Nothing like being full of meat!

Today, I woke up around 3PM with a good-sized hangover and a hunger that could perform miracles. I'm talking Israel-Palestine ceasefire miracles. Cravings that would drive a pregnant woman to hold up your local Kroger. Within moments my brain was half functioning and started taking orders from my stomach to summon food. Problem is that all nearby food sources were already done serving lunch, so my brain resorted to Plan B.

No, my brain wasn't telling me to eat emergency contraceptive. My brain was telling me to commandeer a car and drive it down Montrose at ludicrous speed to Katz's deli. Katz's is, of course, this 24-hour Jewish-ish deli-style restaurant that makes some of the biggest goddamn Reubens that you can imagine. And I wanted one.

So I slung Allee in my trick-ass Accord and raced there as fast as I could. I needed meat. Staring at the menu not less than ten minutes after I left campus, I suddenly shrank back in fear. There were so many choices. My brain certainly didn't want to disappoint my stomach but I'll be damned if there weren't hundreds of appetite-whetting choices on that menu. My brain quickly narrowed it down to two possibilities: the Reuben I had been craving so badly and the equally-stacked Philly Cheese Steak.

It was a battle of sauerkraut versus skillet-sautéed onions and peppers. Corn beef versus steak. Russian dressing versus cheese. But there could be only one winner...

...me.

All I knew for sure was that I was getting my sandwich New York Sized, which probably refers to the size of a typical New Yorker's pious ego. It means big. I wanted big sandwich.

When the waiter finally returned to take my order, my brain once again recoiled at the thought that I would need to actually make a decision. It left the decision-making to my colon, which decided that it could probably process all that dressing easier than it could pump all that cheese through my system. The Reuben it was!

In the middle of the downright excruciating wait, Allee looked across at me from the table and said "I bet you can't finish your sandwich." Now girls, I know you can't read, but if you can have your boyfriends read this little post to you then realize that there's one thing you should never, ever do to a guy: Never test a guy's man-i-tude through eating, because there can never be a winner.

Men will go to stupid lengths to prove themselves. I was about to eat a square foot of corned beef. Under any normal circumstance that's just a dumb thing to do. But now it was a bet-- a challenge! And who am I to refuse such a challenge? So I bet one back massage that I could eat that Reuben.

When we got the order, I cringed a little bit. Steaming in front of me was half a gallon of dressing sitting upon some sizable chunk of a cow and smothered in an acre of fermented cabbage. As I stared into this meal, I tried to imagine how I was going to fit all of that into the available space in my body. I reckoned that if my entire small and large intestine and stomach could fit half the sandwich, then maybe my heart and lungs and blood vessels and liver and kidneys would somehow find a way to take in the other half. The body can do miraculous things when your virility is on the line.

The dynamics of eating the sandwich were kind of boring, so I won't go into each bite. I will tell you, however, that I did eat three quarters of the beast before something broke inside me. I suddenly hated corned beef. The idea of putting one more bite of that monstrosity in my gullet made me want to blow chunks left and right. I sighed, looked at Allee in shame, and conceited that while I wasn't full, I sure as hell wasn't going to eat any more of that Reuben.

Around this time, the waiter came to see if I needed use of the Automated Defibrillator. Just to prove that I was man and that I was not full, I instead asked for the dessert menu. Five minutes later, I proceeded to down a chocolate malt for the hell of it. In my mind, I was vindicated because I proved that my stomach slash body can do what I want it to when the time comes to prove my eating ability. But I didn't finish the sandwich so, sadly, I lost the bet.

I'm so full.