MY TWO BROTHERS

My Two Brothers 

A story of addiction 

I stand frozen on a busy New York City avenue, peering into the face of addiction. I take a step but reconsider. Am I going to do this to myself again? Am I going to blatantly mistreat my body, in exchange for a minute of euphoria? Is euphoria a strong word to describe shitty $1.00 pizza?

Hot oregano fumes radiate from the belly of a sedan-sized furnace. The oven is so well seasoned it could win a boxing match behind a Red Hook warehouse… and believe me, that’s a smell.  Serpents of yeasty steam waft through the gaps in a pair of clear glass doors, racing up my nostrils, past my lungs and into my brain.

The lights of passing cars flicker in the glass doors almost like a mirage. As far as barriers are concerned, these doors may as well not even exist.

There is really nothing standing in the way of that intense, if brief, visceral pleasure that is shitty $1.00 pizza. Nothing but a suspension of will power and one American dollar bill. A fair price, I say, for half of a day's worth of calories.

What is a dollar to a middle class white male burning his 20s in the media arts?

Short sight makes it so that the value of a dollar can only be seen in large sums,

while each individual dollar is merely a flag. A pale green flag, that when waved in the air is the intercultural symbol for "please hand me a slice of pizza."

And in no time flat, a slice of pizza appears, produced, as if by magic, by a Latino man in a dirty red polo shirt. If a hard working pizza man's shirt is clean, something's amiss, do not eat that pizza.

Ouch! I must have blacked out in the glee of a bargain-- I don't even remember putting the slice in my mouth, but hot cheese and marinara water are scalding my tongue, leaving behind painful swollen taste buds, that will remain for days to come. Maybe as a reminder that we’ve gone too far.

The human mouth is not built for $1.00 pizza.

Even God himself didn't see this one coming. He must have been off kicking rocks around the space-time continuum, while two brothers of his very own creation were meddling with forces that only slightly resembled Italian cuisine.

These two brothers, or "2 Bros." if you will, discovered that with the right ratio of cheese product, tomato paste and pure glutenous bread protein, they could sell slices of "pizza" for a dollar each, while covering their overhead costs and still turning a profit. What a display of business prowess, especially considering it only cost them each their first born son.

This business plan was concocted, no doubt, in the brimstone cave that Satan affectionately refers to as his pied a terre. 

For the business is sinister to its core.

To expect a human being to exhibit even a remote sense of self control in the face of $1.00 pizza is ludicrous. To keep the pizza piping hot and ready to eat is garden-of-Eden-snake level temptation. It’s got Satan’s hoof prints all over it.

Who exactly were these two brothers? Who cares. We can't eat them.

We can eat pizza. And not to belabor the point, but we can eat it for a dollar.

You won’t, however, catch me saying I only eat it for the price. The flavor is intoxicatingly pizza-like and the sauce’s high sugar content satisfies my glucose addiction. At only 8 Weight Watchers™ SmartPoints™ per slice I might even exclaim, in a moment of true desperation, that I eat it because it is healthy.

Whether because of stress or celebration, I find a reason to visit my Two Brothers on a semi-daily basis. Like any Italian-American marketing strategy will tell you, family is the most important thing. There’s really no one else to turn to when you’ve found yourself at rock bottom, addicted to shitty fucking $1.00 pizza.   

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Hi everyone, Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this essay, or thought it was funny, please share it with your friends and family. Share it with someone who you may think has a similar addiction. 

I wrote this because it's all true, I love $1.00 pizza so much, and it's been a significant roadblock in my journey to lose weight and rebuild my body before Sexy Halloween 2016. W

As of now I've lost 4 pounds... It's really happening! 

I'm having before pictures taken before I lose too much weight. So next week you can look forward to seeing me in my undies. 

Only 250 Days until Sexy Halloween 2016

Thanks again! 

Ian