Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Bacon, our sinful staple


I am trying to think of the one naughty, illicit and dangerous thing I could do morning, noon and night and I keep coming back to bacon.


It wouldn’t work with drugs, which I guess is the long-story-short of shows like “Breaking Bad.”


I remember having some wonderful times trying it with booze and buddies back during my wild heydays some 20 years ago. Oh, the fun we had! We could make it work for as long as we didn’t have to, which back then was about 10 days at a stretch.


I’m confident I’d enjoy sex three times a day, but that’s difficult to achieve within the family dynamic. It’d be a burden on my already over-extended and sleep-deprived wife who’d have to do all the work while I watched TV.


That means I’d need to get a bunch of volunteers -- could we call them “staffers?” -- to do the job or jobs. And I’d be in way over my head with that.


Essentially, I’d be trying to assemble a harem, and I doubt I could keep a harem happy, not when I struggle daily to keep Val happy -- and by happy I mean borderline tolerant.


That leaves bacon, the only vittle that appears on each and every menu around the clock, a dietary ubiquity even salad can’t surpass.


You can have bacon and eggs for breakfast, B w/ LT for lunch, and renown chefs reach for bacon when they want to add an incarcerating flavor to things like scallops and steak.


I’ve never seen it offered as such but in this, the land of the deep-fried Twinkie, I have to imagine someone’s including bacon-based dessert.


It’s already the rectangular staple included in any well-rounded diet for someone eager to eat three square meals a day.


Eat enough of it in that geometric triumvirate and the doctors warn us our torsos will all become rhombus shaped (tapered tops, expansive mid-sections).


Really?


I’d like to give it a shot. I work above a restaurant/tavern and on the days when bacon steakburgers are the lunch special, the heady aroma invades my office and makes it impossible to concentrate. On those days I often stroll zombie-like downstairs to get a bacon fix.


Of course I do that most days with beer. Like bacon, the health scolds all say that’s bad for me, too.


I wonder what would happen if instead of three or four beers, we all substituted three or four thick slices of Happy Hour bacon.


I doubt much would change. We’d all still stay for about two hours. We’d still talk about sports, politics and how our lives would be different if even just a few young, single women ever stumbled into the bar.


That’s the allure of sin binging on bacon.


It still has all the rebel appeal of smoking with none of the expense or stink. And you wouldn’t have to stand pariah-like out in the bitter elements to enjoy bacon.



On the contrary, you’re welcome to eat bacon in all the finest restaurants. The trim waiter will even unfurl a fancy napkin on your lap prior to ordering some smoked Applewood.


So I’m intent on eating bacon three meals a day.


And if I ever do, this will be the very last you hear of it -- unless the stunt earns inclusion in my pending obituary.


Because I don’t want people who restrict their urge to eat bacon to resent me for indulging mine.


We’re a nation of secret sinners. We all get away with as much as we can and don’t like it when we see anyone enjoying more of it than the rest of us.


So bragging about my bacon diet would be unseemly. People would resent me for my excesses.


And being a pig is a poor career move for a guy who’s determined to really bring home the bacon.

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