He Who is Without Sin...

I met an old lover the other night. I hadn’t seen Hostess Twinkie in years. I know that it has been at least since I’ve gotten married, probably longer. I had run into her occasionally, mostly at gas stations, a couple of times at the grocery store, but neither of us ever said anything. Neither of us acknowledged the history between us.

Why would a happily married man go out and indulge in confectionary? It was a mistake. But I was feeling bad about myself; about looking for work and not finding it. I admit that I went out cruising for comfort food. I’m not proud of what I did, but I did it and I’m owning up to it.

When I was younger, Twinkie and I were great together. She was at all my birthday parties. She met my parents and grandparents. I tried to see her as much as I could, in fact I couldn’t get enough of her. We made each other happy. But a man has to grow up. I knew we couldn’t last. It just wasn’t meant to be. A man can’t take that much sweetness all the time. A man needs salty, bitter, and spicy. I had needs that Twink just couldn’t meet. So one tearful night, we went our separate ways with only our sweet, sweet memories.

It was at the corner Shell Station that I saw her. She looked exactly the same as she did in my memory. I mean exactly. She hadn’t changed a bit. She wore the same wrapper and still had the same cowboy tattoo. I could even tell she sat on the same while cardboard square. Looking back, I realize that on some level, I may have even wanted to run into her, to make something happen between the two of us.

And I’m not going to lie. It was great, over 700 calories in four cream-filled yellow cakes. But afterwards, as I cleaned up wrappers and cardboard, I felt guilty and bloated. What had I done? How could I have done this to my wife? She occasional sees Reeses Peanutbutter Cup, but she assures me their relationship is purely platonic, nothing like this. When she found me trying to wash away my transgression with glass after glass of milk she demanded to know what I had done. I explained what had happened, that I was sorry and that it would never happen again. She was understandably upset, but she insisted that we could work this out together.

So we started culinary couples therapy on Monday. I admitted that some of my Twinkie problems go all they way back to childhood, how I never got enough sugar as a kid. Plus, Caryn agreed that she had been comparing me to her old boyfriend, Diet Coke. He is a great guy and my friend too, but our therapist, Mrs. Fields, says we need to accept one another as we are: a mixture of sweet, sour, and spicy. Just what we really need.