This piece was originally published in The Inquisitive Eater Anthology, which you can now purchase online.
I
When people ask me, “Are you excited to live somewhere new?” I respond, “I’m excited to buy groceries somewhere new.”
Buying anything heavy in New York is a luxury. Am I sure I’m out of milk? How many cans of soda do I need, really? In my mind, I become hostile when guests come over, start drinking a can of my La Croix and don’t finish. It’s not about wasting money, it’s about wasting labor.
Plastic bags are out of the question. There’s the environment to think of. And by environment I mean the environment of my microscopic kitchen after it becomes filled to the brim with plastic bags.
Then there’s the sensation of the plastic bag’s handles slicing my fingers with every step I take. Paper is better, but nothing beats a well-structured tote bag, one I can put over my shoulder, comfortably, big enough that I don’t need multiple tote bags—it’s difficult to juggle more than two tote bags while walking—but small enough that I don’t accidentally trick myself into loading it up too much.
In New York, there is only one grocery store: the one closest to my apartment. All other grocery stores do not exist, unless I’m bringing food to someone else’s apartment in someone else’s neighborhood. Why should I be expected to carry my groceries up and down subway steps?
On many occasions I’ve stopped while walking home to take a break from these heavy bags. I watch people pass by, sans tote bags, and wonder if they are strong enough to buy groceries.
In the suburbs I don’t have to be strong. I can get whatever my wallet and my waist allow, pile it into my cart and then pile it into my car. I can stop by three different grocery stores to get the best deals on different items. Suburban apartments have more room for La Croix, more room for plastic bags.
II
Something about this city makes me want to eat in public spaces. Not restaurants, but places that aren’t meant for food: nail salons, home goods stores, subway platforms, the C line.
An incomplete list of foods I’ve eaten on public transportation: onion bagels with plain cream cheese, plain bagels with strawberry cream cheese, buffalo chicken salads, breakfast burritos with bacon.
Salads are easier to eat in trains than bagels. It’s the cream cheese. I used to think I could bite into a bagel whole, like a sandwich, but with a real New York bagel, cream cheese will always come out the other side. It will get on my hands and my clothes until I’m nothing but cream cheese.
Once when I was eating a breakfast burrito on a crowded subway, a piece of scrambled egg fell out onto the leg of the woman sitting next to me, before falling to the floor. She was wearing jeans. To my surprise, she said nothing. She didn’t even move her leg. I wrapped up my burrito without another bite. I didn’t want to acknowledge what I had done. I didn’t want to look at her. When I finally did, I was relieved to find she was sleeping. But then I looked up and saw a man standing close, towering above the sleeping passenger and me. He had watched the whole event transpire. There’s always someone watching.
Only in New York do I want to eat while walking. New Yorkers are supposed to have a fast paced lifestyle. There’s no time to sit and eat. All of the foods listed above I have consumed while walking. Others include: gyro wraps, triangle sushi, string cheese, dollar pizza, a donut.
I love donuts but almost never eat them. Donuts are delicious but unsatisfying, an undesirable trait for a cheat food. Once, I bought two donuts, a decadent treat for myself. I ate one on the way to the subway, and felt too unhappy with it to eat the second. I decided to give the other to the first person on the street asking me for something. To my surprise, no one did until I was almost at my destination. When I told the man he could have my donut, still wrapped up in a paper bag, he looked uncertain. 71
“What kind is it?” he asked. I told him it was chocolate glazed. Wait, no, it was chocolate frosted. He looked pleased with this response.
“I’d like to share a donut with you,” he said.
III
My favorite thing about you is something you did when I wasn’t around. Late one night, after we went out, and you left to go home, you ordered food from a halal cart. The halal guy asked if he could have a kiss. You kissed him through the window of the cart and later said the kiss tasted like meat. He came out of the cart to kiss you more but then you disappeared into the night. It’s the kind of thing you never do. You don’t even kiss strangers in bars.
There are days when I work from home, but really I’m just waiting until it’s ok to eat again. I’ll look at the clock and it’ll say five, or maybe it’ll say five thirty. I turn to you and ask if we should order in. You say, sure, you could eat. But then I say maybe we should wait another thirty minutes. It’s that awkward in between. We agree we could eat or we could wait. “It’s the brink of dinner time.” I said it once and now we say it whenever this happens. But with an exaggerated British accent: “It’s the brink of dinner time!”
I want to show everyone that text you sent me once, Are you near union square do you want to get pizza hut. I had told you I had been craving those little personal pizzas for years, and you wanted to remedy that. We met up at the Pizza Hut / Taco Bell, and a man followed me in. He looked so normal. He stepped in front of me to open the door, saying I was “lovely like the weather” or something like that. I nodded and smiled. I couldn’t quite hear him. At first, I thought he just wanted pizza or tacos but then I approached you at a table and we chatted and watched as he stood in line staring at me. After a few minutes like this, he left without getting anything. We couldn’t stop laughing at the whole affair. Hit on, stalked even, at a Pizza Hut / Taco Bell.
Back when we were in college you loved ordering in Domino’s to watch SpongeBob and scary movies. You still love these things. This was important to me back then. Because we were just starting out as friends and you were the most beautiful person I had ever met and I thought for this reason your interests had to be beyond my comprehension, perhaps posing nude, while holding a very large book.
It’s important for all of you to know that on more than one occasion when I was shopping at Walmart in the suburbs, visiting the love of my life—the other love of my life, the one I’ll one day marry—I didn’t cart the groceries to the car. Instead, I left my shopping cart by the large sliding doors and carried the groceries, placed carefully in well-structured tote bags, across the vast parking lot to the car, laughing along the way. “How capable I am,” I thought. “How prepared.”
Walking while eating a gyro wrap means dropping pieces of ground meat on a dirty sidewalk. From behind it must look like I naturally produce just a little bit of cooked, seasoned meat wherever I go.
You know, you can always follow the trail if you ever need me.
Felicity was the Deputy Editor for The Inquisitive Eater in 2017-2018. A recent graduate of The New School Creative Writing MFA program, her work has been published in Brooklyn Magazine, The Inquisitive Eater, and Enchantress Magazine, and is forthcoming in LIT. In 2019, she was a finalist in the Voice Over Competition. Her writing can also be seen with Barbershop Books and Healthy Materials Lab. Felicity enjoys writing in all its forms. You can find her on Twitter @charmingfelic
Featured image via Flickr.
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