hallowed parent’s night out meal. The parent’s night out meal is not just important, it’s an existential pivot point. If we want to continue to enjoy the freedom and fun that comes with our Tuesday nights out, and we hope to keep our marriage exciting and new, we know we have to do this night up right. We have to plan, discuss the details of that plan, and iron out any differences to one day, hopefully, look back on this night as that night. “You remember that night, right?” The ‘that night’ designation is the gold standard for all nights in romantic relationships, and those of us in such relationships fear we might never get back to them, and there’s no sense in trying to duplicate them either.
“Why don’t we just eat at home?” she says as we enter the ‘give up’ phase of our process. I do not want to eat at home Mildred, we always eat at home. “It’s healthier and cheaper.” It’s not healthier. Do people ever ask you that question? They ask me that all the time. ‘How often do you eat out?’ It doesn’t matter what we say. We could say we haven’t eaten out since the Coolidge administration, and they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s so unhealthy. You have to eat at home more.’ Screw you, I like to eat out. It’s special, and I’m paying them to treat me special. When they don’t, God help them, I’ll rage. When people say it’s healthier to eat at home, I say, “Doesn’t it depend on what you eat, no matter where you eat it? What if I chose a healthy entrée and healthy sides at a restaurant? Now, I don’t, I won’t, and we all know I won’t, but what if I did?
“When we’re not talking about what we’re going to eat, we talk about what we ate, and where we ate it. Have you eaten there yet? No, OhmiGod, you absolutely must eat there, and you’ve got to eat there now, before they have to start feeding you through a tube.
“You are what you eat. We’ve all heard that. I have a friend who won’t eat chicken. Chicken. I understand not eating red meat and pork, but chicken? She said she doesn’t like the texture. Every time I run into her, ‘How could you not like chicken?’ is the first and last thought in my head. I have more of a problem with her than I do vegetarians. I actually respect vegetarians and vegans. I could never be one, but you have to respect the amount of discipline it takes to go into a backyard brimming with all those gorgeous smells of red meat and pork and say, “I think I’ll take the beans, lentils and organic chia seeds on that side platter over there.” I take my hat off to them, because I could never do it.
“I respect you if you’ve managed to limit your diet to legumes, flax, and chia seeds, and you only drink water that comes from the finest springs in Demark. I respect anyone who can limit their diet in that manner, but my question is always why? Well, to be healthier, they say, and being healthier actually leads to more happiness. I would never say that consumption alone leads to happiness, but it’s definitely part of the equation. If you doubt that, try having someone try to take it away from you. I saw that firsthand. Someone very dear to me told his caretakers he would rather die than give up oral consumption. He went to the extreme of threatening a lawsuit over it, because when someone threatened to take eating away from him, he wrote: “I’d rather die! Eating is the only joy I have left in life, and I’d rather die than have that taken away from me.”
“Some of us who have no limits on our joy of oral consumption choose lentils and legumes over barbecued ribs and steak, because they think those decisions will help them outlive the rest of us. They might be right, if we take accidents and other freak occurrences out of the equation, but will they be happier? It’s a leading question, because I know they won’t. They can’t be happier. We’re talking about the quality of life here.
“Eat eggs,” they say. “Eat tons of them. They’re nature’s perfect food.” “Don’t eat eggs; they’re evil.” What? “It depends on how you prepare them.” Drink coffee, don’t drink coffee. Eat steak, don’t eat steak. Eat butter over substitutes, and everything your body recognizes in the digestion process. Everything in moderation: Eat less, play more.
“Various studies suggest that if you eat less, you will have more energy to play. It makes sense and it doesn’t. We need food to sustain energy levels, but if we eat too much, the digestion of it saps our energy. Even without the science we know what happens when we eat huge. To prove their point, the study brought on some fella who tight ropes the very lowest levels of caloric intake possible. He says he’s happier and healthier than he’s ever been. I don’t question the science, but I know what I know, and I know that if I go out to eat at a big steak house, and I choose salad with a side of broccoli, I’m not going to be happier. I might have more energy, and I might be healthier, but when I’m 105, playing pickleball and parcheesi, I’m still going to be thinking about all the steaks I passed on in life. Healthier? Yes. More energetic and playful, sure, with some asterisks. Happier? No.
