CONQUERING THE BLANK WHITE

Gawd....

I forgot to put deodorant on this morning before I left for work, and, just a moment ago, as I folded my arms over my head, looking at the blank white Bloggin' screen, wondering about what to write, the smell assaulted my nostrils, sneaking in gossamer Kartoon-White: garlic.

Garlic. I love me some garlic. Sauteed in spaghetti sauce--Uncle Paulie had a trick in which he used a razor blade to slice the garlic, slicing it so thin that it basically melted in the pan--grated over pepperoni pizzas, chopped finely into kick-ass saladas...yum.

Word had it that garlic was also good for the heart. Liberally-used in Mediterranean cooking, a belief was once widely-held that the consumption of garlic meant kudos for the ticker. Hell, a vitamin company even once recruited the resilient Larry King--he, the survivor of about 57 heart attacks (and 73 wives)--to blather on about the wondorous medicinal benefits of Garlique brand garlic tablets. ("Now, odorless," he'd rasped.) But, as so often happens with medical news, I remember reading a while back that garlic's benefits for the heart were grossly overstated and that, unfortunately, all it gave you was bad fucking breath.

Ahhhh, but the taste. A little bite here and a little bite there and you'd be crying to you Great-Granny in Hebben that life couldn't be so good. And! You could burp it up later! Sah-weeeet!

Have you ever roasted individual cloves of garlic in olive oil and then spread the substance on some toasted bread? Oh, but you must!

If Post or Kellog's or General Mills had a garlic-flavored breakfast cereal...I wouldn't eat it. But! I would be tempted.

In fact, the only bad feeling I have about garlic isn't even really garlic's fault. This distaste--pun definitely intended--for garlic comes from when I was working at Hungry Howie's Pizza, some eight or nine years ago. This dude--we called him the "Garlic Man"--used to come in after he got off work about three times a week, and he would walk in, his greasy dark brown hair slicked over, his blue work jacket sporting his stenciled name, and he would say to us, "Give me the regular." The "regular" was a medium pizza, "heavy on the pepperoni and heavy on the cheese," with double garlic-butter-cheese crust and garlic powder sprinkled over the top of the pizza, before and after the cooking. Now, basically, what the guy ordered was a three-topping medium pizza (double pepperoni and extra cheese). The then-actual price for a three-topping pizza is lost in the dusty vaults of my mind, but a ballpark figure would be around eleven dollars. When I first started managing there, when I first met the Garlic man, I quoted him the regular price and he kind of chuckled and scanned around the back of the store and said something like, "Well, Eva always gives it to me for five dollars." (Eva was the other manager and, no, the irony was not, and is not, lost on me. Adam and Eva...LOL. LMFAO. Haha! In the Garden of Howie! HAHA!)

Anyway, I stared at him and said, "Yeah, but...."

"And make sure there's a good amount of cheese and pepperoni on there, will ya?"

I sighed. Fuggit. I wasn't making enough to give a damn. "Fine. $5.30, please."

"Oh," he said, jamming his hand into his pocket looking for the nonexistent thirty cents tax. "Eva usually just rings it up for five."

Who was this guy? And who the hell did he think he was? "Fine. Five dollars."

I turned to the prep table and he leaned over the counter, grinning crookedly, a round-bellied forty-something, regaling in the fact that he was "sticking it" to the man. "And go over that pizza twice with that powder of yours. Make it really garlic-y. I love my garlic."

Fuck you, Garlic Man. How 'bout I shove this plastic garlic powder dispenser up your fucking ass, motherfucker? I grinned. "No problem, man."

So, anyway, he would come in about three days a week and get his six-dollar-reduced 'za and--always!--say, "And make sure you get that good and garlic-y."

I'm about to pour this whole motherfucking bottle.... Grin. "Okay. No problem."

And, but, in the end, we became good friends and I visited his mother's wake and he sent me Christmas cards and I named a corner of my refrigerator for him and his wife cooked me Garlic Pineapple Mushroom Cheese Bake--don't knock it till you've tried it--and, one year, he knitted me a woolen scarf when I'd had the late-Winter flu.

No. Actually, none of that happened. All that happened is that my passive-aggressive nature became more engorged each time he came in and smarmily asked for "the regular"--grittttting my teeth more and more--until, one day...nothing. I found another job.

Not because of the Garlic Man, you see, but because I just--well...I just found another job.

Whew! Thank God I got that off my chest!

Now go eat some garlic.

And listen not to Larry King. Because he is a blowhard who would not know a good interview if it...snapped up and latched onto his package.