Marc Gasol fiddled around on his computer, but he found himself unable to stay on any one webpage for more than a minute. His mind was far and away in another place. In the kitchen, he could hear that unmistakable whirring, the siren call of the microwave, and he knew that he would not be able to focus until the appliance had finished its waltzlike dance of food preparation.
Restlessly, Marc Gasol pushed his rolling chair away from the desk and walked into the kitchen. Smushing his face against the glace of his microwave, he watched the food within spin and spin and spin, putting him into a kind of hypnotic trance. So engrossed was he in the circular movement of the food that he failed to engage in his lifelong tradition of counting out the last ten seconds in Spanish. The microwaved beeped, startling Marc out of his contemplation.
“Yes,” Marc breathed, knowing that the food was just a minute away from consumption. It was supposed to sit in the microwave for additional cooking time, but Marc had no time for such limiting concepts as “rules”. Popping open the microwave, he retrieved the forty Totino’s Pizza Rolls which had been heaped onto a plate. They steamed and sizzled; to Marc’s ears, a plea to be ingested.
Taking the plate back to his computer desk, he roughly shoved aside his keyboard and placed the plate right in front of his monitor. He resisted the urge to pop a single pizza roll into his mouth, as he knew that one would become forty in no time at all. Ignoring the wafting aroma of tomato sauce and flaky crust, Marc navigated his browser to a custom-compiled YouTube playlist containing every episode of Hey Arnold! available on the video-sharing website.
A mini-fridge containing nothing but Sunny-D stood at the ready. Grabbing one of the bottles contained therein, it was time. Marc pushed the triangular “play” button.
As the humorous yet instructive exploits of Arnold, Gerald, and all his school-aged friends played out on the monitor, Marc pinched a single pizza roll between his two fingers. It collapsed easily, spurting out cheese, sauce, and grease. Eating these things, Marc placed the empty bread shell on an additional plate and took a swig of the citrusy Sunny Delight that he remembered so fondly from his childhood in this very city.
Not even halfway through the second episode, Marc had consumed the innards of all the pizza rolls. Bringing the plate of crusts closer to him, he unfolded the first one so that it took up as much surface area as possible. Now, reenacting the ritual that had first been conducted at the age of six, Marc removed his shirt, reclined his office chair fully, and placed the unfolded shell on his chest. He shivered with delight as the still-warm, still-greasy food item caressed his most sensitive area.
This process he repeated with the remaining thirty-nine. Each addition to his starchy armor caused Marc to quiver. When they were all in place, he used both hands to scoop them wholly into his mouth. He struggled to fit them all in, but the task, which had been impossible as a child, was not impossible for a seven-footer. As he chewed and swallowed, and chewed and swallowed some more, he felt his eyes growing heavy.
In the darkness of his office, with Hey Arnold! playing in the background, Marc fell asleep, fully sated. In his dreams that night, there were none of the usual scenes of basketball. Instead, the ghosts of ingested Totino’s Pizza Rolls saluted him, thanked him, and he thanked them in return.