***
“You see me here tonight. I could stand to lose what 10, 20 … 30 pounds?” Barry asked. He turned to an audience member with a smile. “You think I could stand to lose 40?” All right, I could stand to lose a lot of weight, but I’m not a glutton. Yet, I receive sensorial joy from eating delicious food, and I find going to a restaurant and eating their food eventful. I, like the distant kings and queens of yore, get to point at a menu selection, “I shall have your finest meal on this eve.” When the server walks out with my food, or what I think is my food, most of them understand how majestic we consider their arrival. The ones who do it up right, share a knowing smile with us, and they add a very subtle element of pageantry to their arrival. If you watch them, the best of them, they have it in their stride, both of us knowing our moment has arrived. They also have a big, glorious ‘your moment has arrived’ smile on their face.
“We all know this ‘your moment has arrived’ smile. When it’s directed at us, it’s glorious. I think, I think she just directed that smile at me. Praise the heavens, she did. When I was younger and more attractive, and young women gave me that ‘your moment has arrived’ smile, it meant something entirely different. It took me a while to deal with the fact that that’s over for me, but I’m okay with it now if it means food. I’m okay with it, because when I see that smile now, it comes after I saw all the other tables around me have had their moment arrive first, while I silently implored my server to bring my food.
That smile suggests she knows what we’ve been through. Even though were good little soldiers, silently waiting, she knows. We know she knows, because she a couple minutes ago she stopped by to say, “Don’t worry, your moment is near. I just checked with the cook. It will only be moments. I promise.” Then it happens. “Look, there she is! She has that big smile and that majestic stride. She knows. She knows, and she’s still young enough, and she hasn’t done this so often that she’s lost her enthusiasm. She loves this moment as much as we do. “Wait a second, did I see pork on her tray. I think I saw pork. No! God, no!” That smile was for someone else. If feels like, in a weird way, that’s hard to explain, that she’s cheating on us, when she gives that big, glorious ‘your moment has arrived’ smile to someone else.
“What the hell is going on here?” we say, rolling our head up to the heavens. “I’m going to say something.”
“Don’t,” the wife says.
“I’m sorry, I have to say something. This is getting ridiculous.”
Then the true moment arrives, and the server knows firsthand what this means after everything we’ve been through together. She has a majestic, almost parade-like stride to deliver our food. How many of us go to the bathroom, hoping, just hoping that our moment will arrive while we’re in there? We all do this right? We all think things up to pass the time until our moment arrives. We talk. We look around at our neighboring tables, and we whisper awful things about them just to waste time, until our moment arrives. We go to the bathroom, and some of the times it works, but most of the time it doesn’t.
“And you, you in your distant, ivory tower of health and nutrition, you want me to give all this up? To what? To live longer? You’re telling me that I shouldn’t go through the cinematic highs and lows of food arrival for nutritional and health reasons? Yeah, I’m not going to do that, and I’m not even going to cut back, even if it means I’ll only live to 65 as opposed to 105.
“The event today was this big, old beautiful ribeye. Ribeye was the word that popped into my head when I woke up today. Do you hate mornings? Everyone does. We hate waking up? Today, I sprang out of bed singing, “Good Day Sunshine, Good Day Sunshine!” and I was doing it with this smile on,” Barry said pointing to an exaggerated, toothy smile. “This is my ribeye-eating smile. Ribeye was the first thing I thought about when I woke up, and it was the only thing on my mind when people spoke to me. They all became a Simpsons’ jokes, talking ribeyes.
“It sang out to me, this ribeye, calling me like some evil siren beckoning me to my doom. I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I can tell you that she had a beautiful, alluring falsetto voice.
“When our moment finally happened, the server slid that big old block of meat in front of me. I love everything about that moment, the majestic arrival, the “Who had the ribeye?” question, and the, “Right here!” answer I give with pride and joy of ownership in my voice, followed by the almost cinematic sound of a plate sliding across the table. These are a few of my favorite things.
“When I finally have that big, old before me, I cut the entire thing up into small, serving portions. I no longer have a big, huge ribeye before me. I have all these little ribeyes. It makes me think I have more ribeye. I don’t and I know it, but a secret part of me thinks I can fool myself into thinking I have more. I also want to enjoy chewing each bite as much as I possibly can, and cutting them into smaller portions allows each piece an ability to do that for me. If I don’t cut up my steak before taking a bite, I’ll either cut while I’m chewing, which diminishes my enjoyment somewhat, or I’ll be thinking about my next cut while I’m chewing. Either way, I’ve calculated that I’m diminishing my enjoyment of a chew by fractional percentages by cutting while I chew or thinking about my next cut. By cutting my steak into small pieces before I take my first bite, I also get all the work out of the way, so I can sit back and enjoy those cuts of beef without having to worry about any future cuts while I’m chewing, savoring, and soaking it all in.
