Prick of the Spindle: Nonfiction: Stronghold: The Burrito

Crossing the border into Texas is an exciting thing. It’s exciting for about half a minute: the time it takes the “Welcome to Texas” sign to pass from the front of your car to the rearview mirror. The scenery changes just a little, adding more vegetation and a few low Mesquite trees to your view. But once the thought of being out of New Mexico settles comfortably in your mind, like a blanket of dust on old library books, you get bored again. There are still 70 miles until Amarillo.

But once Amarillo comes upon you, you are never the same. You’ve spent days and days wandering through the deserts of the Southwest, with a dozen little hamlets that barely catch your attention and Albuquerque, which you just rush on through as fast as the wind can carry you. Then, over the horizon, about 20 miles off, you see the lights of Amarillo lighting the sky, drawing a line that the brightest stars cannot cross. The freeway runs like a river into a vast surrounding display of what can only be called civilization.

The Big Texan bragged on billboards for hundreds in miles in every direction that it was the home of the “free” 72 ounce steak. Yes, it is free, so long as you eat the steak and all the fixins in under an hour (it is dressed with a full baked potato, shrimp cocktail, green salad, and, presumably, an entire hog). It is a feat that has been accomplished, purportedly, by people ranging from 12 to 85 and has, from time to time, been accomplished in stunningly short amounts of time. There was one dude—a professional wrestler in the 1960s—who ate two of them in an hour. Take a moment out of your day to imagine the look and smell of a wood-fired steak that is four and a half pounds. Imagine sitting down next to it, taking in the bouquet, picking up the small fork and knife, and starting off on a culinary journey of epic proportions. And then imagine doing it again. What. The. Crap.

We passed the Big Texan, just one exit up from where we had to turn to get to the KOA. A massively kitschy cowboy stands out front, announcing the restaurant and bragging just a bit about his Texan heritage. And despite the fact that it was Father’s Day, the place didn’t look like it was bursting forth with people.

Her face adopted a stern expression. “You’re not eating that. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”

“You’d only be embarrassed if I can’t eat it. I know that I can,” I reasoned.

“There’s no way in hell that you’re going to ruin my honeymoon by eating that much steak.”

While her argument seemed—at the time—oxymoronic, I could see that by the way she invoked “ruin the honeymoon,” there was no way I was going to push any further. But still. Our minds were made up; we parked it and moseyed into the restaurant.

I admired the menu, soldered onto a slab of wood, knowing I‘d finally settle for the 15 ounce rib eye. Even though I didn’t want to come across as whipped, it was a foregone conclusion that a honeymoon was no place to really try and eat a gigantic steak. Walking away from the object of every glutton-watcher’s glee wasn’t the right and proper way to adjourn to a romantic evening with one’s wife of only a few days. It was, in fact, a classless notion that just happened to be rather hard to come to grips with.

There was a time in my life when I was game for such things. One might think this time in my life shameful, but, to be honest, I’m quite open with it, you will kindly note. It was college, and while many of my compatriots happily adopted the sins of drinking, drugs, or rampant sex, I embraced overeating.

We had this friend. He was the roommate of a pre-existing friend and, for whatever reason, he had plenty of money and enjoyed paying people—in the form of a bet—to entertain others with acts of public foolery. He would bet you, for example, that you couldn’t eat 24 saltines without taking a drink in the middle. While this was something that you could do, you would openly hate the endeavor and make a right ass of yourself earning the twenty bucks that he bet you. One of the best parts of his bets was that they weren’t bets proper; he didn’t make you put up the money that he was putting up. He wasn’t interested in winning, only in the sport of it. This made everything in good fun for everyone. He once bet me that I couldn’t eat a gallon of ice cream by myself, and, when that turned out to be true, my only punishment was to put the rest of the ice cream on my head and walk to the beach across the street where I could wash off. This was agreeable terms to everyone on the beach, as well as to my friend.

We had just finished working on a video project together for my brother’s filmmaking class and about seven of us were celebrating at a taco shop across the street from the college. There is, by the way, nothing in this world quite so wonderful as a taco shop in San Diego. This particular taco shop had wonderful carne asada burritos, as did they all. But this one sold a large version of the carne asada, called, not inconspicuously, The Fat Boy.

“I’ll buy it and I’ll pay you one hundred dollars if you can finish it in a half hour.”

The Fat Boy was a carne asada burrito with all of the trimmings. Besides the steak, it had pico de gallo, cheese, lettuce, rice, beans, and guacamole. It was made with three large tortillas, all working together to make a burrito 27 inches long. Its girth hung off of the tray on which it was served on both ends. And it smelled terrific. Besides the seven people who we knew, the five or six others in the restaurant joined in and ooed and ahhed when it was delivered to our table.

I started eating. It tasted really great. Who wouldn’t want to eat so much of such a good burrito?

Twenty minutes passed and I was only six inches into The Fat Boy, and getting really full.

“Sorry man,” I said. “I can pay you back for the burrito. It’s not gonna happen.”

Now we were talking. I knew that if I dragged it out a little, I could earn much more than a hundred for it. “Okay, I’ll give it a try.”

