RIP KRIS

Y'all. Feelin' kinda hopeless tonight. Feel like I might be the next Chris Farley.

I remember where I was when I found out Chris Farley died. I was frenziedly binge eating sugar cookie dough against my mom's wishes while she was in the other room, and against my best interest as a chubby thirteen year old boy striving for social status and relevance in my junior high. I heard it on the kitchen radio. The result, they said, of an overdose of cocaine and morphine. They could have left it there, but they did not. They said his death was the unglamorous end of a long downward spiral that included a serious cocaine addiction, naturally, but that also involved a lifelong battle with a food addiction.

A food addiction? "Doesn't everyone really really love to eat as much as possible all the time of everything ever?" i thought to myself. I'd never heard of such a thing and it seemed absurd to me that it had been given what seemed like a semi-scientific title. This was just human nature. And then my chubby little brain made one more unconscious turn of thought and I realized it. This was not normal. I was a compulsive overeater. I ate uncontrollably on a more-than-daily basis. I was Chris Farley and Chris Farley was me, more or less except for a few differences.

This realization would have ruined me and what little self-confidence I had left after middle school if I had allowed it to. Instead, I did what I do with all memories and realizations that make me uncomfortable with myself - I put it really very far back away in my head and never thought about it ever. And I joined a football team, the one group of people among which fatness can be a virtue.

Lately, though, I been feelin' like a lil' fatty. There are these chocolate chips that I can't stop eating until I'm completely asleep. I will, seriously, get out of bed when I'm teetering on the edge of a good sleep so that I can go to the freezer and eat yet another handful of Ghirardelli milk chococheeps. (Full disclosure: these are best chocolate chips evahhhhhhhhhh! Cook's Illustrated says so too.) Sometimes i'll eat a whole box of cereal in one sitting, simultaneously reading recipes and taste tests in cooking magazines and, when I'm being particularly weird, pretending I'm the host of a cooking show and that the cereal is the sophisticated yet simple fusion dish I'm preparing for that day's show. I graze a lot. Usually by the time I finish cooking dinner I'm completely full already from eating tub upon tub of hummus. I eat off of people's plates at work when they don't finish everything. To sum it up, the fact that I'm always full or overfull or really uncomfortably way full is troubling to me, and has brought back memories of Chris and his bloated end.

WEEEEKEEEE entree:
"An individual suffering from compulsive overeating disorder engages in frequent episodes of uncontrolled eating, or bingeing, during which they may feel frenzied or out of control, often consuming food past the point of being comfortably full."
"In addition to binge eating, compulsive overeaters can also engage in grazing behavior, during which they return to pick at food throughout the day."
"Eating much more rapidly than normal."

Now that I've advanced in the world and become a food runner at a relevant seafood restaurant in the SoHo/NoLita restaurant scene, I make vast quantities of money. This makes me want to go out to restaurants that make 'Best of' lists and other restaurants that are more authentic because they're only known to be special by 'foodies' who 'live in the city' and are rated 'elite 09' on yelp.com. Then I go to these restaurants and I order as much food as I think I can possibly eat And then I look for somewhere to sit or lie down because I like to digest horizontally when I'm that full. Ohhhhhhhhhhh the duality of man. This makes me happy. This makes me miserable. I want to write the fat version of The Picture of Dorian Gray.

RIP Chris. (wouldn't him dying from a mix of coke and morphine on the 60-somethingeth floor of the John Hancock building at a young age have been way more glamorous had he not been obese?) I will not graze. I will ride my bike on my way to binge eating at 'bloggable' restaurants in a dual effort to preemptively burn calories and to better my personal brand. Can I beat this disease? Is this just another term for the age-old "fatty fatty no friends?" Do I want to beat this? Am I making all of this up because I like self-deprecating humor? Even I don't know.