Taco Hell
Part Three: Good to the Last Bite
Taco Ten (well, ten for me, and twelve for him, because he "taco'd" me twice, which is on par with lapping someone in a foot race) really was the turning point. Look at how miserable we are:
I didn't feel like I was going to puke, but I didn't feel good either. And I was starting to realize that I wasn't going to win. I have to admit I egged him on a bit through a brief bit of dramatic eye contact and probably got him to eat one more taco than he should have. I also destroyed his stack of neatly folded empty wrappers by throwing one of my crumpled up wrappers on his pile, but that was the extent of my taunting or "gamesmanship" as the audience was calling it. Matt's strategy was an endless stream of philisophical thoughts. I do remember him using the word "solipsistic" at one point, but the rest is just a blur.
It's hard to tell in this photo, but I seriously did mess with his neat little pile of wrappers.
I also realized this - and I had realized this last week actually, but it was confirmed - that I didn't really want to win, after all was said and done, because I didn't want to ever have to go through this again. When you're a winner, you have to take on every challenger who comes your way. When you're a loser, you get to say you tried and you failed, and sometimes making the effort, well, that's just good enough for me.
I gave up after twelve tacos and one gordita. Matt, the champion now and forever, was at fourteen tacos and one gordita.
Was I in it to win it? Sure. And I think I did win a little something that night. I won the respect of my peers, and by my peers I mean a bunch of other people who had gone through the same hell for no particular reason, and I won the respect of myself, and by myself I mean the girl who used to smoke a bunch of pot in college and eat massive amounts of leftover pizza at 3 AM, laughing my ass off with my roommates like a complete idiot. I didn't think she'd come back to me, and yet, there she was, grinning at me under the fluorescent light of a fast food chain on 3rd Avenue. And I thought she was gone forever.