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No one must know my terrible secret...

House of Noh!

Friday, February 03, 2006

The journal entry at hand is about something that Sharon P. tried to talk me out of. What she said made good sense, of course, but I told her that I wouldn't be talked out of it, because it was my dream, that it had been my dream for years, and that if she had ever had a dream in life she would let me do it. My dream was to order, and eat, a pizza with every single topping on it. I imagined a ludicrous, topping-overbalanced pizza that would make my jaws pop with the effort, yet still I would scrape toppings off the pizza with my front teeth on the way in, it would be so jam-packed with deliciousness.

Just a few weeks ago the Domino's Pizza close to my apartment (I can smell their delicious pizzas all night long through my open bedroom window in the summer, for chrissakes) started offering three medium pizzas, seven dollars each, with unlimited toppings on each. That's when I knew: the time to realize my dream was nigh.

I ordered one pizza for Sharon P. Then a back-up pizza for me, in case the pizza with every single topping was too much. When I told the pizza woman what I wanted for my final pizza, I couldn't hold the tremor out of my voice. I was like, "on my third pizza, I want, EVERY SINGLE TOPPING." I expected her to hang up on me, or to hear her mouth drop agape over the line or something like that. But the pizza woman just sounded bored. I guess it's no big deal to get every topping. They even have a name for that kind of pizza. It's called the extrava-fucking-ganza. And it's not preposterous, and it totally fit in my mouth, and I couldn't even tell it from a Supreme.

That is how the Domino's Pizza on Irving Park stole my dream. I think that Nelson Algren, had I told him about my dream before I attempted to realize it, would have had these sobering and sage words for me:

"It's a rusty iron heart that pumps haberdashers and cat photographers bruising Chicago's inner drive in cars slung low and rusty between bumpers on rain-wet bungee cords. A square in a high-crowned hat reaches for a package of six low rise sport briefs and buys a radio alarm clock in a box that has been taped closed after being returned as defective by the Pottawatomies, hustled from their portage between waters and grasses, they too listened to the night. The blue-eyed man touches all the saran-wrapped stacked wedges of aged cheese at the Whole Foods and smells his fingers on the crowded street, index finger and thumb close up against nose-holes sucking hot car exhaust that smells like stinky cheese, standing outside the Let's Pet Puppies in a shower of brake-dust from the El tracks, shaking his fist in through the window because they have many puppies, and he has none."