Agorafabulous!

by Sara Benincasa

  Basil Bandwagon was the locally owned organic and natural foods store. It had opened nearly a decade before, but in 2002 Flemington was just beginning to wake up to the organic food movement. We were proud that the state had preserved some of our local farmland from developers, though McMansions continued to mushroom up all over our county. Farm stands were a frequent sight along the country roads that wound through the valley and up into the low, ancient mountains. But we didn’t have what you might call a political food movement like the one you see today. If you wanted to see a big fancy organic foods store, you went to Wild Oats in Princeton or the brand-new Whole Foods shop in Manhattan. In Boston, we’d had Bread and Circus. But Flemington wasn’t cosmopolitan like those places. Basil Bandwagon was still an anomaly, and most folks got their groceries at ShopRite.

  We walked in and immediately inhaled the unfamiliar aroma of fresh, healthy food. Basil Bandwagon was the only place in town whose “deli” counter hawked lentil loaf, tofu with brown rice, gluten-free macaroni and cheese, quinoa with cranberries, and organic kosher matzoh ball soup. There was an entire aisle devoted to bottles of magical supplements that went way beyond the alphabetical vitamins. They sold odorless garlic capsules, wheatgrass tablets, echinacea pills, and some refrigerated bottles labeled FLAXSEED OIL and ACIDOPHILUS. They stocked powders and extracts of astralagus, eyebright, horny goat weed (I giggled out loud), dong quai (I giggled out loud again), reishi mushroom, calendula, milk thistle, feverfew, açai berry, skullcap, marshmallow root (sounded awesome), motherwort (sounded gross), and about seventy other things that sounded as if they ought to go into a good witch’s brew.

  I bought bananas and peanut butter. They were both organic, and I’m fairly certain the peanut butter was made by members of a back-to-earth Christian hippie cult. It was the type that separates naturally when it is in the jar, so it contains mostly a heap of peanut butter topped with half an inch of translucent oil. I’d never seen peanut butter like that before, but I’d read about it in Oprah’s magazine.

  Once home, I set about creating the kind of alchemical culinary masterpiece I’d witnessed on that infomercial: ice, bananas, skim milk, peanut butter. My father walked in as I was adding the latter. He started to laugh.

  “What in the hell is that, Ra?” he said, pointing to the peanut butter jar. I turned it toward him so he could read the label. His expression of amusement changed to one of utter horror.

  “You can’t eat that!” he exclaimed. “It’s gone bad.”

  “No, that’s how real peanut butter is supposed to look, Dad,” I said airily. “Your Skippy is full of artificial ingredients and it’s going to give you Type II diabetes. Mine is natural.”

  “It looks horrible. How does it taste?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m sure it’s fantastic. There’s no added sugar.”

  “So it’s just . . . peanuts and oil?”

  “It is just peanuts. Organic peanuts, from an organic peanut farm.”

  My father shuddered. “I think I’ll stick with my Skippy.”

  He left me to my rudimentary cooking.

  My first attempt at a smoothie was unsuccessful. There are a lot of reasons I could cite, but the primary one is that I didn’t put the lid on the blender before turning it on. This resulted in a lacto-peanut-banana splatter show that resembled certain moments in the worst porn I’ve ever viewed. It took me a full hour to clean the wall, the counter, the rarely touched cookbooks on the nearby shelf, the kitchen telephone, the cabinetry, and the floor.

  My second attempt went far better. I cautiously dipped a spoon into the mixture and sampled it. It tasted like a milkshake, but healthier. I poured myself a glass, sat down at the kitchen table, and toasted my own creativity. I downed it quickly, surprised at how hungry I suddenly was. I poured another glass and stuck a straw in it, slurping it up with all the delight of a (very simple) child. When I was done, I felt sated for the first time in a long time. It didn’t even occur to me that I’d eaten real food, with real calories, real vitamins, real minerals, real fats, real proteins, real sugars, and real nutrition. If you could drink it, I thought, it wasn’t food.

