Whoagie

I bought a hoagie yesterday.

I know what you're thinking, "Oh, Jesus-- this is exactly why I always vow to STOP reading blogs, because they're just inane blather about everyday vomitus written by frustrated English majors (Theatre, thank you) about their banal, boring, petty and pointless existences on the planet that would most likely be inherently better off without them and their miserable, lousy blogs.

But, seriously, listen to my hoagie story. It's so awesome-- you'll be quoting it to all your balding, sexually-frustrated coworkers.

I went to a hoagie shop called "Primos." I don't know if they have "Primos" everywhere, because I don't travel much and, when I do, I generally don't go hoagie-hopping.

Anyway, I was dying for a Primos hoagie. When I used to work as an optician, I would sometimes get a Primos hoagie, and it was a practically sexual experience. My boss used to make me eat it, way in the back of the shop, and I was only allowed to eat it while the very loud lens grinder was running, because the noises I would make during consumption of said hoagie would be, well, inappropriate. And bad for business.

But that was ten years ago, and that's hard to believe and swallow. So, yesterday, I made up my mind: as a big FUCK YOU TO PASSOVER I was going to celebrate the end of all the unleavened madness and get myself a Primos hoagie.

I got a Suprimo. It's aged capiacola, fresh buffalo mozzerella, roasted red peppers, all the yummy spices and, well, that's it.

Now, at Primos, which I had forgotten, there are three sizes-- the short size, which is intended to intimidate heterosexual men into ordering the next larger size, the larger size, called "The Primo," and the largest, which is simply called "Whole."

Well, I'm very heterosexual, I said to myself, in spite of my necktie with the dozens of carrots and one hungry bunny on it, and so I ordered the "whole." After all, it wouldn't be a very big FUCK YOU TO PASSOVER if it wasn't whole.

I waited and I waited and I waited. This sandwich was taking an awfully long time to prepare. What are they, pulling the mozzerella out of the buffalo's ass, I thought, displaying a relatively incoherent comprehension of the overall cheese-making process. Maybe I should have gone on that public school field trip to the farm after all.

Anyway, after around fifteen minutes, I was presented with a tautly-wrapped package, cylindrical in shape and stretching approximately the length of my torso-and-neck. Maybe two-and-a-half feet, though I'm notoriously bad with measurements-- this thing was absurdly long.

I stared at it.

"Um..." I said, not really to the cashier-- to nobody really. Three unshaven township groundskeepers eyed me suspiciously, waiting to see whether I would accept this mammoth log, like a man, or reject it, like a non-man.

"$19.71," the cashier said, with a deadpan expression on his face.

My jaw released and my eyes closed.

Nineteen-seventy-one, kids.

I said the only thing I could think of to say:

"Do you take debit?"

My wife likes to point out that I don't pay attention. And, in the immortal words of the irrepressible "Homie the Clown": "I'm so poor, I can't even pay attention." Of course we know that the dearth of waddage in my wallet has no bearing on my wandering mind, but it's catchy.

I've bought wildly inappropriate things at the supermarket before because I did not read pertinent information contained on the box or the bag. I look, primarily, at pictures. I love pictures, especially of food. I know food in pictures is slathered in varish and that the milk in pictures of cereal is really Elmer's glue, but I don't care. Pictures seduce me all the time, and they turn my higher education diplomae into dust.

I'm not a very detail-oriented person. I've been wearing the same pair of trousers since Monday. I can't be bothered to learn what a "grande" or a "venti" means at Starbucks. I still order a medium, or large if I'm feeling frisky or decidedly un-frisky. And I don't do it because I'm counterculture or because I'm too cool for school, I do it because I just don't give a shit, and I'm too impatient and overloaded to learn.

And I suppose that's why I ordered a sandwich that cost almost twenty bucks. I ate it for lunch yesterday, and dinner. And, pretty soon, I'm going to have more of it for lunch. I might polish it off now, even though I haven't yet eaten half of it, because I'm scared of the episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer gets an outrageously-sized hoagie and eats it over the course of days if not weeks, until it is purple and furry.

Is this what I am to become? Is this my destiny? To be done in by a fucking sandwich?

Thank God there's no mayo.