Cheap Chocolate, All You Can Eat by Tony Noland
Cheap Chocolate, All You Can Eat
by Tony Noland
"How often do you do this?"
"Do what? Eat?"
"Go on these binges."
"Ah, let's see... whenever I get particularly hungry, really. Maybe every couple of weeks. It used to be less frequently, every two or three months. There are these all-you-can-eat places, see? All kinds of different foods - Chinese buffets, Italian pasta buffets, steak houses, pancake houses, all kind of different places. I'd go in, pay my fourteen bucks and dig in. They were great. I'd just keep refilling the plate and eating until the manager kicked me out. I must have gotten blacklisted by every one of those places at one time or another."
"You were blacklisted... by an all-you-can-eat restaurant?"
"Oh, sure, by every one in town. At first it didn't matter much, because of the staff turnover in those places. I'd go to different places, y'know? Lay low for a year or two, and when I went back to a place that tagged me, nobody recognized me. Once they all got to be part of chains and franchise operations, though, it all went to hell. They had my picture up by the cash register and everything. I was Public Enemy #1 at all of them."
"That's... hard to believe."
"Not really. If you ever go to one of those places, you should read the fine print. They all have it up on the wall someplace. It says that management reserves the right to refuse service to anyone who takes 'unreasonable' amounts of food. Can you believe that? On the one hand, they say 'all-you-can-eat', and on the other hand, they tack on restrictions. So I gave it a little thought and came up with the candy gambit."
"The candy gambit?"
"Sure. Look, follow my thinking, OK? I could just buy a gallon of cooking oil at the grocery store, mix it with a jar of molasses and drink it straight off, right? That would give me all the digestible calories I need to run, and it would be cheap, but it would taste like crap. And, since I can't cook worth a damn, where does that leave me?"
"I..."
"Exactly, prepared foods! Now, when it comes to prepared foods, you can go for ala carte, which is expensive, or all-you-can-eat, which isn't. Thing is, though, when you eat eight or nine plates heaped high with General Tso's chicken and pork fried rice, or with spinach lasagna and spaghetti alfredo, or with whatever and whatever, you get lots of calories, sure, but you draw some attention to yourself at the restaurant. I was faced with a dilemma: do I lay low and eat less at each sitting, but eat more frequently? Or do I get my calories somewhere else? If so, where? Where can you get a bunch of good-tasting calories like that, and do it on the cheap? Why, with candy!"
"I don't believe this."
"Yeah, me neither. It's so obvious, why didn't I think of it sooner? At first I would just buy supersize bulk bags of chocolate chips from Costco, mix them up with a couple of jars of peanut butter and spoon them in. I got bored with the taste, though. Besides, that wasn't really all that cheap of an option, on a dollars-per-kilocalorie scale. However, the first time I saw all that cheap chocolate on sale at Walgreens? Bingo. The day after Valentine's Day is a great day to buy chocolate. For twenty or thirty dollars, I can get a hundred thousand calories or more. It's funny, you'd think that November 1 and December 26 would be good days to buy cheap candy, but they aren't, not really. You get your best clearance rack bang for the buck after Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. I don't know what that says about society, but it's nothing good."
"This is crazy! Look at you, you're practically skeletal! You've got hollows under your cheekbones, and your clothes are hanging off you. You're six feet tall and you can't weigh more than 150 pounds!"
"Ah, 137.2, actually. I weigh myself every morning."
"So there is no way you eat the way you're describing. A diet like that is deadly! Anybody who ate that way all the time would be diabetic and morbidly obese, if not dead of an intestinal blockage."
"I don't eat that way all the time. Like I said before, I don't eat very frequently. Only once every couple of weeks."
"And what do you eat between the binges?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing? Nothing at all?"
"That's right."
"Let me make sure I understand you correctly. The last time you ate was...?"
"Wednesday, the 15th. I had six boxes of chocolates, the cheap kind. Mostly caramels and solid milk chocolate, with a couple of chocolate covered cherries. They never put nut clusters in the cheap boxes."
"You ate six pounds of chocolate in one day?"
"Eighteen. They were three pound boxes, on sale because it was the day -"
"- the day after Valentine's Day, right. And what did you eat before the chocolate?"
"Let's see... oh, right. Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, candied yams... the usual Thanksgiving stuff. There was a holiday all-you-can-eat buffet special at that new steakhouse on McKitrick Road. With all the distraction from the holiday crowd, I really cleaned them out!"
"Hold it. So you hadn't eaten since Thanksgiving?"
"Right. I forget the exact date... November 26th? 27th? Something like that."
"You honestly believe that you went two and a half months without eating anything at all, then gorged on eighteen pounds of chocolate? And survived? Look, sir, I'm going to have to recommend that you be held for some more in-depth psychiatric evaluation. When I get the blood work back from the lab, we can see what physical needs to be addressed specifically, but the fact is, I think these delusions make you a danger to yourself."
"What can I say, doctor? You asked, I answered. I may eat and digest the same foods as you humans, but my energy storage biochemistry is quite different from yours. Now, I realize you're going to put an end to my sabbatical on your planet, but could you at least do me the courtesy of believing me?"
"Don't worry, sir, we'll take good care of you."
"Hey, before you go, could you do something for me?"
"Um, possibly. What is it?"
"When they were wheeling me in, I saw a vending machine down by the entrance. Would you mind getting me a couple of dozen Snickers bars?"
