Fistfuls of dough

I don’t typ­i­cal­ly have crav­ings. Some­times I get a han­ker­ing for some food or drink or expe­ri­ence, but noth­ing real­ly deep-down, noth­ing can’t-get-it-out-of-my-mind, noth­ing got­ta-have-it-now. Per­haps a reli­gion so heavy on self-denial as Catholi­cism can have this effect on its more earnest followers.

But this past week has been an entire­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. I want dough­nuts like I have nev­er want­ed them before. And I’m not talk­ing like, “Oh, I could real­ly go for a jel­ly-filled right now.” No, this is a James Frey, face-down-in-a-table-sized-pile-of-coke-till-my-nos­trils-bleed kind of crav­ing. I want to dri­ve to Cub Foods and grab one of those assort­ed dozens and a gal­lon of whole milk, and I want to dri­ve home as fast as I can, except I could­n’t wait that long, so I would sit in my car, right there in the park­ing lot, and I would open the box on the pas­sen­ger seat, and I would uncap the milk jug on my lap. Then I would eat the pas­tries, all of them, one after anoth­er, wash­ing down each raven­ing bite down with big thirsty chugs of the sweet, cold cow juice.

I would eat the maple fried cin­na­mon first, and it would be gone in a flash. I would fol­low that with the apple frit­ter, the glazed raised dough­nut, and the cher­ry bis­mark. There would be a lemon-filled dough­nut, and a choco­late cov­ered one; these would be the next to enter my insa­tiable maw. I would chew on the sug­ar twist for a lit­tle while, catch­ing my breath. Calmer now, I would savour the old fash­ioned dough­nut, and the cus­tard-filled bis­mark with choco­late frosting.

At this point I would prob­a­bly feel sat­ed, and per­haps even rather full. And the three things left in the box — the white-frost­ed long john, the cake dough­nut with coloured sprin­kles, and the sec­ond glazed raised — would not excite me that much. But I would eat them any­way, because they were there, because I could.

I would eat these last slow­ly, each mouth­ful adding to the nascent pain in my mid­dle. But I would tri­umph in the end.

My crav­ing sat­is­fied, I would dri­ve home, very slow­ly, and pass out on the liv­ing room floor. And my dreams would be very, very sweet.