Swift, from The Lady’s Dressing Room
Waterboy, Boy with the bucket, If you didn’t like the job, You shouldn’t a tuck it.Brown, from “Licking Stick, Licking Stick”
People often ask me, “why do you eat a Paleo diet?” Actually, that’s not true. I can’t think of a single time anyone’s asked me that. I did get some nice comments on my tits the other night, though, after a soccer game. I mentioned something about not eating bread. The dude’s eyes looked away. After all, what do you say to that? We went back to drinking.
Still, there is a story here. A long time ago, I was a beautiful boy. The meat man at my local supermarket told me so. He bopped me on the head with his meaty hand to punctuate this fact. My mom was there, so it’s ok. Sort of. Actually, I was traumatized for years….
At any rate, how do things get so messed up? Here’s what I mean. This is me in 2007:
I’m the one in the middle, with my little girl in San Diego. At the San Diego Zoo. This, by the way, was me looking better. I had just begun a strict gluten-free diet because, in October of 2007, I found myself with a broken collarbone and lots of vicodin. The stuff really stops you up. Yet I had my first normal bowel movement in about 20 years. Weeks of Internet research later—vicodin does not exactly fuel the fires of research—I started to notice that the celiacs sounded a lot like me. I got a doctor to order the test and, fancy that, I had a positive diagnosis.
Getting rid of wheat gluten is really no problem once you accept it as a life-or-death proposition. I lost 15 or 20 pounds right away.
Some of the gluten-free crowd are in the habit of eating gluten-replacement foods. I went through that and moved on. Fuck pancakes. Made of wheat or rice, it’s the same thing. I never liked them anyway. I hid pancakes and vegetables behind the stove when I was a little kid. My parents were always finding bits of my mummified food. I just wanted to eat hot dogs all day. Still do. I can’t say I felt better on a gluten-free diet, however. I knew there were other pieces of the puzzle that I had to solve. For one, my skin had red bumps and was itchy all the time. For another, I was still kind of a fat fuck. Also, I still could not take a proper crap. How that vexed me…
I eliminated certain sugars, along the lines of diets with acronyms like SCD, GAPS, and FODMAPS. I also eliminated soy, which had the benefit of clearing up my skin problems. Who would have known that eliminating such a healthy food additive could produce such an effect? This question prompted me to ask, what other crap is killing me that I don’t know about? And that’s when I discovered a bunch of Internet crazies who were engaged in Paleolithic human diet re-enactment.
Of course that’s not entirely true. The diet itself is whatever you want it to be, as long as you’re true to the ideal that avoiding the crap that’s killing you is important and serious. You can drink as much as you want. At least that’s my take on it. Wine, potato vodka, 100% agave tequila. These are on the list. Why? Because I say so. It’s my list. I’ve had at least two glasses of wine every day since going gluten-free. And I think that’s probably a low estimate. Really low, actually.
But the proof is in the proverbial pudding. If it weren’t so tacky, I’d go ahead and show you my tits, right here on this blog. But, again, I’m a man of sophistication and taste.
So why do I eat paleo? One day, the curious associate or colleague will ask the question. And I’ll be ready to set the record straight for the world. It was a vicodin-inspired autumn evening back in 2007 that showed me a vision. A vision of a world in which children need not fear the meat man, the turds behave themselves, and no one is afraid of the night.
And this, for me, has made all the difference.
- years gone by and daughter has outgrown face paint
Bacon at 3am 