  After I cleaned up my second, far less spectacular mess, I scanned the cookbooks. Mom had an ancient Betty Crocker tome, a few pretty gift cookbooks with photos of food no human would actually have time to make, and then some old healthy cookbook my Aunt Diane in San Francisco had sent my parents years ago. Unlike the other cookbooks, it was an oversize paperback that looked as if it had been stitched together by tiny, hemp-scented elves. It was filled with beautiful line drawings, and it had hardly any recipes with meat. It did, however, have an entire section full of “health drinks.” I began making a shopping list.

  The next day, we returned to Basil Bandwagon. I left the store with recycled paper bags full of avocados, lemons, pure pineapple juice, wheat germ, flaxseed oil, unsweetened cranberry juice, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, more bananas, and plain fat-free yogurt with live “good” bacteria that had come from the milk of cows who did yoga or something. My mother cringed and paid $8 for a bag of crushed ice made from thrice-distilled spring water that burbled up at the base of some sacred mountain in upstate New York. I guess when you’re glad that your daughter has decided to obsess over fruit instead of suicide, you’ll spend big bucks on some Ulster County hippie’s frozen tap water.

  I experimented a lot over the next few weeks, and I learned a few important things. I’m pleased to share them with you now in a helpful list form. If you are recovering from a nervous breakdown or an eating disorder or just a bad day at tennis camp, these pieces of hard-won wisdom may inspire you.

  1. Wheat germ makes you poop. A lot.

  2. So does fruit.

  3. Fruits are awesome for you and they’re full of natural sugars. Natural sugars are way better than nasty-ass chemically processed sugars like the popular white stuff, but they’re still sugars. So if you’re susceptible to yeast infections, make sure you’re not just eating fruit all day long for like two weeks. Which leads me to the following tip.

  4. Unsweetened cranberry juice tastes like ass when you first try it. Also when you try it the second time, and the third time. But it’s great at helping you avoid or clear up UTIs or yeast infections. It makes your piss crazy acidic, I guess. I don’t know. I’m a comedian, not a doctor or a nutritionist. Anyway, it’s good to have a bottle on hand just in case. But make sure it’s 100 percent cranberry juice, not some bullshit cocktail from Ocean Spray.

  5. If you add lemon juice to milk, it fucks the milk up real bad.

  When you’re building your smoothie, always put the ice in first. In order to go easy on your blender, make sure the cubes are small. You can also wrap a bunch of ice cubes lightly in a towel and then smash the shit out of it with a hammer and then put the crushed-up bits into the blender. This is also a great way to get out aggression and/or feelings of self-loathing!

  After the ice, put your solids in. Again, make sure they’re of a manageable size for your blender. And finally, add your liquid. Remember that the blender will kick everything up, so don’t overfill the container. If you want a denser, chunkier smoothie, use less liquid.

  Once you’ve got it all in there, pop the lid on and hold it down with your hand. It’s tempting to think you can let that fucker do its thing alone, but I’ve been traumatized too many times by blender explosions (yes, even when I actually remembered to put the lid on).

  I put together a few recipes of my very own. As you’ll see, they’re clearly too terrible for me to have stolen them from anywhere. Also, they don’t use actual measurements. Feel free to use them and experience the magic of smooshed-up food for yourself. Think of me each time you tip a glass of delicious mush.

  Lazy-Ass Lassi

  Organic plain or vanilla nonfat yogurt with that good bacteria

  Organic mango chunks (fresh or frozen)

  Celtic sea salt

  Ice

  Instructions: Whir this shit up until it
reaches sufficient levels of subcontinental Asian-tinged awesomeness. Feel free to break out in choreographed dance moves whilst singing at a super-high pitch. (Racism!)

  Citricidal Tendencies

  Organic orange juice

  Organic pineapple chunks (fresh or frozen)

  Organic lemon juice

  Organic clementine segments (sans seeds, duh)

  Organic lime juice

  Whatever other citrus fruits you can find

  Ice

  Instructions: You know, blend it. This one has lots of vitamin C. You may be a depressed anorexic dancing on the edge of sanity, but at least you’ll never develop scurvy.

  The Sexy Mexican

  Organic fresh tomato juice

  Organic lime juice

  Organic avocado chunks

  Organic cilantro

  Celtic sea salt

  Instructions: Vroom, vroom, vroom. Puree the shit out of this liquid guacamole-like concoction. Did you know that avocado is a reputed aphrodisiac? Well, it is, you slut. This tasty concoction may just inspire you to lovingly fellate one of our kindly brethren from south of the border. Surprise! He’s probably uncircumcised. I try to avoid fucking foreigners for exactly this reason.

