Those who know me well know that I enjoy good food, well-prepared. Those who know me even better know that I enjoy nasty, horrible food almost as much, though my intake of same has slowed appreciably, as my aging body begins its inevitable descent into decrepitude. Soon, I will subsist on nothing more than unflavored Cream of Wheat studded with the hardened scraps of Fixodent that will leak over the rim of my prosthetic teeth. That day has not yet arrived, however, and so I am still free to abuse my gut from time by cramming unwholesome things down my neck.

I recently decided to torture my bloated gullet with a single chili-cheese dog, with onions, purchased from a local automotive dining establishment known throughout the land for its cold, delicious drafts of root beer. Note, if you will, that the phrase “chili-cheese dog, with onions” pretty much enumerates the ingredients required to build such a meal. There shouldn’t be much margin for error when you’re only working with five ingredients (there’s a bun, too, remember). I was dismayed to find, however, as I sped down the road with my sauced tube of mystery meat, that neither cheese nor onions were to be found anywhere within the dog’s wrapper or bag. Not a scrap. This pissed me off. I could, though, do without my beloved onions, forgiving this transgression against my will, as evidenced by the distinct lack of any trace of the savory bulb Allium cepa. After all, there are plenty of wimps who can’t abide the strength of this noble plant, especially when raw. “No onions” is the default on a lot of things, because many establishments pander to the lowest, weakest, simpering denominator.

But my dog was also still bereft of cheese. In my opinion, anybody who would eat a cheeseless chili dog is to be counted amongst the worst sort of people; Communists, pederasts, and long-distance service telemarketers all probably eat chili dogs without cheese. Such dogs, denuded of their melted, gooey underpinnings, are anathema, and vile abominations in the sight of God. Heck, just about anything meaty that lacks cheese is boring and loathsome.

Now, you’d think that any moron capable of wielding a ladle would be able to handle dropping a piece of cheese into a bun, but I am apparently a Pollyanna with regards to human nature. Such a sad, naïve little man I am. Still, by this point I was about four miles away from the grease pit, so I didn’t turn back. “What the hell,” I figured, “at least I still have the taste sensations of chili and a hot dog.” I decided to eat the hateful thing. After all, I had just spent a little over a dollar on it.

Big, big mistake.

It was nasty. The chili was… acidic. Almost bitter. I wasn’t quite sure whether or not the stuff was rancid, just plain bad, someone had spilled glass cleaner into it, or if I had hit the trifecta, and someone had added glass cleaner to it, in order to mask the flavor of rancid meat in already horrible chili. The hot dog itself was tough and chewy, evoking visions of those leathery, sweating cylinders one sees in convenience stores, the kind that have been spinning on their shiny, silvery rollers since the late Carter administration. While the flavor was certainly more pleasant than industrial detergents, it was clear that whatever epicurean joy might have once been contained in its once-supple skin had been leached away by countless æons spent in some godforsaken steam table insert, and had even taken on a slight metallic tang, no doubt imparted by its heated steel sarcophagus in ages long forgotten.

God help me. I ate the whole thing.