Young And In Lard

Soon after embracing the cliché and trading Ohio for New York City, I came to a cold, hard conclusion: Food cost money, and I had none. My $10-an-hour temp job steaming middle-aged women's clothes barely covered rent on an Astoria railroad apartment, an abode shared with a tv production assistant with a raucous vibrator and a 40-ounce-loving Maxim lackey. The duo's antics often drove me to drink, which also cost money. This is how my gluttony began.

After punching my daily time card, I would retreat to East Village Mexican outpost Mary Ann's. Back then, Mary Ann's offered a lush deal: $3 for knee-capping margarita pints and all the chips and salsa I could stomach. A word to bar owners: Sure, by providing sustenance, you're theoretically encouraging patrons to increase consumption, but a 22-year-old with a hummingbird's metabolism and pennies in his pocket is not an ideal customer.

"Would you like another margarita?" the thick-goateed bartender would ask, his voice tinged with disdain.

By then I would've been super-glued to the bar for about 45 minutes, taking tear-dropper-size margarita sips. Two baskets of fried chips, however, would be roiling in my stomach acid.

"No, but I'll have some more of these," I'd say, pointing to an empty wax-paper basket, the crumbs long licked up. "And don't forget the salsa!"

Not long after, Maryann's happy-hour margarita leapt to five bucks. I took this as a hint to shepherd my overindulgence elsewhere. Needing anesthetization to face home and nutrition to keep going, I started hitting Midtown's Rudy's.

The man-sized pig guarding Rudy's entrance (the statue, not the bouncer) tips off the dive-bar bounties: pitchers of domestic beer for a couple wrinkled bills, and enough free hot dogs to tap out a slaughtering plant.

"Three hot dogs," I'd tell a bartender with a face that made the Grand Canyon seem youthful, "with mustard-no ketchup."

He would shuffle away and retrieve three glistening dogs from the wiener carousel. I'd receive them on a paper plate. It was barely moistened with mustard before the hot dogs were memories, and I anted up again. I was very hungry back then. And very drunk. My diet became obvious.

"Josh, have you put on a little weight?" my mother asked in her subtle way. This was during Thanksgiving, several months after my New York City move. I was home for the holidays.

"Uh, I might have put on a couple pounds," I said. I grabbed my sides and, much to my surprise, found love handles. But since no one loved me, I was simply getting fat.

Obesity is not something to which men of my ample shortness need aspire. Sure, 120 years ago, society dictated that a five-foot-five gentleman with an I-can't-see-my-penis belly equaled prosperity. After all, only the wealthy ate enough to insulate with lard. This was the era of potato famines and fiefdom: The proletariat was thin as string beans, not that they ever tasted any.

Oh, how the Trimspa scales have changed. These days, wealth equals a little waist while poverty, whew, wide load on board. More than 60 percent of Americans are overweight, diabetes more prevalent than chlamydia. Double Whoppers with cheese are the new sex. And back then, I was enjoying more of the former than the latter.

At temp jobs, lunch was unpaid. Every minute I left meant a svelter paycheck. My lunchtime routine consisted of dashing to Wendy's or McDonald's and ordering four dollars of greasy, gooey one-dollar burgers, chicken sandwiches and fries-enough calories to sate a pachyderm. I'd rush back to work, cramming slippery nibbles into my mouth fast enough to win an Olympic medal-if rapid gluttony progressed beyond internationally recognized exhibition sport.

Compounding this, my roommate situation deteriorated. The Maxim lackey now befriended two 40s a night. If I came home with less than a four-beer buzz, it was difficult to care about his rigors of airbrushing nipples. So I drank more Rudy's beer and ate more sweaty hot dogs.

My future was unfolding, fat, agonizing and swaddled in extra-large sweatpants. I needed a savior. I sent out a resume. It won. Of course, the job was editing Playboy-reject porn, but, hey, that's another essay.

As I eased into the succor of biweekly bank deposits, my gluttonous ways ebbed. I eschewed McDonald's for fragrant meals of $5 Vietnamese pho soup. My lackey roommate got promoted, spending less time drinking and more time learning Photoshop. The other roommate went schizo, swapping her vibrator for lithium and soft white walls. Home was palatable-without Pabst.

As for my gluttony, over the years it has reinvented itself. No longer do I cram down one-dollar Big N' Tasty burgers and enough after-work beer to sleep dreamless sleep. In fact, my Midwestern-style excess is no more, replaced by gluttony more quintessentially New York: I work 70-hour weeks.