  Of note: You can substitute almond milk or rice milk for cow’s milk in any smoothie recipe (not just my brilliant ones). Don’t use soy milk. That shit is usually packed with weird, gross chemicals and tastes like the inside of a hamster’s asshole. I mean, probably. That’s probably what the inside of a hamster’s asshole tastes like.

  I invented these and other fine culinary delights every day in my parents’ kitchen on their marble-top counter. It was the fanciest thing in the house. I liked to look at its swirling, irregular pattern every night when I set out the fruits, the cutting board, the knife, and the blender for the next morning. Knowing I had a new smoothie adventure on deck for the next morning gave me a reason to look forward to waking up.

  The strange thing was that as I drank more of these liquid concoctions, I got my taste back for their solid counterparts. Soon enough, it was easy to down a peanut butter sandwich (with all-natural, organic, five-grain, sprouted bread from Basil Bandwagon, of course) accompanied by a glass of (all-natural, organic, free-range, grass-fed, reiki-treated, shiatsu-massaged) skim milk. I learned that you could spread ripe avocado on that same toast, then top it off with a (local organic heirloom) tomato, and the whole thing was pretty delicious. Every day brought a tasty new discovery, or a happy rediscovery. My efforts were tentative, but promising. Because I took tiny bites and chewed so cautiously, I savored my food in a way I never had time to do before.

  “Food is actually pretty fucking awesome,” I told Dr. Morrison.

  “Most people seem to enjoy it,” he replied. “The Prozac is helping, then?”

  I leaned forward. “Totally. Sometimes I put it in my smoothie. It adds this really interesting texture. Peanut butter, milk, bananas, and emotional well-being.”

  He blinked.

  “I’m just fucking with you,” I said.

  He actually laughed at that one. I really liked the way it sounded. His laughter was near-tangible proof that I’d said and done something right in that moment. For a moment, I felt all warm and glowy inside. I decided I could get used to that kind of feeling.

  Then he asked, “So how is the driving coming along?”

  “Driving?” I repeated. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

  “You sound like you’re doing pretty well. Have you thought about just practicing driving around your neighborhood?”

  On to the next adventure.

  Chapter Six

  Om Mani Padme Fuck You

  While I was learning to eat solid foods and shit in a toilet and drive a car again, I read a lot of Zentastic, organic, free-range, fair-trade, sustainable, sage-scented self-help books, most of which were designed for postmenopausal ex-hippies with a fondness for moon worship and natural-fiber clothing. I wasn’t rich enough to follow my dream of living among noble brown stereotypes, which is why this book isn’t called Eat, Pray, Love. I just read books that similarly co-opted other people’s cultural traditions and repackaged them with a neat, lily-white bow on top. I called this “spirituality.”

  My foray into the crunchier realm was not entirely without precedent. Flemington is about twenty minutes away from a lovely little riverside gay enclave called New Hope, across the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. When I was in junior high, I began spending free Saturdays and evenings there, taking in poetry readings and organic, locally sourced, artisanal snacks with equal reverence. After my mom dropped me off, secure in the knowledge that no adult male in that town had any designs on a young teen of the girl persuasion, I could get homemade rose petal ice cream at Gerenser’s (it tasted like perfume, but it sure was more interesting than a cone from the Carvel back home) and walk right down the street to the two competing witch-supply stores. One was called Gypsy Heaven and was run by an actual witch with a shock of wild blond Stevie Nicks hair. The other was called the New Hope Magick Shoppe and offered tarot readings by an elderly, chain-smoking devout Catholic named Irene who taught catechism when she wasn’t unspooling the mysteries of the Major Arcana.

  Fresh from my Confirmation as a Roman Catholic adult, I saw no contradiction between what I learned in church and what I learned from the woman with the cards. Catholicism is steeped in mysticism, magic, and ritual anyway. And there was nothing in the cards to discourage my belief in the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the inherent evil of putting it in the butt. I figured Irene and I were safe from hellfire.

