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Notes -
Someone once asked me what falling in love for the first time felt like, and I described it as “what it feels like to use heroin.”
Never having taken any opioid, I was just guessing for rhetorical effect. But if that’s accurate, I wasn’t far off.
To be fair, though, “you’re my addition baby” is the province of love songs and fuck sonnets since the invention of modern pharmaceuticals, so it’s not like I invented it. I notice nobody has yet described their lover as their methamphetamine, although I’m fairly certain the sensation is similar. “I’d rot out my teeth because of my singular obsession with you and lack of dental care” isn’t, you know, exactly a Shakespeare sonnet, though maybe it kinda rhymes with 130.
(Did people before opium came to the west use alcohol as a reference point? “You’re like fine wine” doesn’t really parse as a romantic phrase to me, and the process of alcohol intoxication sounds more like a metaphor for a bad hookup, of which I’m sure the drink has been the cause of many, than it does a burgeoning romance. “It’s fun while it lasts but I’m throwing up in the morning.”)
The comedian Sam Morril had a bit where he said that sex in a relationship is like a baked salmon darne, where you feel nourished and satisfied afterwards, having eaten something that was healthy and good for you. Whereas casual sex is like a takeaway kebab or burger, where you are absolutely loving the experience in the moment, but then feel disgusted and ashamed of yourself immediately afterwards.
Off-topic: do people actually feel disgusted and ashamed after eating take-out?
I get that people say this so it must somehow be true (even if a meme, it's too popular to just be made up) but of the thousands of burgers I've consumed over my lifetime so far I have yet to identify one I was disgusted with myself for eating.
Is it just that it's a product of an industrial kitchen system, and industrial kitchens are bad because reasons?
Do people really order two number 9s, a number 9 large, a number 6 with extra dip, a number 7, two number 45s (one with cheese) and a large soda, then consume it all themselves in one sitting?
Have I missed the mythical past, or never having visited the southernmost US states, never knew a world where fast food meals were more than 1000-1300 calories on the regular?
Or is it something else I can't see?
Depends on what kind and how much.
I'm a big fan of that burger assembly meme, where healthy bread, lettuce, onion, tomato, cheese, and beef get put together and suddenly get labeled unhealthy instead for no apparent reason. Yeah, you could do with a lot more of the fiber and low-glycemic carbs in the lettuce+onion+tomato and a little less of the high-glycemic carbs in the bread, and if you're topping beef with cheese maybe that's more than one meal's worth of fats, but balance it out later and you're probably fine.
But it's real easy to get that burger with a huge side of fries and a large coke (and if you're not frequently in the US recall that here "small coke" means "large coke" while "large coke" means "a quart of diabetes"), and that combo can push you over the line from "fine meal" to "disgusted and ashamed after".
Even 1000-1300 is a lot for a lunch, and a Big Mac combo gets you straight to 1170; you can get to 1360 just by going from medium to large on the fries and soda, even though the burger itself is only 580.
I guess the other parts of "disgusted and ashamed" are:
Fast food often kinda sucks. My wife's burgers probably aren't much healthier than McDonalds' (the extra onions and mushrooms might have helped, but a quick sauté in salty burger grease fixes that right up!), but they're about the same nutritionally for far higher quality. If I just go to Burger King, even if either way I can afford some extra calories (I can't), it still would have been much better to spend those extra calories on something worth the expenditure.
Fast food is really fast. Burgers with avocado and fresh-grilled Hatch chile slices are not something we're going to make every day, or every week, at home, but if I want something 40% as good I could have it any time by swinging by one of many convenient drive-thru lanes. Making it so easy to indulge makes it too easy to over-indulge.
It’s the bread/bun, condiments (ketchup, mayo, mustard, and whatnot), and side(s) (e.g., fries) that are the culprits. Cut those out, and ground beef + cheese + toppings are decently solid.
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It's a good point but burgers are not the best example -- my burger-making strategy these days is:
If I'm at home it's pretty much the fastest easiest thing I can make, and probably at least half-way between your avocado burger and the fast food one; if I'm not at home obviously stopping at a restaurant is faster, but a burger is probably the easiest, fastest fast food to make for yourself in the universe.
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One thing is that the flavourings used in a lot of fast-food get absorbed into the mucosal lining of the mouth, so that e.g. for me McDonald's leaves a particular aftertaste for hours afterwards. It's not terrible but if you get carried away and eat too much and feel a bit bad about it anyway, the lingering aftertaste can definitely produce a more 'disgusted' response.
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Are you familiar with the meat and three? These are restaurants. Diners, if you will. They sometimes have burgers, and the burgers will be typically on a buttered and toasted bun, with a bit of mayonnaise that even a person like myself who for years despised mayonnaise can tolerate, some crispy lettuce, ketchup, maybe a firm tomato slice, a medallion of red onion, and of course a burger patty, but with proper ground meat shaped as a patty. Calorically I'm not sure, probably a lot. In my view these are the best burgers to be had anywhere. But even if the place doesn't have burgers it will have hamburger steaks. These are not the filler and spice heavy Salisbury steaks one not from the south might imagine, but, again, big patties of meat well salted and peppered and cooked to a Maillard reaction and served with probably sauteed onions and a brown gravy beside, again probably, a mound of white rice. This or fried chicken, stewed chicken with dumplings, a tender gravied pork chop the promise of which once extended my mother's life briefly, or a chicken fried steak with white pepper gravy. These are the meats. Sometimes beef stew or tender pork ribs or maybe meatloaf. The three would be the sides, popularly understood as vegetables but often including something un-vegetable like such as a rich macaroni with cheese, dirty rice or just boiled white rice, a baked potato with butter or sour cream or both, mashed potatoes with gravy, creamed or kernel sweet corn, etc. True vegetables might be green beans cooked with pork fat, collard greens (also cooked with pork or bacon fat), black eyed or field peas, pinto beans, fried okra, sliced tomatoes or sweet Vidalia onions, or just cornbread, either in muffins, slices, or shaped like a stick. You order a meat and three sides. You drink cold iced tea, either sweet or unsweet or half and half. You have a small cage of Tabasco or other hot sauces, ketchup maybe, mustard, etc. I miss these places. They're even better at breakfast but I'm already damn hungry and my train just stopped.
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It varies. I don't remember ever feeling disgusted or ashamed of myself after eating McDonald's, or a burrito. If I get a really cheap takeaway pizza (Domino's or Apache), the first few slices will taste like the nectar of the gods, but by the time I get to the end I will feel full to the point of nausea, and will regret having over-indulged. I often get the same feeling after eating a burger and chips from the chip shop, or a kebab and chips. I remember one New Year's Day I bought a kebab and chips to treat my hangover, and felt so full afterwards that I was practically bedridden for the rest of the day.
So yes, there are absolutely certain kinds of fast food that will make me feel gross and remorseful afterwards. The same is true of casual sex: I have had sexual encounters which I regretted immediately afterwards (and equally, casual encounters that I didn't regret).
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A good argument for making casual sex taboo again. Or at least informing people that it doesn't live up to the hype.
Well, speak for yourself.
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