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Fake maple bars

It was an unpleasant morning, preamble for a short day. Woke up queasy, like a hefty barf was upcoming, but it never came up. After praying at the porcelain altar several times, dry heaving for twenty minutes, suddenly I felt fine, so what the heck, I got dressed and went to work.

Feeling a bit lightheaded, I needed an energy kick from something sugary to calm my belly and keep me moving. Before descending the steps to BART, I stopped at the scuzzy Chinese place above the 16th Street station, and bought several maple bars. Biggest mistake of the weekend.

True maple bars are hard to find in San Francisco. Bakers don't seem to know what a maple bar, so I'll explain: It's a sweet fluffy chewy doughy rectangle with a coating of fake maple slop on top.

What some shops sell instead is something that looks like a maple bar, but it's injected with unidentifiable beige viscous fluid, like it's a maple Twinkie.

No. Emphatically, no. Maple bars were a frequent treat when I was a kid, so I know what a maple bar is, and isn't, and it's not a maple bar if it has filling inside. The filling makes it an eclair or something. Call it a cream-filled maple bar if you must, or more accurately a snot-filled maple bar, at least from that Chinese place. But it's not a maple bar.

It said 'maple bar' on the display case, though, and I stupidly didn't ask for proof. I bought a small bag of them, took a bite from one, and sank my teeth into the disappointment. I was already on BART, though, and needed that sugar fix, so I ate it, and then under the bay I ate two more, and finished the fourth and final fake maple bar as the train pulled into Berkeley.

Walked where I needed to be, and got Number 55 in the vendors' drawing, but then as the second phase started, where vendors pick their spots & argue about their spots & trade their spots, those phony maple bars attacked me like Pearl Harbor. I seriously had to retch — no false alarm this time.

In the People's Park public john, I puked and the puking made me puke some more, and then I puked atop my earlier pukes. Some got fake maple on my shoes and pants, and some of it splattered the floor, sorry. After horking up those fake maple bars and last night's dinner and maybe a hairball or two, I finally could hork no more, but I'd missed my number on the second draw.

There is a procedure to sign up late if you've missed the lottery, but it's complicated and probably involves forms filed in triplicate, signed in blood, and notarized by a CPA. With no stomach for that, no stomach at all, I decided my vomit was a secular sign from an atheist god, telling me to go home and back to bed.

Called Jay, informed her that my day was done, BARTed home, and I've been asleep for four hours, oblivious to the downstairs neighbors' barking dog, the upstairs neighbors dumbbell-dropping, and Pike's 110-decibel Screeching Weasels or whatever audio garbage he's listening to.

Haven't puked again, but it's my greatest desire at the moment. I feel pretty good, but another puke session would make it seem less like the day was wasted. I ain't rich, you know — can't afford to take a day off work for just one good regurgitation.

From Pathetic Life #13
Sunday, June 11, 1995

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

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