I eat like shit. I really do. Every day is yet another opportunity for carbs, sugars, fats and chemicals to throw garden parties in my system. Breakfast is coffee seeped in sugar and cream and a butter-soaked bread item; lunch is leftover pizza, coffee shop croissants or any number of chocolate baked goods; dinner an inevitable scrounge for bready and fatty morsels to stifle the sugar crash, followed by mandatory dessert. Baguettes, cheese, jam, pasta, cookies, scones and caffeine are my staples, fueling me through the days with their high-fructose hydrogenated oily goodness.

“How can you eat like that??” Boyfriend demands as I inhale another choco-cinnamon danish. “It’s not healthy. Your veins must be coated with flour by now.”

“Fnufck mofft,” I fire back through a mouthful of berry preserves.

I admire people who “eat healthy,” foregoing the mozzarella sticks and triple-decker baco-burger for tempeh sticks, hummus wraps, leafy greens and brown rice. You can always pick them out, those lithe, veggie-filled nymphs who smile at the world with luminous eyes and bounce though life with nutrient-rich grace. I watch them with admiration, and daydream about how good I’d feel, how much weight I’d lose, how happy my body would be. Once or twice I’ve even been inspired to order a side of spinach (drowned to expiration in butter and oil). And with that, the vegetable quota is filled. Tiramisu, anyone?

The way I see it, adult life is a world of deprivation, where the things you have to do inevitably outweigh the things you want to do. Rules, responsibilities, obligations – it’s all part of the giant clusterfuck of being a productive member of society. Food is the one remaining realm of abandon, a daily carte blanche to make choices based entirely on the whims of that eight-year-old still throwing tantrums in the back of your head. Somewhere deep inside that ugly, primal place that we hide from everyone else (except maybe bank tellers and significant others) I want the Rocky Road mocha fudge bar with the caramel drizzle. The voice may speak up at other times, whispering how it wants to elbow the fellow Subway commuter shoving his armpit in my face or drop-kick that woman’s yippy Pomeranian. But with food, all is permissible! Finally, a request from my Id that can reasonably be granted. No harm is done, no one gets hurt – with the exception of my blood pressure. I want it, and I shall have it! Bring on the meat lovers calzone and German Chocolate cheesecake!

“Just wait ’til you hit your thirties,” Boyfriend warns. “That’s when the big metabolism slow-down hits.”

Shit. Well, until then, pass the butter.