The following is an excerpt from my new book The Last Bomb Before the Fall: When the Buff Dried Up. Oprah featured it as her book of the month on her show last week. It will be in stores around the country on Black Friday. Enjoy.
Chapter I
August 15, I remember it fondly. It was hot but not too hot, it was cloudy but not too cloudy. There breeze was just strong enough to rustle the pile of crumpled takeout bags and grease-speckled parchment wrappers on the coffee table but not quite strong enough to blow them away. The tantalizing scent of fried wafted from the pile up to my face, fluttering around in my nostrils . I knew what I had to do. Deftly, my fingers moved across the keypad of my phone, Toucan Sam-like my fingers recieving orders from my nose and not my brain.
And, the more I mull it over in my mind, I still can't decide whether it was one of these days (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFlcqWQVVuU) or one of these (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzjLlqIuVhI). August 15, 2009 was the date of my final buffalo bomb from AK's.
I moved to Allston two weeks later, way out of AK's delivery range (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s). I had signed the lease so swiftly, so surely, withouth thinking or even considering the consequences. I didn't realize that my brash decision would leave me in Buff Bomb purgatory.
A month went by and I could still taste the buff, feel the burn and, when I really dug down deep, feel the full pull of its weight in my stomach, the kind rendering it impossible to gather the effort to slither off the couch save for the frantic moments of pure panic not knowing whether I'd make it to the bathroom in time to puke and/or poop. I would awake from delightful buff-town dreams only to realize that my toungue was not on fire, my esophagus did not demand long drawn out cooling breaths, my stomach was still, my small intestine was not a waterslide and my b-hole was placid. I would scream in horror, knowing that I would never develop the sauce-induced ulcer of my buffalo dreams.
Another month went by and I could barely taste the sauce. My Nintendo 64 controllers had dried, the pangs had reduced significantly and I was thinking about moving on. I tried getting takeout from Inbound Pizza because of a promising recommendation from a cabbie. He had informed me that the name is "very very clever" because it is right across from the inbound T stop. He had also informed me that the pizza is "very very well." Needless to say, I tried it and, as it turns out, the sandwich was about as inspired as the name of the establishment (not very inspired). Subsequently, I tried every takeout place in a 2 mile radius but to no avail. It was then that I made the concession that my buff bomb was out of reach and my poops were to remain clean.
This is the story of a tragedy and loss but it is also a story of triumph and rebirth. This is a chronicle of the first rays of spring after a long winter. This is a story of a young man with streak-less underpants.
