Mr. Wai Lin

Push aside the long term implications of being horribly out of shape, morbid obesity and an existence completely encapsulated within the walls of a home to which you are forever confined. Because once these physical barriers are forgotten, we are free to become truly happy people. Romans. Hedonists. The embodiment of a culinary Caligula. God of your appetite.

A major source of concern would immediately be eliminated from your life. Imagine being free. Completely free to consume. Think about it. Anyday and everyday, Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, Bojangles for lunch, Golden Corral for dinner. The options for everyday consumption would not just grow exponentially, but indeed the enjoyment of choosing our meals would blossom to the level of sheer ecstasy.

We know how we all feel around the Holidays. We push aside our nutritional concerns to instead indulge in our most enjoyable grazing time of the year. We snack, we dine, we reheat and do it all again. Our spirits are up, as well as the weight. But we make promises to ourselves that in the coming year, all our eatable sins will be repented on a treadmill. Now, extrapolate this one month of the year to become the other eleven. Accept certain inevitabilities (which are bound to arise just as any other genetic defect in even the most healthy individual) and move through our short little life on this planet completely satisfied. Full forever on a diet of our choosing with no regrets. Skylights and internet can offer every semblance of a life we would ever need.

Shit, even the fattest man in the world got married.

Conscious nutritional apathy or rather, conscious experiential gestation?

If you are what you eat, then:

I am a towering temple to decadence, all European coffees and pastries with eggs, meats and cheeses.

The ancient woman sitting next to me is an icy little igloo surrounded by a moat of half and half, her coffee having run dry before I arrived.

The pretty girl at the counter is a busy country inn, taking and providing bites of fruit and potatoes without the time to really enjoy doing either.

And the man that made the shirt I’m wearing is a little statue of rice and vegetables with a mortar of coconut milk.  And he is rebuilding himself right now, five thousand miles away.

The statement “you are what you eat” has a sprawling estate in the land of bullshit right next the quiet domiciles of “masturbation will make you go blind” and “you can do anything you put your mind to”.  We all have friends who live on diets consisting entirely of pizza, gin and Sour Patch Kids.  They laugh at the concept of a “gym” and look like they could be in print ad for American Apparel.  We get mad at them. Maybe you are one of them. Either way, they (you) prove this statement completely false. 

What does “you are what you eat” even correspond with?  

Body shape? I don’t see Paris Hilton morphing into phallus with a pomeranian. 

Personality? Jared from Subway doesn’t act like a boring foot long sub.  (Actually, he does.)

Anyway, my point is that, if the statement correlates on a physical level, maybe the correct statement is “you are HOW MUCH you eat.” 

That’s why you see the obesity shows on television where the poor soul is telling the doctor:

“But doc, all I eat is apples.”

“Frank, you can’t eat 46 of them.”

Calories are the body’s currency and you can’t go out and buy a flat screen at every business lunch.  My friends that eat pizza, gin and Sour Patch Kids?  That’s all they fucking eat.  2500 calories of pure shit, but it’s 2500 calories.  

“But they aren’t getting the right vitamins and minerals!” I hear you whining from the line at Whole Foods with your SUV in the parking lot.  

My answer?  No one wants to live that long anyway.

If people “were what they ate” then most of my friends would be fourth graders with a drinking problem and I would be a lesbian organic farmer in a small coastal town in Maine.  

Lesson?

Eat what you want.  As long as it’s not a person.

Nothing makes you feel better about life than a delicious meal. Depression, self-loathing, thoughts of suicide. These things pale in comparison to a thick cut of sirloin, a heaping plate of Spaghetti Bolognese, a steaming bowl of Vietnamese Pho Tai Soup.

Add Sriracha sauce to that last one, and you’re no longer feeling awful, you’re feeling downright fucking spectacular.

Ask yourself the following question:

Do you ever feel more alive and more amenable towards life than those few supreme moments during and after the enjoyment of a sacrilegiously delicious meal? (Ironically, to me it’s akin to a religious experience).

The preceding dishes were just three of the meals that give me pure, unadulterated happiness. And at the risk of sounding self-indulgent, I am going to list the other seven of the top ten foods that—when cooked right and made with the best ingredients— make me want to live forever.

As you look at them, think about whether these particular foods make you feel the same way. What is on your list?

In no particular order:

-a spicy tuna roll, a spicy salmon roll, a spicy yellowtail roll and a bowl of miso soup, served by someone who speaks broken English. This meal makes me want to make out with said server.

Especially if it’s a chack.

-a pepper, onion, tomato and cheddar omelet from a breakfast coffee shop. When consumed hungover, this meal has often made me think about getting up, dancing, slapping someone in the face, then taking off my pants. I have yet to act on any of this. Yet.

-a ½ lb bacon cheeseburger and fries from a latenight diner in the middle of nowhere, CT. This meal is best enjoyed at 3 AM when returning from an evening at the blackjack tables at some scummy, upstate casino. The best part? Regardless of whether you have won or lost, the burger will either make you feel like more of a winner if you’re a winner, and less of a loser if you’re a loser.

Unless you lost all your money and your buddy has to pay for your food. Which is just degrading.

-shrimp scampi over linguini in Little Italy after bartering your way to a half-priced bottle of wine with the maître de in return for dining there. Nothing makes you feel more like a man than getting something out of nothing for doing what you were planning to do anyway.

-cornbread muffins. The kind your mom makes.

No insult intended. Seriously.

-shrimp and broccoli in spicy Szechuan sauce, served with brown rice in some tiny, shithole-of-a-basement-restaurant in Chinatown. They shuffle you in, you indulge, they shuffle you out, you indulge again when the fridge calls out its sweet hymn 2 hours later.

-a platter of beef fajitas so big and delicious it makes you want to simultaneously die and eat more as you crush your way through them.

Now this question:

Why is it such a catch-22 that God, the cruel, malevolent dictator he is, makes it so that the more of these delicious, life-loving foods we consume, the more overweight, unsightly, unhealthy, and ultimately—unhappy we become?

Because God is a bastard, that’s why.