My friend Hope was the first person to explain to me that white flour is Satan incarnate. We were young - in our early twenties - driving across Texas at breakneck speed and for days on end. At some point, the silence broke. She said "Biscuits are evil," and stared over the steering wheel into the flat cactus void.
As I say, this was news to me. I had never considered that the essential ingredients to biscuits and bread - white flour and milk - are the exact same ingredients necessary for making homemade paste. "White bread turns into glue into your intestines. It's, like, one of the worst things you can eat. Ever." And now I was staring into the cactus void as well, which had become a void that contained every slice of white bread I'd ever eaten.
A few days later, we broke out of Texas and crossed over into New Mexico. In a town called Truth Or Consequences, we stopped at a diner on Main Street. It was full of sloe-eyed, drawling locals. The line cook was also our waiter. And he spoke with what appeared to be great concentration: "The special...of...the day...is...brisket. Beef brisket." I had never had brisket before. And Hope warned me against that too.
Like a time bomb, the lunch special was unleashing its fury on my gut exactly one hour later. We had pulled over at a rest stop just in time. Beads of sweat, a mad dash. Great reckonings and bargains with God were made. As I paced back from the restroom, pale and lessened, the sun was hanging at a high, oblique point above Creation - and it was that bright, January sun that can make the Southwest almost too vivid for a body to behold.
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