I heard these two guys on the radio talking about how mentally screwed up we all are because in modern society we’re so comfortable, so fat, and so well-off that we don’t exercise this part of our brain that our caveman ancestors had to use in order to survive their brutal conditions and that when that part of the brain is not utilized for survival it asserts itself by creating insane problems that have nothing to do with reality so that now, while we don’t have to burden ourselves with killing giant Mastodons and dragging their rotting carcasses back to the cave for dinner, we have to fend off this constant impulse inside us to invent monstrous crises that loom inside our imagination and we invest all our time and energy fretting over these imaginary problems, we become miserable, we feel utterly helpless under the weight of these obsessions, and we find ourselves far worse off than our caveman ancestors who couldn’t leave their cave for two seconds without worrying about some pterodactyl or other carnivore snatching their babies out of their arms or biting a giant hunk out of their ass.
I can remember the comedian Larry David, shining under the glory of his hit TV show Seinfeld, discussing this topic during an interview with Charlie Rose. He explained that while Seinfeld had made him millions upon millions of dollars and had ceased his need to worry about money for the rest of his life, he had this dysfunction in his brain so that when one worry was erased it was immediately replaced by another worry, like hypochondria, so that Larry David, no matter how rich, was doomed to languish in some form of agony or other forever and ever.
One of the grotesque ways we sublimate our caveman impulses is by frequenting those all-you-can-eat buffets, such as Claim Jumpers and HomeTown Buffet, which are, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.
In front of one local buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there.
One afternoon I was afforded an especially hellish insight into the buffet's inner workings. As I walked to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet gluttons, I could not avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime. I saw cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees were old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagined them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerged into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I looked into their sad eyes—eyes that seemed to beg for my help and mercy. The vision of these lugubrious souls has afflicted me with a recurring nightmare that a giant hairy claw with thick talons emerges from the kitchen door, from which flames flicker, and then this monstrous claw grabs one of the workers around his torso. He flails his arms and screams for mercy, but to no avail. The claw pulls him back into the fuming hell of stale grease and rancid chicken fat. Whatever the significance of my disturbing dream, I am haunted by these images of those poor men trapped at their job and I am overcome with dread and anxiety every time I pass them on my way to the gym.
My sympathy for the workers, however, was dwarfed by my disgust for what I perceived to be criminal behavior of some of the patrons. An extended family, all fat with a multiplicity of flabby chins that rippled like flapping bird neck appendages, limped out of the buffet. They were bloated, sickly, full of crapulence. The corpulent matriarch, the grandmother, had a huge travel bag full of donuts and biscuits that she had pilfered from the buffet tray. Apparently, she hadn’t stuffed herself enough. The donuts and biscuits were falling out of her over-packed tote bag as she hobbled across the parking lot. You could see the baked goods rolling across the asphalt like rot-gut bowling balls. This grandma’s butt was too big to get into the back seat of the banged-up, rusted Mercury Topaz, so she had to swing the door all the way open. Seemingly oblivious, she rammed the right door into the left door of a brand new dark gray Honda Accord parked in the next space. The Topaz door was wedged right into the once-pristine Accord and I could see sparks and gray paint chips flying off it. All the while the grandmother, straining with her cane, was lowering herself into the Topaz while grunting like a pig. She squatted lower and lower while gagging and squealing. Spittle flew out of her mouth along with bits of semi-masticated biscuit clods.
It gets worse. The grandma’s weight sunk the back of the Topaz so low that the car’s rear hit the asphalt and this made the door wedge deeper and deeper into the Accord. By now the door had violently gashed that poor new Honda. I was just standing there with my gym bag in my hand wondering if I was the only person who saw what was going on. It then occurred to me that someone’s Accord was getting thrashed. I rushed into the gym and explained the situation to the manager and he let me tell everyone what had happened over the PA system. A guy ran off the StairMaster while screaming hysterically and I followed him to the parking lot. The family was still sitting in the Topaz. They were so stuffed from their feeding that they were now “recovering” inside the car with the windows down, fanning themselves with the buffet’s take-out menus. The Honda owner was irate. He screamed at them and they just looked at him with bovine indifference, their blubbery chins glistening with drool. A bunch of clueless gluttons destroying and devouring everything that comes into their path--all because they couldn't find a more productive way to channel the caveman impulses that roiled within their emotionally-arrested DNA.
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