In which I am lain low.

Okay. I am far from being the most sympathetic guy in the world.

I admit that, readily and freely.

I've fought my way up for years and earned everything - everything I've ever achieved has been through through sacrifice, sweat and naked ambition. To me, the inability to succeed is a sign of innate weakness - a sign that one is one the wrong side of the Darwinian equation.

I sneer at foibles and perceived weaknesses. I fail to understand the underachiever - the wimp - the loser. To me, organized religion and Dollar Stores are naught but shattered temples to those who have given up on life and are subsisting on the wrinkled, dried-out teat of society.  They mingle under the feeble flourescents, this refuse, reeking of spoiled milk, nicotine and regret.

I sneer at food warning labels. Who the hell in their right mind can't ingest a little bit of gluten or survive eating a freaking peanut?

And yet...

And yet...

Cottage cheese may be the end of life as I know it.

You see - for years, I have hidden my own personal shame. Privately, it has humbled me - shamed me for my weakness. Made me shy away from the light of the Dairy Queen drive thru.

You see - I am...

I am...

I am...lactose intolerant.

There - I've said it.

For years I have been forced to shun breakfast cereals swimming in their milky brine - eschew the allure of silken yougurts - forego the sensual pleasures of milky cheeses...it is my shame and my curse.

And yet - and yet - every once in a while...I forget.

I forget and perceive that I am normal and whole.

Like tonight.

I was foraging in the refrigerator for a late night snack that would be satisfying, yet healthy.

I spotted the cottage cheese. "Aha!" says I - "something that will benefit and sate me yet will not cause me regret upon the morrow!"

Right.  BIG mistake.

You damned fool.  You should have opted for the apple.

Now - now - I am a Clive Barker movie, a grotesque, replete with other-wordly noises emanating from my person.  I feel like Jabba the Hut if he had eaten the flaming Hindenburg and then been jumped on by bears - big bears.

As I write this, I am chugging a diet soda in hopes that it will - in the words of my forebears - "kill me or cure me."  The aftermath does not bear reporting.

Pray for me that I survive the night.

I will lay in bed and writhe and make unusual sounds - all the while, cursing the dairy gods and all their yummy temptations.

And then, one day, I will forget.  Again.