Can We Get Two Steak-and-Cheese Subs?
A lot of alcoholics forego food in favor of alcohol. In college, with my meals “free” (thanks Mom and Dad!), I didn’t need to forego anything. The cafeteria was a social hub and I didn’t want to miss anything – least of all the cute guys building towers out of their mashed potatoes and meatloaf, only to drop an apple on their creation to see the spray.
But Bonnie didn’t see the cafeteria in the same light; she wanted to eat better food – meaning, something from the snack bar after the cafeteria had closed. It didn’t matter that I had no money for such frivolities. Bonnie had a checkbook.
I didn’t even know how a checkbook worked, but Bonnie would say, “Let’s get malts!” and I would leap from the chair and head over to the snack bar for a malt.
One day I asked, “How can you afford malts every night?”
She shrugged. “I’ll just bounce a check!” And in we’d go, for malts and whatever else we might want.
For the first semester, Bonnie also often had a car. This was rare, as a freshman, so we made the most of it. We’d walk to the bar and back – then hop in the car and drive to Denny’s, because it was open all night.
The entire campus – and many people we didn’t know – would be at Denny’s, wasted, inhaling thick pancakes and greasy bacon. Denny’s was the place to be at 3 a.m. We’d be there for hours, stuffing ourselves silly and laughing like we’d never laughed before.
Sometimes we’d go to Bonnie’s parents’ house for the weekend. We’d wait for them to go to sleep and then we’d raid the refrigerator. One night we dined on cold peas in a jar. We considered this a delicacy, and laughed about it for weeks.
Since we rarely had dinners at the cafeteria, we also had pizza delivered. There was no Door Dash – pizza was the only thing we could have delivered. Everyone had pizza all the time. And always Dominos.
Then we found a place that would deliver subs. We’d ask: “Can we get two steak-and-cheese subs?” And that would be lunch. We’d get pizza for dinner.
We ate subs for quite awhile before we discovered that they also sold beer at the sub place. It was like getting soda, we reasoned, so it didn’t hurt to ask if they’d deliver it.
“Can we get two steak-and-cheese subs? And can you maybe also add a six-pack of Natural Light?”
They would.
Suddenly subs were our favorite food.
“Can we get two steak-and-cheese subs and a six-pack of Natural Light?” we’d say – every single day.
One day Bonnie looked at me in all seriousness and said, “We should get more beer.”
So we did: “Two steak-and-cheese subs and a twelve-pack of Natural Light, please.”
This made us temporarily happy. And then one day, it happened.
“Can you just deliver us a twelve-pack of Natural Light?” I don’t know what we ate that day.
I know that within a week, we were ordering two twelve-packs at a time, because as any alcoholic knows: more is always better.
Some days we got subs, too. Some days we got pizza, too. Some days we even got malts at the snack bar.
But not leaving the room and having infinite beer delivered … and living across the hall from the bathroom and the water fountain … ? Well, that was truly heaven on earth.