Self-Harm Via Fat Sandwich

Gluttony is still my fav drug. Poetry compilation dreams. Tunes for goons.

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Bleecccch. — AJD

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Last Friday, I was in a mood that took me to one of those undesirable places that can best be described as “on one.”

I had a day marked by some new annoying flashes of stress that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I also felt: misunderstood, overlooked, mismanaged, trapped, VENOMOUS, bereft, and stagnant.

All of these feelings mixed together created a classic resentment jambalaya, one that 4th-Step AA purists insist will instantly cause you to drink alcoholically. But if you live in a dry house like I do, that means you must resort to guzzling peroxide and Costco-size bottles of mouthwash. Neither appealed to me; I was never that kind of drinker.

But instead, at around 9 p.m. I decided to eat whatever I wanted and never look back until now, for you, the faithful readers who show up each week to find comfort and wisdom in this hallowed space.

In my defense, I will suggest that I genuinely thought I deserved to eat “freely” as a reward for not quitting the newsletter, the podcast, and walking out on my family and moving to France, even though that was what my mind encouraged me to do.

By the time I made my food order, I was exhausted in a way that usually comes after a full day of crying, fighting, and emotional abuse. But I was ready to suffocate some of these feelings in food, and what I craved was: Fat Sal’s.

If you’re not familiar, Fat Sal’s is a Los Angeles-based sandwich chain that was conceived by one guy named Sal, his friend Josh, and their friend Jerry Ferrara, best known as Turtle from one of HBO’s most lauded and prestigious television shows, “Entourage.”

Shameless excess distinguishes Fat Sal’s from basically any other sandwich store. Most of the sandwiches are hulking messes, artlessly constructed with appetizers you’d find on an Applebee’s menu that are then dumped on top of a normal sandwich and then smushed all together onto a long roll. And that is what I wanted — that crap. And a Dr. Pepper.

So I opted for the classic “Fat Sal” — sliced ribeye steak, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, fries, brown gravy, and mayo on a garlic hero roll. And I housed that thing. Couldn’t get it into my face fast enough. I would take two huge bites of the Fat Sal, then swig Dr. Pepper. But halfway through it, the sandwich tasted dry to me, so I doubled down on the insanity: I went to the fridge to grab a bottle of fancy Kansas City bar-b-que sauce and plopped some of that on the remaining half of the sandwich. Awful.

When I finally came up for air, I looked down at my shirt, now dotted with pieces of ribeye gristle and BBQ sauce. My neck was sweaty. Horrifying belches jumped out of me. What the hell happened?

This felt a little bit like a relapse, since you’ll be surprised to know I have a history of food overindulgence, which my wife gleefully outlined in an old TSB essay from a couple of years ago:

It didn’t matter if it was eggs Benedict or sushi or clams. You always started eating by grabbing a strand of pasta or a big floppy piece of romaine and cramming it into your mouth with your fingers. You’d over-order, but you’d also eat whatever you ordered (often when I was paying, important to note). And then it would just all get kind of clawed into your face at rapid speed. It was part bear-trying-to-catch-a-salmon and part feudal-lord-with-goat-thigh – just very aggressive. I wondered if you’d been a spoiled kid who didn’t get yelled at enough, but it seemed like a personality choice.

Hey, no one died! Progress, not perfection.

Anyway, I unlocked her story, so you can now read it for free.

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Okay, enough. Let’s start our Sunday. See you down below. – AJD