  When I was thirteen, I loved nothing more than to scarf down my ice cream cone inside or just outside one of the witch stores (Irene didn’t care if you brought your food inside, but Stevie Nicks wouldn’t have it) and breathe in that mystical smell of Nag Champa incense, patchouli oil, and body odor. These stores stocked spell books, tarot cards, mini-gargoyles (to keep the bad vibes away), gemstones that could heal your physical and psychic illnesses, white sage smudge sticks to purify your home, and handmade candles that came with instructions for making wishes and visualizing one’s ideal future. Stevie Nicks made her own magic(k)al herb blends that you could burn to attract love, calm an unruly pet, invite prosperity, and ease menstrual cramps. There was also a Wild Womyn Mooncycle Journal designed to help the fertile human goddess chart her sacred ovum’s monthly journey.

  Pantheistic earth hippies are obsessed with menstruation. A few years ago, my big gay bear friend Alan told me about some queer spring musical jamboree/fuckfest he attended on an organic farm in the hills of Tennessee to celebrate Beltane, May first. Before they could erect their giant maypole, there was a preparation ceremony. Alan, who was tripping on acid, can’t remember exactly what the rationale behind all this was. Mostly he just remembers the intense, all-consuming fear that enveloped him when some of the organizers dug a hole for the pole. As he watched in horror, a couple of floppy-titted women took turns squatting over it and menstruating. After that, dudes were invited to jerk off into it. This happened during a sacred drum circle, of course. Only after the various effluvia had settled into the hole were the hippies ready to plant the giant ribbon pole in the ground. Everyone wondered why Alan stayed in his tent for the next two days.

  Sadly, I’ve yet to attain that particular level of enlightenment. But when I was in junior high, I sometimes knelt and prayed in front of a little altar in my room, burning a blue candle (for masculine energy) and a pink candle (for feminine energy) while envisioning straight As and a really awesome date to the next dance.

  When I entered Emerson College, I found myself with a pagan roommate. She told me ooky-spooky stories about passing an invisible ball of energy around with her friends, which I would later discover was a common beginner’s level improv comedy game. This makes perfect sense, because Wicca and improv comedy are both packed with dorks who like to play pretend when they really ought to be learning a trade. Anyway, she was really nice and she encourage
d me to read up on astrology, which I found at least as believable as the Catholic stuff I was beginning to disdain.

  Emerson wasn’t generally the sort of place where one worshipped any goddess other than Fame (and I’m pretty sure Fame might be a sparkly, glittery, fabulous he-god). Once again, my hippie inclinations fell by the wayside as I got caught up in more worldly pursuits, like finding a boy to date who preferred my company over that of cocaine and/or cock. School forced me to read a lot and write a lot, and the urban environment of Boston wasn’t exactly conducive to meditation in nature or communing with a sacred grove of trees. I once passed a very pleasant morning communicating with fat squirrels in the Boston Public Garden, but I’m fairly certain they just hung around and listened to my boy troubles because I fed them a steady diet of leftover Cheetos.

  When in the late fall of my junior year I went batty and went home, I found myself truly struggling for the first time with basic, day-to-day tasks. Even my trip to Sicily back in high school could be chalked up to the stress of being far away from home, if I ignored the fact that it had actually been a clear indicator of the mental illness to come. My first weeks in New Jersey were fraught with fear, stress, and strain, even though I was surrounded by familiar faces and places. The surroundings were cushy, but my mind was a minefield that kept exploding.

  People in crisis often turn to religion and other drugs for comfort. I was ripe for some kind of new dependency. But instead of darkening the door of a church, I threw myself full-tilt boogie into the Holy Sacred and Apostolic Church of the Barnes and Noble New Age Section. Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell, Pema Chödrön, Marianne Williamson, Eckhart Tolle, that dude who wrote The Four Agreements . . . I gobbled them all up. I accidentally stumbled upon actually helpful information in the form of a book about Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.’s, work at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. I credit Full Catastrophe Living and the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program with adding speed and sense to my recovery. Though he was a seemingly devout Buddhist, Kabat-Zinn dispensed with all the gobbledygook espoused by self-help charlatans and provided a workable program that incorporates cognitive behavioral techniques, good nutrition and exercise, and relaxation methods. And his book came with progress charts that you could photocopy. I love homework.