Too Much Mastication Will Kill You! (or, Will This Razor Chafe My Palms?)

Since my pants were filched by the titans of finance, the luxury of free time has been available in heaps (or “shitloads,” to use the beaten man's vernacular). The endless ass scratching, a kind of secret handshake among the unemployed, reveals my hapless status. And while hours are trashed in self-deprecating pollution – Tostitos feedbag gently nestled beneath the chin – they might also brim with aimless web surfing, laundry, or creative reveries with neighborhood women. Thankfully, narcissism works in fits and starts, thwarting a permanent lapse into feral licebag territory. In other words, I’m usually coherent as opposed to rag-clad, and would rarely be seen, say, shaking my fist at traffic while cursing the fragile labor market. Likewise, I’ve been fairly spry after reclaiming rectal control in the wake of an HR-led emasculation (see "Apocalypse Now" from March 19). Yes, the initial pain is severe, but like everything else in the jobless slum, it converges to a dull pang. Several months later, one can even sit with minimal discomfort.

Delousing weekly – generally with a quick spritz of Ortho Home Defense – I prepare for intense mastication at my mother’s house. Although palms remain hairless, stomach bloats from the inexhaustible cornucopia of chow (pastrami into kiwis into chocolate death cake, to name one such jaunt through the gastronomic gauntlet); akin to stapling one’s mouth against a food conveyor set on hyperdrive. Of course, these gluttonous eating orgies are appreciated as a mid-week pause from crotch-scratching coma. And at this point, any diversion that keeps my hands out of my pants is a welcome plus.

Predictably, mom will recap neighborhood gossip, opine on my dwindling ego, and avow misinformed distrust of the internet, all before coffee and Entenmann’s. If my laundry was tumbling in the basement, these visits might parallel the rudderless magic of college, sans jackhammer hangover. Yet there I am, a leeching ignoramus, obtaining geopolitical headlines from my mother because notions of keeping informed – the core of an international business career – have become impossibly tedious. These days, you’re more likely to find me hanging in a closet with a rope slung around my genitals than perusing the Wall Street Journal. Yes, I’m the deadbeat charity case stockpiling leftovers from the maternal refrigerator, two steps from assuming residence in the garage with a weight bench and mullet. Well, maybe three steps from the mullet. But in all seriousness, I am almost off the grid. Blissfully ignorant, enormously happy, but off the fucking grid.

Like a drunken romp through 7-Eleven, doggie bag contents on any given week might include pineapples, taco meat, soup, oranges, and (only once) Goya sardines in mustard sauce(?!), bizarrely chosen yet lovingly packed for the favorite son. While the boxed fish stunk horribly – a gift more suited for beggars or church homeless drops – believe me, I’m not complaining. Something needs to offset the troughs of Frito Lay products on which I graze like a famished horse. And since I’m expecting a job offer shortly, I’ve only got a few weeks to burn 200 pounds, hack eight inches off my hair, and replace a spoonful of lost teeth. Those Catholic priests were right. Overly-indulgent mastication will kill you. And I don’t want to go blind.