“We all know it’s not healthy to eat large portions, but when that server puts that plate of ribeye before me, I don’t see plate, fixings, or side items. It’s all ribeye. I’m not going to complain. I’m not going to tell that server, “I’m sorry, that’s too much ribeye.” Have you heard people do this? “Oh, that’s too much ribeye.” Excuse me, excuse me, what the hell is too much ribeye? I ask this not to boost a joke. I’m genuinely curious. How can there be too much ribeye? The premise of this guilt makes no sense to me.
“I really shouldn’t have eaten all that,” is another way they express guilt. Yeah, you didn’t say jack when they slid all that in front of you. Some people suffer gastrointestinal issues in the aftermath, and they say that that seductive, siren song I hear is the voice of a gargling monster in their head who says, ‘Go ahead, but you’re going regret it,’ followed by maniacal laughter. Food fights back some of the times. I know that, but I think most people say it just to say it, because they feel guilty eating too much.
“So, the question I hear in your heads is, do I feel some guilt when I have a twelve-ounce ribeye sitting before me? Some? They stress that word some as if it will unlock some false wall we have before guilt. No! No, I don’t feel guilty. Not only do I not feel guilty, I think I’ve found my purpose in life when a ribeye sits before me. I feel guilty about a lot of things, I’m Catholic, but eating a big, juicy, medium rare ribeye is not one of them. We all think we were put here with a greater purpose in mind. “What’s my purpose?” they say. “I need to find my purpose.” “It’s your job in life to find your purpose.” We all say various forms of that. Well, I found mine. You can laugh and call it stupid and simple, all you want, but when it slides across the table at me, I know I’m going to love that piece of meat so much that I will make noises eating it. “And some of them won’t be what you classify as human noises,” I warn my date.
“They listen, they nod, and do you want to know what they say, it’s so cute, they say, “Hey, I like to eat too Barry, and we all make noises.” They think they know what they’re talking about when they say noises, but they ain’t ready, as evidenced by the fact that they’re all shushing me a couple bites in.
“Hey, I told you I love to eat,” I say, “and I told you that I make noises.”
“I know, but people are staring, Barry. They’re uncomfortable. We’re all … uncomfortable.”
“Then, some busybody saunters over to the table. You know what he looks like. I don’t even need to describe him. The minute he steps up to the table, with his phone out, you just know he’s going to drop some kind of busybody crap on you, talking about how he and his family are trying to enjoy a meal, and how his kid is crying, because she’s scared. He says all that, and then he adds something about public noise ordinances. Noise ordinances? Did you just say noise ordinances? Noise ordinances are about firecrackers, sirens, and barking dogs. It’s got nothing to do with the sounds a fella makes eating a delicious ribeye. Mr. Busybody shows me his phone, saying, “Here you go,” and he conveniently has a copy of section 27 of article 4 of the city’s noise ordinances all pulled up, “And you’ll see here,” he says with professorial authority, “that subsection C of article 4 specifically addresses public eating noises in restaurants.”
“People like this busybody, some of my friends, and the women who state they’ll never eat with me in public with me again, think these noises are a problem, a real problem. We all know I could control myself, and these noises better, but I have to tell you that I don’t consider it a pressing issue. I wish I could find some way to enjoy eating more, and I fear that if I tried to temper my noises that might diminish my enjoyment of the meal by fractional percentages, and that’s just not a risk I’m willing to take at this point in my life. Because, as great as the meal of the day is, it doesn’t last long. I eat and what seems like a minute and a half later, I’m done. It’s all over. The whole event I looked forward to all day is … over. It was so hot and juicy that I ate it too fast. I didn’t chitchat. Chitchat ends with the sound of a plate sliding across a table. I don’t even look around the room when a big, old juicy ribeye sits before me. Taking in my surroundings is over too. I even forget, sometimes, that I have someone sitting across the table from me. I hate reaching the end of a meal and having to force down the last few lukewarm bites. I want it hot! So, I eat all of those beautiful cuts of ribeye so fast that some of the times I can’t even remember how good they were. I know I just met these delicious, little morsels, but in a strange way that’s tough to describe to those of you cringing throughout my testimonial tonight, I kind of miss them. I miss them so much that, look at me, I’m salivating. I know it’s disgusting, but I can’t help myself. I loved eating them so much that I almost wish I didn’t eat them, so I could eat them again. I apologize for getting so emotional, and I know I shouldn’t get so emotional over such a stupid thing. It’s unseemly and not very professional, I know. I just love them so much that it’s hard for me to accept that they’re gone now. All of them. They’re all gone. I just loved eating them so much.
[Standup comedian Barry Becker is The Unfunny comedian, and this is one of his sets. If you enjoy this style of comedy, there’s more available at The Unfunny.]
Rilaly 