Bleux Stockings Vol 1: Kara Cantrell
We are delighted to reprint Kara Cantrell's piece from our January show.
Debasement
Have you tried the Sweet and Spicy Chili Doritos? Seems they used to also include the word Thai in their name but that was dropped… perhaps because cooks of authentic Thai cuisine the world over called bullshit. It’s not that the flavor isn’t faintly reminiscent of the far east: The coating is tangy with a hint of sweet like seasoned rice vinegar with just a shot of heat like, but not exactly like Sriracha sauce, and these being Doritos, there is a slight backdrop of something like cheese. The flavoring is peppered thickly over that very pedestrian but delightfully consistent American-style corn tortilla chip. So, no, maybe not Thai. But, let me say this: They are possibly the most glorious things I’ve ever put into my mouth, and you may rest assured that I have put thousands upon thousands of things in my mouth over my fthoir….ae8fra d;l-something years. They are without equal or comparison. And, more than that, something about them extinguishes fear and self-loathing better than any medication or meditation I’ve ever tried. Pair them with a 24 oz, fountain Coca-Cola, preferably from McDonald’s, and a King Size Kit Kat and you have a recipe that can erase an entire week’s worth of humiliations.
I must’ve been eight or nine years old that afternoon. It was warm. I can remember my dad was walking around the house in cut-off jean shorts and no shirt, a cigarette dangling from his lip. (That’s not significant, it was just the 70’s.) My brother and I were being given something at the kitchen table. A snack, maybe? I was always game for a snack. Even though I’d had one just a bit ago. I’d come in that day, and raided my dad’s sandwich stash: slices of deli ham and Kraft American singles. I liked to roll them up pinwheel-style and nibble them from between my fingers, holding them like a cigar. My mom worked for Oscar Mayer and that stash was something to be counted upon. I don’t recall what Dad was giving us; ham and cheese perhaps because he seemed to discover the missing items just as we sat down.
And, he flew into a rage. There was screaming, the kind that makes people go hoarse at sporting events. I was shocked, frightened by the suddenness of it. I remember looking across the table at my little brother. He was staring at the tabletop, his head in his hands. Then, my father’s face was right next to mine. It was so red that for a moment I became less alarmed for me and wondered if he were going have a heart attack right then. And, the heat coming off his face. That heat made it harder and harder not to cry. The crown of my brother’s head went all blurry, and I remember biting the inside of my cheek to try to stop the tears. Words like “goddammit” and “fuck” and “stupid” and “disgusting” and “fat pig” were shouted in my ear.
Finally, he ran out of steam and I was sent away. My face was raw like a sunburn from his rage and my tears. And, I began to plot. For the most important thing was to maintain my ability to bury these horrible feelings under a pile of Doritos or ham-and-cheese pinwheels or Three Musketeers bars. I was devastated by my father’s rage and I’d been sent away with no food in hand to fix it. Nothing to quiet the blood churning in my ears, but I was coming up with plans. Plans that involved sneaking portions of snacks small enough not to be noticed. Scavenging and hiding chips and cookies in my dresser or closet, taking advantage of parties to gorge, saving the sweet memory of it for the times my father’s rage would flare again, because it would, every week.
I’d known for a long time that food makes things better. I can recall being much younger, four maybe, and daydreaming about the next eating… I don’t say meal. Anger and anxiety were to be buried… under Little Debbie snack cakes. When you’re a child and you’re trying to drown your sorrows, there is precious little besides candies and cakes to take the edge off. And, once that devil has made landfall in your psyche, it grows roots. Extracting it becomes an exercise in extracting part of your very self.
It isn’t sexy. It isn’t alcohol (how romantic!) or pills (how fashionable!) or cutting (how punk!) It is moral weakness. It is offensive to anyone who is not fat, who actually believes that skinny feels better than Kit Kats taste. Poor misguided bastards. But, in the scream of night, faced only with the specter of inescapable me, it is the only debasement that stuck, the only one that works. I tried all the others. I’ve been a smoker, a drinker, a cutter, a slut. Smoking came the closest, I suppose, but I never got beyond being a “social smoker” and when I finally decided to put it down, I just did. I really tried with alcohol but it wasn’t as satisfying, made my head hurt, and if it’s going to make me fat anyway, I’d rather it were chocolate. Cutting hurts. And boys, well, they have their charms, but it’s rare you meet one who can sweep away your woe with his dick no matter how earnestly he may try.
This one though, this eating is my endorphin cascade, my black shroud of forgetting tamped down my throat into my guts where the cancer will start. There is no foundering relationship, no career failure, no unresolved childhood trauma that isn’t abated by slice after slice of cold delivery pizza or bowls of melted ice cream soup. Food is my nightly sedative, secret lover hidden even now in my lingerie drawer or in the convenience store bag on the front seat of my Jimmy outside right now containing a Coke, Doritos, and a Kit Kat. I know, too, that it will be the death of me. Nobody can eat the volume of Quarter Pounders and commercial cookie dough that I have and expect no repercussions. But then, there is something very comforting about staring down the barrel of the gun that will end you. And, if that gun ever panics me, at least it’s made of chocolate and that sweetness drowns all sorrows.
