Caveman

We had tinkered with the Steroid Diet. For a week and a half my buddy Dale and I ate nothing but egg whites and baked potatoes. Potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil lined the bottom shelf of my fridge. Giant bowls filled with hard boiled eggs lined the top shelves. Egg yolks filled my kitchen trashcan and started to smell after a while.

I heard it was what steroid users ate during their cycles. So we figured we'd give it a shot. On our lunch breaks, Dale and I would pile salt and pepper onto the eggs and potatoes as we drank beer and watched Sportscenter. After a week, we got sick of the diet. It was too bland. We started going to Carl's Jr. and Subway again on our lunches. Big Carl burgers for 2.49. Foot long subs for 5$. It was cheap. It was easy. It was alright tasting.

A girl we worked with introduced us to the Paleo-diet. Or the Caveman Diet. She touted the benefits of this 'cleanse', as she called it. Her long black hair flowed over muscular shoulders and thick biceps. She was short, but solid. Light colored hairs prickled her square jaw. She squatted to tie her shoes, and bent over to push heavy objects as she grunted. There was something grotesquely masculine about her.

She was the perfect example of what we were looking to become.

I went jogging with her one hot afternoon when she gave me the caveman diet template. She had just ran a half mile up a hill twice. I only made it once. And barely. I held the paper with the outlines in a sweaty hand as I collected my keys from her hot apartment and left.

Dale asked me how it went.

"She kicked my ass." I said.

"Obviously." He replied.

She had placed some bottles in front of her doorstep to take out later before we went for the run. I told her the bums and tweakers would take them for their deposit. She didn't believe me. I savored a brief victory when we returned and the front of her steps were bare.

It was the night before Dale's birthday party when I went over to her house to make jello shots. I thought she wanted to get drunk and take advantage of me, but it turned out that I was the most alcoholic person she knew and she wanted my advice on the recipe, which was sad for the both of us.

I drank warm tequila and toyed with her cat while she got high out of a small bong and the television made noise at us. It was the depths of a summer, and the boiling jello made us sweat as we sat on separate couches worlds apart. My phone was vibrating constantly. Other people wanted me. I wanted her. She wanted to get high and watch sitcoms.

I compromised by asking if she wanted to go out. She declined. I left her in a pair of white bike shorts and a black tank top to go hit on the big breasted dipshits my socially awkward companions had waiting for me at the Horsehead. When I mentioned that Bear Gylles was a fraud and a rip off of Les Stroud, they refused to speak to me for the rest of the evening. I introduced myself to another table and began to eat their fries.