We may have a serious problem.

In college, I was obsessed with these frozen chicken cordon bleu thingees.  Practically every other night, my roommate Joe and I would throw two in the toaster oven, cook up a big ass bag of rice, break out the Country Crock, and go to town on our little meal.  Senior year, before I started seducing an adorable little sophomore with a meal plan, this is what I ate every other night.

(To be fair, it was a relationship based in utility for both people: I used her for a couple of sandwiches a week from the cafeteria, she used me for 40 cans of Natty Light every weekend for her roommates.  The hooking up part was inconsequential and could be described by both of us as "Eh.")

Even after I met the girl with the meal plan, I still cooked up these chicken cordon bleus.  They were delicious: breaded chicken, oozing with cheese and ham, everything about them totally artificial (which translates to "totally good" in my book).  They were easy to make, cheap, filling, and tasted good.  In short, I was falling in love with them.  We were going to be happy for a long, long time.

Then one day, shortly after Joe and I dined on the cordon bleus, I got violently ill.  I was sitting in our common room, watching a college basketball game, when something exploded inside my belly.  I ran to the bathroom and violently threw up.  I spent the next few hours there, laying on the bathroom floor (a bathroom floor shared by three seniors in college – yikes).  I threw up a few more times and spent the next two days looking pale and with a major pain in my stomach.  Physically, I would recover.  Emotionally, I would not.  Knowing that the cause of my illness was the chicken cordon bleu, I gave them up then and there.  After being so badly burned by something I trusted and loved so much, I wouldn’t allow myself to be betrayed again. 

(To make matters worse, my relationship with the sophomore went downhill shortly thereafter, leaving me without food-less and makeout-less.  Not a good time for me.)

To this day, almost six years later, I still haven’t eaten one of the chicken cordon bleus.  Every once in a while I will see them in my grocer’s freezer, we’ll look at each other, and I’ll feel that pang of nostalgia and regret – and not a small amount of affection.  I may even open the door to the freezer to reach in to touch them.  But invariably, I end up walking away, alone.  It is not easy for me to forgive and forget.

But I have adjusted, moved on, and met new and exciting foods to love.  Among them is the carrot cake at Dean & Deluca.  This carrot cake is breathtaking.  I mean that literally – when I eat it, I have trouble breathing.  I focus solely on how good the carrot cake is that I forget to inhale and exhale.  Then I choke and cough and crumbs of carrot cake shoot out of my mouth.  It’s embarrassing, but it’s absolutely worth it.  If you love carrot cake and have not had the carrot cake from Dean & DeLuca, you do not love carrot cake.  You love garbage and your life is incomplete.

I’ve been feeling kinda down because I’m turning 28 next week.  Though I’m successful in terms of loving luxury and owning luxurious things (books of poems, decanters, a cleaning lady, fine sheets, etc) and participating/running various drinking tours and wine drinking competitions all over the country, I still feel unfulfilled.  Sure, maybe this is because the highlight of my summer will occur on Saturday night when I get so drunk that I (hopefully) shit myself, but I’m not a psychiatrist.  So whatever.

Yesterday, with the general anxiety of my birthday hanging over me and after an especially crappy day at work, I decided that I would get some air and walk from my office to my local Dean & DeLuca to get a carrot cake.  If there’s one thing I learned from growing up fat and in a broken home, food is love.  And if food is love, this carrot cake is rapture.

So I walked and sweated my way through the rush hour streets of Lower Manhattan, slogging through the 90° heat and 90% humidity, up through Chinatown, into Soho, and finally to Dean & DeLuca.  The carrot cakes come in two sizes, small ($9, four slices) and large ($20, eight slices).  When I looked into the glass case, I saw that they were sold out of the small ones, so I had to get a large.  Man, I was pissed I had to get a large one [sarcasm].  I mean, what I am going to do with a whole, large, giant, delicious carrot cake [more sarcasm]?  Also, I think Dominicans are wonderful people [even more sarcasm] and am totally not afraid when they ride in the same subway car as me [extreme, extreme sarcasm].  By the way, I would never make out with a dude [sarcasm meter exploding].

I grabbed a quart of milk to enjoy with my carrot cake and was shortly on my way home.  When I got back to my apartment, I cut the carrot cake into sixths and ate a monster-sized slice.  It was, as usual, incredible.  After I was finished, I spent the next thirty minutes breathing heavily and making ga-ga noises in my oppressively hot apartment (also, I wasn’t wearing a shirt).  My name is Jason Mulgrew, I’m 28 years old, and I had a giant piece of carrot cake for dinner while not wearing a shirt.  And yes, I am single.   

This morning for breakfast, I had another giant piece of carrot cake (seriously – totally available, ladies).  I again had a tall glass of milk with the cake, so there I sat, watching Sportscenter, eating carrot cake, drinking my milk, having a great time getting ready for work.  When I finished, I went about my morning routine and got ready for work.  It was when I had put my gym bag around my shoulders and turned off my kitchen light that it hit me.

Something exploded inside my belly.  My mouth started salivating and boom – before I knew it, I was doubled over the toilet, dressed in work clothes, puking.  It wasn’t exactly one of those "I’m crying and I need my mom" pukes, but it was still a mighty one.  Short, but thorough, it was a bout of vomiting that demanded respect. 

But again, worse than the physical pain was the emotional trauma of the vomiting.  I had eaten nothing in the previous sixteen hours aside from carrot cake, milk and water.  Therefore, one of these had to have made me sick.  The thought of it being the carrot cake nearly caused me to faint.

God, I hope it wasn’t the carrot cake.  Losing the chicken cordon bleus was hard enough, but I was much younger than and had much less at stake.  I’m older now and realize I don’t have much time for games.  To have to cut this carrot cake out of my life might be the end of me.  I’m not even prepared to consider this.

My hope is that it was the milk that made me sick.  What I didn’t mention is that I bought the milk not from a closed-door refrigerator in Dean & DeLuca, but from a dairy case.  When I grabbed the milk, the first one in the line, it was covered in condensation (remember, it was extremely hot and humid in NYC yesterday).  By the time I had walked back to my apartment, cut the cake, and was drinking the milk, it was only slightly cooler than room temperature.  Under any other circumstances, I would have dumped the milk out or at least put it in the fridge to cool some more, but I was so hard for that carrot cake that I needed to have it right away.  This morning, after a night in my fridge, I didn’t notice anything strange about the milk, but again, this carrot cake has a strangely intoxicating effect.  I could have been drinking antifreeze and would not have noticed the difference.

But tonight will be the true test.  I plan on having the carrot cake again for dinner, but this time with a new milk (and maybe I’ll wear a shirt this time ’round – it’s raining out, so it should be a little cooler).  If I don’t get sick or experience any discomfort, all will be right with the world.  But if I wind up puking in my work clothes again…this will be the worst birthday ever.  Pray for me.