Sometimes, when I miss eating food too much, I open a jar of peanut butter and take three or four deep breaths. I live on the fumes of today and the faint aroma of yesterday--and I think of how I mindlessly ate my last peanut butter sandwich and kick myself. This usually works for a couple of hours.
I have been experimenting with what other, more punk rock tube wearers have suggested I do--just grind everything to a faree-thee-well, mix with a lot of appropriate liquid, and shove down the g-tube.
A few days ago, I made a meat loaf for Charles--meat loaf is a great dish to make when left overs will become important--for him, a Catholic music director in the midst of Holy Week, a dish that can be warmed up and eaten at will is a lifesaver, or at least a McDonald's-saver (just kidding, Charles would gnaw a sloth claw before he'd eat at McDonald's!).
Wouldn't you know, even given my long, illustrious, career of making meat loaf, this one was perfect. The onion was sautéed perfectly, the garlic left a beautiful impression along the spine of the meat, a dash of cumin, the slightly more liberal black pepper, the decidedly more liberal cayenne, the devil-may-care dashes of Worcestershire sauce! Ah, the smell!
The meat loaf with it cartoon come-hither fragrance...I had to have it. Had to! My problem with the punk rock approach to eating with a feeding tube, though, is that my blender is decidedly better for Hootie and the Blowfish--it can make a smoothie, but not the smoothest, it can do protein shakes, but you know there's some banana lump in there. It doesn't not make the type of consistency that an incredible small feed tube can bear, or even let pass.
Yet, there are times in your life when sense--well, what the hell is that? It happens to me at odd moments. A pair of brown chukka style Varvatos shoes with a wing tip design on the toe? Had I not bought them I'd still be crying. A t-shirt that says People's Republic of Portland? Would not rest until I was wearing the Commie Star. Having a dessert at Cafe Lalo (83rd, between Columbus and Amsterdam--famously included in the wretched movie "You've Got Mail" with dog-haired Meg Ryan and basset-hound-faced Tom Hanks) every time I'm in NYC? Try not to take me. The bitch juice starts flowing the moment of no.
You know of course what I did--I could stand 1 1/2 days of the torture and that was that. If I were Jesus in the desert, this planet would be shot and you'd all be slogging through hell fire laughing at babies carrying switchblades.
To the underpowered whir of my mixer I added the only meat stock I had--chicken--until there was a vaguely greasy looking beige liquid in it. This, I began to feed down the tube, and surprisingly, it worked--or it worked for about half of the production--then a stray piece of beef hit a filter and ka-pow. The show was over.
Surprisingly, I can taste--there's some buds left in my mouth, there's a strip of tongue back there somewhere (not 100% of my tongue went--something like 97%). And the great steam pipe of the esophageal tube releases a sort of exhaust that indicates, teases, and occasionally delights what buds are left.
The meat loaf, at least its essence, was indeed perfect. I cannot underestimate, as a Midwesterner, the value of knowing that the loaf one has produced has reached a zenith, an ultimate expression of one of life's perfect foods.
Ah, but the clog. Equally allow me to assure you that you cannot live with a clogged pipe in your house, and I cannot live with a clogged pipe to my stomach. The Heloise method of clearing clogged g-tubes? Coca Cola. Yes! Nature's best window cleaner and all around frightening thing to put in one's stomach is also the number one unclogging agent, suggested and loved by all--except me. Until I had a tube, no Coke has passed my gay lips for literally decades. I would rather destroy myself piecemeal with chocolate than go straight for it with something that could bitch slap my gastric juice and eat through my stomach walls at will.
The upshot is that the Coke worked--pour acid on sheet metal and you'll get holes every time! But it worked on me too--and here is my new pledge to myself: Not until I have an incredibly powerful processor or blender will I try to eat any meat product through my tube. Not because I don't want it but because the Coke is so not worth it. The bloat and stomach ache are not what I wish to add to my stock in suffering.
Lately, I have tried to be proactive instead of whining, and to be a sport instead of a spoil. Truffles mixed in milk and hot chocolate, eyeing a Cadbury cream egg as a potentially creamy little spot of no-nutrition goodness...a tablespoon of peanut butter mixed into Nutren (it slows it down considerably) was worth it for the after vapors....peanut butter clouds rising and raining a soft sweet peanut butter essence throughout my mouth and throat...if that sounds vaguely sexual it might be and I'm sorry to skeeve you out. P butter has been a constant in my life from my early memory forward. We cannot be forever parted.
I have promised myself that I will, at some point, go to a restaurant with Scott and Terry and be a jolly companion. I'll watch them enjoy and enjoy with them. I'll go as hopped up on Nutren and whatever Scott's blender (better than mine) can concoct to delight me. Perhaps we'll go to Chow in the Castro and I can watch Scott have spaghetti (have seen this twice, it's adorable), and if Terry is so inclined, their lasagna that I inhaled when last there.
Or, at K Pop, I can see them taking those aromatic meats and pickled side dishes and enjoy the corner windows looking out onto nude accordionists, disability bears and tourists gawking at them both. We'll watch neighbors kiss greetings and pick up artists and Sunset gays come back down the street for a good slumming in the ghetto. Then, full and happy, head up the big hill to the top and call it a night, and a tasty one, at that.
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