~~~Lara Zielin~~~

I hide my weakness well. I’m functional. I have a loving husband. A beautiful home. Fabulous hair and makeup if I do say so myself. But I confess I have a fountain pop addiction. It bubbles up inside me almost constantly.

It started off innocently enough. My husband and I would get Big Gulps at 7-Eleven and giggle at the sheer volume of beverage in our hands. We’d carry our plastic cups past the Funyons and Bud Light, tickled that we could have this much fun with something that made us pee almost constantly.

Right away I wanted another. Then another. I’d sneak back to 7-Eleven, watch the brown syrup foam out of the dispenser next to the crystal carbonation and I’d think, this is it. I don’t need anything else. That sweet, sweet Aspartame would hit my throat and I’d close my eyes and know what chemical heaven tasted like.

Soon, I was asking my husband to run out and get Big Gulps for me at all hours, day or night. I started craving them at work. I’d lose focus in meetings. The end of the fiscal Big Gulp? You need your carbonated beverage collated?

At work, I started wandering out over my lunch hour in search of the biggest super-sized drink I could find, and I’d come back to my office in a carbonated stupor. It wasn’t a Big Gulp, but it did the job. Crack is whack, but you still use it if you gots to.

I tried to wean myself by drinking diet soda from a can, but it was like swigging mountain- goat gin. I don’t even know what mountain-goat gin is, but I swear to god that’s what it was like.

This month, instead of buying the book for book club, I bought a fountain drink. I sucked on it at Borders while I sat in their cafe and read the book I was supposed to have bought. I sucked on my pop teat until the straw made noises and the manager came over and asked me to please buy a coffee or something from the cafe if I was going to sit there and read their books for free and not pay for them, this wasn’t a library after all. I just looked at him. I couldn’t afford a coffee. I had spent all my money on fountain pop.

7-Eleven used to take only cash, but they recently had a credit card machine installed. There is no minimum amount required for purchase. That means that when my husband opens this month’s MasterCard statement, he will see 196 instances of $2.33. All from 7-Eleven. Oh, and there’s one for $4.67 because one time I really wanted a jumbo sized Tootsie Roll to go with my soda.

My teeth hurt.

Please don’t judge me. I can’t help what I am. I am no monster. I’m just someone who is choosing to spend their free time and money with their best friend who happens to be carbonated. And delicious.

I can’t type for much longer. The tunnel vision is setting in, and my hands are startinggg to sshake. I nnnneed the next fiix. I hope I fiind it soon.

**  Names and places have been changed to protect the identity of people who may or may not have a problem with pop. This is a work of fiction. Mostly.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 at 8:49 pm and is filed under looks like life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.