And try I did. For the first time in front of him, I ate in earnest. I knew that I had a real eating problem because I ate differently in front of people from when I was by myself. If I went with my brother and a friend or two to Jack-in-the-Box, I’d order a value meal, right? Like a burger and fries and a coke. Big deal. But when I was by myself, I’d order several items together, all from the 99 cent menu: a Jumbo Jack, a chicken sandwich, two tacos, and onion rings with a large coke. And I would make time just about every other day to stop in at The Box before or after walking to school (it was probably the two-mile walk to school that saved my ass from a heart attack, come to think of it).

So I unleashed the caged beast within me and started making a fool out of The Fat Boy. I got Brian to refill my Pepsi, I got my brother to run up and get a couple cups of hot sauce. I asked for a side of chips and guac. Cheers went up and the restaurant-goers gathered around to see what all the hubbub was about. Those that came in late were regaled with stories about how large the burrito had started out and how I had played my cards to bait Brian into a bigger payoff.

All the while, Brian was excited, but not worried. Fifteen minutes in, he said, “You can’t do it. I’m so sure you can’t do it, I’ll put up a thousand bucks!”

It was just what I needed to keep going. My determination was so obvious that another crowd-rallying cheer was sent up. Bite after bite, I would make it through the last sixteen inches of it; I had to. I had never had anything close to a thousand dollars before.

There were fifteen minutes left, and still eight inches to go. I felt like shit. The burrito, once a wonderful masterpiece, now tasted like dirt. The chips and guac sat mostly uneaten, my showboating obvious.

“What do you need to finish this?” Brian yelled at me. “What’s it gonna take, Stronghold?”

“The Cannon XL-1!” my brother yelled out. The XL-1 was the newest mini-DV camcorder on the market at the time and cost around five grand, when you could find it. It was broadcast quality (ESPN was using for basketball!) and we knew that our lack of one was the only thing stopping us from international fame and fortune. With it, we would be superstars, we just knew.

“Dude,” my brother yelled when there were five minutes left. “You gotta tell us the rules. Does he have to have it down or does he have to have it in his mouth?”

Brian thought about this, but he might as well not have, since he wanted to see the same madness my brother was looking for. “He has to have it in his mouth by the time limit, but he has to eat it all for it to count.”

“You hear that bro!” my brother yelled (everyone was yelling at me, as if I was deep in a gorge, climbing gear failing me, and they were motivating me to get the hell up the mountain before the molten lava took me). “You just have to get it in your mouth! Do it, damn you, do it!”

Shove. I started to shove the last five inches of burrito into my mouth. The entire room erupted in cheer. People were jumping up and down, hitting each other on the back, asking me to sign their take-out menus. Riding the wave of the crowd as if on a boogie board during el Niño, I got the whole of the remaining burrito into my mouth and feebly started to chew.

I was close, folks. I was really close. I’ve never been closer to winning the lottery or to getting on a game show or anything else in this life that can grant such a humble man, living so poorly, such a windfall. For what it’s worth, my brother and I really and truly believed that getting the XL-1 would change our lives. We really did. This was going to be the dawn of a new era for us, like having all debts paid off sounds to me now. It was going to be terrific.

But it was all just a dream. While trying to chew and swallow the mouthful of rice, beans, meat, lettuce, tomato, onion, tortilla, and God knows what else, my body took over. I had had to open up my throat to fit it all in. The plan was to somehow chew the food in the front and then switch its place with the food in the back. My body, sensing real and terrible danger, stopped me from going any further. And there, right in front of the only crowd that I’ve ever truly pleased with genius and unique entertainment all my own, my throat pushed the excess food out, and from there, the mouth cooperated and it all ended up on the red plastic tray, right in the middle of the climax of the crowd’s adulations.

There was disbelief. There was heartache. There was cheering and moaning and a general chaos. I coughed, complained, and took a long drag of Pepsi. I couldn’t look in my brother’s eyes. By now, many of the cooks from the back who had been watching, put their sunglasses back on and went back to work. People who had walked in from the streets grabbed their skateboards and headed back out the door. People who had long since finished their food gave me a pat on the back, cleared their tray, and headed back to apartments and dorm rooms to study for the next day’s exams. The press was notified to get back to work on more pressing stories.

I walked outside and, in the flower bed, quietly puked. My brother was there, slapping my back as if to help it come out more cleanly.

It was a Sunday night, now, and people had to be going. The glory had died away and now everyone wondered what the big deal was, anyway. Someone had cleared my tray for me, and my brother got me a refill on my Pepsi for the ride home.

That night, I swear this to you on everything I love, I dreamed of nothing but burritos. I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed and they were all terrible nightmares. As the rice and beans expanded in my stomach, I would wake and rush to the toilet to throw up and heave and throw up again. Around three in the morning or so, my mild-mannered roommate, who wasn’t at the gathering of the century, came downstairs to see me. He had heard about the burrito adventure through the grapevine while at his study group. He had taken two sleeping pills when he heard about the big guy from State who tried to eat The Fat Boy for five grand. But it was no use, he told me, the sound of my puking had kept him up all night and could I please stop?

William B. Stronghold is a writer living in Michigan. He has written extensively for The Fresno Weekly Arts and Entertainment section and has recently penned a book-length work about his travels wondering the country with his wife, Charlotte. He enjoys giving readings from his unpublished manuscript, "Travels with Charlie" whenever there are enough people around to listen. He keeps a blog devoted to the critical analysis of daily life at www.willstronghold.com.