“Health Freak”

By Eric Z. Weintraub

Health Freak

When I was a student at Long Beach State, my roommate became addicted to Taco Bell. Dave would come back to our dorm each night with a Grande Meal or a Toasted Cheddar Chalupa Box and wash it down at his desk with a Skittles Strawberry Freeze. On weekends, he’d bring a brown to-go box to parties we’d attend at a frat or off-campus apartment, set up shop at the drink table beside handles of Hornitos and Sauza, and devour his Crunchwarp Supremes and Quesaritos faster than a hamster stuffs seeds into its cheeks.

Some nights he’d disappear for hours, out for seconds at the nearest location on PCH and Stanley, only to return empty-handed, save for the dried fire sauce smeared across his cheek. Sometimes he got so full that he’d pass out on one of the couches at the parties, right next to the guys who’d chased too many shots of SoCo with too many cans of Keystone Light.

On Saturday morning, Crystal, who’d hosted the party the night before, blew up my phone at 6:00 a.m. “There are salsa stains on the carpet, the house stinks of artificial meat, and my dog needs to go to the vet from licking the neon cheese off the taco wrappers. Get your ass over here and pick up your friend.”

“At least Dave didn’t throw up.”

“I’m gonna be sick. I don’t know how he can put that shit in his body.” This coming from a girl who had eaten a Costco microwaved vegan patty last night while chugging room temperature margarita mix. “Your friend has a serious problem. I don’t want you or him at one of my parties again until he gets his shit together.”

She hung up the phone. Although she had no receiver to slam, the tone of her voice assured me that she’d pressed the end button with much dramatic flair.

My body was sore from both a hangover and six months straight of sleeping on a dorm room bed, but I sat up and considered what she’d said. Except for his Taco Bell addiction, Dave was a good person. We’d gone to high school together in Hesperia. We were co-captains of the debate team. Our moms were friends on Facebook. He was now twenty-one, rail skinny, and as far as I was concerned, he could eat as much Taco Bell as he wanted. Enjoy it while you have your metabolism, my father always said.

When I picked up Dave outside Crystal’s apartment, he told me to make a right on PCH. Taco Bell was no longer a suggestion, but an assumption. I thought about what Crystal had said. I could understand someone being addicted to alcohol, drugs, chocolate even. But a fast-food restaurant?

“Let’s try somewhere new. Maybe go downtown?”

“Too expensive.”

“Or something healthier. Like Subway.”

“They have healthy food at Taco Bell.”

“The Black Bean Crunchwarp Supreme?”

“Precisely.”

I sat across from him at a plastic table in the Taco Bell on PCH and Stanley, the scent of ground beef hanging omnipresent in the air. We were bathed in the purple neon of the light installation by the entrance, part of Taco Bell’s attempt to catapult itself into the 21st century. My side of the table was empty, but Dave’s tray was lined with tacos that leaned against each other like fallen dominos.

“I think you have a problem,” I said. Through a mouth of ground beef and tortilla, he grunted a question mark. “I think you’re addicted to Taco Bell. After this meal, you should stop. Go back to eating at the dining hall.”

“Dude, people can’t get addicted to Taco Bell. It’s not In-N-Out.”

I reminded myself that this was a tactic from the debate team. It was his job to make me question my argument. “If you can’t get addicted, then stopping shouldn’t be a problem.”

“You’re tripping.” He slid a Cheesy Gordita Crunch across the table and told me to eat it.

The cold pit in my stomach from too many shots of Seagram’s the night before made the food more tempting than I’d expected. Dave was in too deep to see what Taco Bell was doing to his body, so I decided I’d let him see what it did to mine. I inhaled the Cheesy Gordita Crunch, ordered a Grande Meal from the counter, and sat across from him with a meal that matched his own.

“Fuck off. Don’t put on a show like one taco got you addicted.”

“I am going to match you taco for taco, quesarito for quesarito, until you lay off the Bell.”

“Your body.”

I ate the meal over the next ten minutes. At first, I savored the salty meat juices, the butteriness of the tortillas, and the slight crunch of the otherwise flavorless lettuce. Aspirins have done less to cure hangovers. By taco number eight, the meat sat in my stomach like a brick. I could eat no more and allowed Dave to complete the task for me.

I spent the day working off the Grande Meal: going to the campus gym, napping, and jogging to the nearest 7-Eleven to buy overpriced pomegranate juice to lower my blood pressure. That night, my roommate returned to the dorm with a Variety Taco Party Pack and offered me a Shredded Chicken Mini Quesadilla. I scrunched together my cheeks like I might puke.

“Told you it’s not addicting.”

I ate the quesadilla in two bites. Although my gastric juices wailed, the food tasted delicious. “This is what you’re doing to me.”

“Don’t be such a health freak.” He arranged his fiery sauces across his desk like a YouTube chef preparing to shoot a cooking video.

I spent the next week matching him meal for meal. I puked in the shared dorm bathroom, took cold showers, and woke up in the mornings with my bed soaked in grease-scented sweat. At night, I had dreams of Steak Quesaritos growing cinnamon twist shaped legs and chasing me down Bellflower Boulevard, of wrappers crawling out of our trashcan to give me paper cuts, and the chihuahua from the old commercials biting at my leg where it dangled over the side of the bed. Each night, Dave cheered me on as I finished the meal we’d ordered. “Eat one more. Eat one more.” I swallowed the last taco and wondered if my stomach would explode.

After a month, I’d gained twenty pounds, but because my metabolism was still in its prime, it all went to the baby fat in my chin. That weekend, we attended a party at the Beverly apartments. The girl who sat in front of me in astronomy was there. Though I wanted to talk to her, I stood beside Dave, where our fill-up boxes commandeered the edge of the drink table. The girl spoke to me when she came to refill her red cup with Cazadores, but backed away at the smell of my bean and cheese scented breath. I reached for my Altoids, only to remember I now used the case to store Tums. By the time I looked up, she had left with a group heading to the pool. I ate till the pain went away, but once my box was empty, I realized I was still hungry.

“You want to get more?” I asked Dave.

We left the party and walked to the nearest Taco Bell. When we arrived, the doors to the inside were locked. I rattled the handles and peered through the clear plastic windows.

“Open up. We’re hungry.”

“Quit tripping,” Dave said.

A worker appeared inside from behind the kitchen and pointed for us to use the drive thru. Since we had no car, we walked to the speaker box where I asked if the employee was ready to take our order and called for him to answer several times.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t serve you if you’re not in a car,” the speaker box said.

“We walked here.”

“Company policy. You’ll have to get your car. Or hire an Uber to drive you through.”

I couldn’t wait that long, nor afford Uber and Taco Bell in one night. “Help us out. Just this one time?”

The box ignored us. I kept calling for an answer, but it remained silent. I soon screamed that not servicing someone who doesn’t have a car was discrimination, then charged the box and tried to pull the speaker off its stand like I was breaking its neck. Dave shouted for me to calm down as I decapitated the speaker and the box hung by its wires.

He ran off without waiting for me. But I stayed, transfixed by the brightly lit drive-thru menu, a collage of every meal option photographed in beautiful high-key light. I sat on the driveway concrete and fantasized about the next time it would be mine.

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Eric Weintraub is a recent graduate of the Mount St. Mary’s University's MFA in Creative Writing program in Los Angeles, CA. His short fiction has appeared in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, The Cost of Paper, and other publications.