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FAST FOOD PORN NATION
Why I haven’t finished reading the book, my childhood experiences with fast food and eating out, and my current fast food addiction:

I didn’t grow up eating fast food. For one thing, it didn’t exist in our town; neither did stoplights. On very special occasions we might stop at a McDonalds out of town, but between Dairy Queen, Burger King and McDonalds, I probably ate fast food less than twenty times before the age of twenty. Oh wait, we did go to Skippers and Kentucky Fried Chicken more often (my grandpa even brought home KFC a couple of times) so I could probably add another twenty or more onto that number. I think we ate at Skippers quite a bit; my mom loves fish & chips. Skippers now seems to be the grossest, dirtiest fast food restaurant around — a shame. We also did eat burgers out, but generally at actual non-formula drive-ins that did old fashioned grilling or were local destinations with a sense of regional history, like Dick’s. Also, my mom hated soft-serve ice cream and didn’t want to spend money on milkshakes or cones unless they were made with hard ice cream.

When our family would really “go out” to eat, my stepdad would take us to obnoxious pizza places. Shakeys in Redmond was one, and Showbiz Pizza was another. My stepdad LOVED the animatronic band way more than we kids could possibly relate to. Showbiz was always pathetically underpopulated, so I picture my stepdad’s chortling head hovering in an empty room, the garish red stage lights reflecting off his glasses while he stared, mesmerized by the inhuman display and echoing music.

We did go out to eat a lot with my dad when he had visitation on the weekends, but he took us to diners and family restaurants. In the seventies and early eighties, Guadalajara #3 in Crossroads (Bellevue/Redmond area) was an early favorite; my dad would always order a side of corn tortillas which they presented hot wrapped in a royal blue cloth napkin. He would butter them for us. I always got a cheese enchilada. Eventually that restaurant closed and I moved on to ordering chicken enchiladas instead.

We also ate at VIPs in Issaquah where my sister enjoyed coloring their wacky bunny heads and I learned to copy my dad by ordering my eggs sunny side up. After VIPS died, we went to Shari’s where my dad usually ordered steak and eggs. To this day, that’s still one of my favorite breakfast meals.

Our dad was also partial to Chinese food so we went to Andy’s in Issaquah a lot. We were such regulars that once my sister and I even went to Andy’s house and on an outing with his daughter and some other kids to Chinatown where we went to Oujimaya (why can’t I fucking find anything in google for oujimaya to find out if I’m spelling it right?) and ate out. He scolded us for using too much soy sauce on our noodles. Last thing I heard he was embroiled in an immigration scandal where he was accused of bringing a bunch of illegals over and had them working in near-slavery and living in inhumane conditions.

As we got older, we wound up eating at Red Robin a lot with our dad. I also remember a restaurant called Casa Lupita. I can’t remember many of the other places, but they were your regular suburban dining spots. He never took us to Denny’s, but we did go to The International House of Pancakes where he would order the Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruitie. Lately I have been wondering a lot about my dad’s real gender identity and sexual preference.

I was not an IHOP fan, probably because they didn’t have good booths at the locations we went to; there was something disturbing to me about sitting in the IHOP with those high ceilings and the fish bowl plethora of windows with no good partitions inside so every single person in the joint was highly visible. I think good puffy booths with high backs and a table layout that affords some privacy are appealing to children for their fort-like atmosphere and sense of glamour. I haven’t outgrown my love of booths and I hope I never do; I’m guessing that our early exposure to restaurants, as modest as they might have been, instilled a preference for being waited on over grabbing fast food. I also suspect that my dad’s (undiagnosed except by me) ADD made him fear ordering fast food; I understand this fear — the menus are overwhelming, everyone’s clamoring for their turn, the rules and rituals seem so regimented and difficult to decode. Everyone around you seems to know exactly what they want while you stand there alone adrift in a sea of confusion, beeping machines, and teenagers incoherently mumbling their customer service lines. It’s much less stressful to have time alone with a menu at your own table with your own waitress who will answer questions or just go away if you need more time.

The only fast food our dad ever took us to was Wendy’s; he loved their chili. Wendy’s never did it for me, and fast food in general didn’t do it for my dad. He seemed to be opposed to it. I learned to be a responsible and proud tipper from my dad and I think my sister and I are healthier people today because our weekday family was too poor to go out to eat much but did have STANDARDS when it came to burgers, burger joints and ice cream, and because Daddy took us to actual restaurants instead of grabbing us happy meals.

*****

I started reading Fast Food Nation, but it was so good I couldn’t get past the preface; my head got busy making parallels to porn. How most porn is made and presented like fast food. How people would never say that all food is intrinsically bad because FAST food is bad, but they will irrationally say all pornography is bad because some sucks ass, or has a few ass-suckingly unhealthy characteristics. Not that all forms of ass-sucking are bad or unhealthy . . . it’s just a figure of speech. How people feed their children extremely unhealthy, addictive, and eventually life-threatening fast food and call it good without a moment of critical thought going into the decision, but think that PORN is somehow a gigantically dangerous threat to their children’s lives.

That’s why I don’t read nonfiction as much as I’d like to. MY HEAD STARTS SPINNING AND I CAN’T KEEP READING FOR THINKING TOO MUCH.

*****

At twenty years old I finally moved to a place with fast food restaurants ALMOST within walking distance. I became addicted to Taco Bell, and it was good. I ate a great many chicken soft tacos without ever feeling too badly about it.

Lately I’ve become addicted to McDonald’s, though. Our town has restrictions on formula stores, so McDonald’s and Subway are the only fast food places that are grandfathered in. McD’s is the only place I can go late at night to get a hot and tasty treat; once I started taking advantage of this I started doing it more and more. It’s only become a frequent (once or twice a week) thing in the past four or five months.

Just the other day I got suckered into playing their little Monopoly advertising game and went TWICE IN ONE DAY. We strategically planned our menu choices to get the most “game stamps”. I am even online right now entering codes from my game stamps on their site. On top of that, I’m considering doing research online to find out which stamps are the hardest to get, and starting new “collector” boards to fully maximize our chances of winning a big prize; I mean, I wouldn’t want to throw away a large-prize-winning property to turn in a board for a $50 prize!

I feel like a sucker.

I wish we had a Taco Bell in town — if we did, none of this would ever have happened.

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