The Mousse is Loose

Happiness comes in extremely small but potently lasting doses. Getting to make a memory with a loved one. A small bit of professional validation that reminds you the last several years of your life haven’t been a total waste and maybe it’s not time to go shopping for handguns and hemlock just yet. Just barely catching a train. Watching some self-preening-alpha-male-who-clearly-chose-his-major-for-the-money just miss the train. Finding out the person next to you on the plane takes as much joy in not talking to strangers as you do, so now you can read your Fred Astaire biography in peace without having to make hours of small talk about peanut butter crackers and tarmacs. That last one hasn’t happened for me yet, but hope springs eternal.

Guilty pleasures seem to be the ones that bring the most happiness. Supposed to steer clear of because of our gender, race, religious background, ethics, pre-existing health condition, state of perpetual brokenness, or maybe we just have a level of passion concerning this particular thing that others might (or at least should) find alarming. Try oh-so-hard to behave, but sometimes nature just has to take its course. I find guilty pleasures particularly intriguing because the stuff you enjoy with shameless enthusiasm tells a lot about who you really are, good & bad, & really really bad (translation: awesome).

Sometime I think about the kind of stuff I like on that level, makes me proud and ashamed at the same time. Deep down, I enjoy rooting for whatever team is winning in a football game, seeing that look on pitcher’s faces as they whip around to watch the ball sail out of the park, repeatedly sitting through highlights of sporting events I watched the day before, avoiding documentaries that have anything to do with poor people, important conflicts in foreign countries, education or why I need to vote, skipping the interview portion of “The Daily Show” & “The Colbert Report”, making needless biblical references in everyday conversation, art that doesn’t challenge me, jaywalking in front of children who are still being taught to obey the crosswalk light, stockpiling whatever materials I can find about Batman, Motown and standup comedy to an obsessive & financially imprudent degree, movies about felonies and criminal enterprises, watching Fred & Ginger dance numbers an insane number of times in a row, youtube clips of old presidential speeches and debates, Mystikal’s “Let’s Get Ready” album, wasting Saturday mornings with back-to-back-to-back-to-back episodes of “Law & Order”, NOT jogging ever, overpriced books about architecture, overpriced t-shirts from American Apparel, using big words in front of people I know didn’t finish high school, video footage of Kanye West acting a fool at awards shows, and the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Chief and most diabolical of all my guilty pleasures is my intense, Captain Ahab-esque passion for chocolate mousse. Had it once on a date during DC’s Restaurant Week a few years back and have been on the alert for it ever since. Interesting to reflect on that particular date, on that particular girl now, with the space of a few years between us. Still easily ranks as the most tumultuous relationship I’ve ever been in; we could barely bless our dinner together without getting in a heated “discussion” about “my tone”. Once got in a shouting match in the middle of a Northern Virginia Macy’s while Christmas shopping for EACH OTHER. No surprise that since then I’ve become a strong, strong believer in the importance of a “good fit”. The bad times outweighed the good there, but a part of me will always be grateful for the way she had my back when I first started comedy (yours truly was bombing with wild abandon people. If I scored one good laugh in five minutes I thought I had a career, how the hell did that woman or any of my friends sit through so many of those sets?…). On top of that, she introduced me to the granddaddy of all desserts, mousse. Would be a hater not to acknowledge.

Mousse amazes me because it has all the flavor and verve of solid chocolate, but goes down so light you feel like you couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong. I don’t know who came across that magical density & texture, lighter and drier than pudding, heavier and more substantial than whipped cream; it might’ve been a second gift from Prometheus, perhaps it was dreamt up by a French George Washington Carver or one of the critters from “Ratatouille”. Whoever’s idea it was, I lose my cool like a Justin Bieber groupie whenever I see it on the menu.

The problem is that I don’t see it on the menu. Ever. And I eat out a lot, so I notice a lot. It’s not on my mind when I first walk in, it’s not on my mind while I’m waiting to get seated, eating dinner, or trying to assess whether the waitress is into me or just wants a good tip (why oh why do I always get suckered into that mental debate? Stop looking at me like that lady, I came here for buffalo wings and a Yuengling, not for your short-shorts or your mean-spirited head games!). I get through the whole meal experience, am mentally readying myself to see the check, then the server comes to the table with that blasted question, the one that makes cardiologists so wealthy…

“Can I interest you in some dessert?”

“Why yes. Yes. You. Can.”

But it’s never that simple for yours truly. Asking for specific desserts in public can be complicated for a man. It can be kinda weird asking for mousse when you’re hanging out with a guy, because all of a sudden you two look like a couple (that’s how I know who my friends are, if I feel comfortable enough asking for mousse around them). It can be weird asking for mousse in front of a date, because guys are supposed to be “protectors” right? And how many protectors get particular about dessert? You think Randy Couture or Kimbo Slice give a f*ck about mousse? I bet when Brock Lesnar orders a bear claw he’s surprised to find it’s not an actual bear’s claw. And it can be weird asking for mousse dining by yourself, because then it looks like you’ve just given up on finding happiness with any other human beings, or maybe other human beings have given up on you, and now this little bit of whipped chocolate is the only thing keeping you from taking a blindfolded stroll down a railroad track. But having these misgiving does little to fortify any sense of restraint for me, because once that word “dessert” hits the ear, a voice starts going off in my head at the most annoying volume imaginable

“MOUSSE! MOUSSE DUDE. SEE IF THEY’VE GOT MOUSSE. I’M GOING TO CARVE YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER ON THE BACKS OF ALL YOUR DVDS WITH A SCREWDRIVER IF YOU DON’T ASK ABOUT MOUSSE. DID YOU HEAR ME, WHORE? ASK. ABOUT. THE MOUSSE!!!”

“…dessert sounds nice… hmm, I don’t see it listed here, but I don’t suppose you guys… have any… mousse?”

“No I’m afraid not. We do have a delightful mudslide you might like though. I can put an extra cherry in it for you, perhaps a candy cane…”

Great. Now ‘short-shorts’ is patronizing me even more than when I came in. Not like I had a lot of stud points to lose anyway, not sitting here with my Ghostbusters t-shirt on, you know ladies love that Egon Spengler mojo. Whatever. ‘Short-shorts’ can’t judge me. At least I get to wear pants to work.

“A mudslide sounds nice, thank you so much…”

For four years, this has been my most secret and recurring heartbreak. Searching for a dessert that never seems to be on any menu. Staking my fragile dignity on a request I know to be in vain. Cursing the cruelty of Fate for allowing me to enjoy this sweet delight once, only to deny me bitterly two hundred times and more, with no sign of relief or remorse. Better to not have a tongue than to see it so maliciously teased, taunted and deprived. If happiness comes in a teaspoon, surely misery comes in a dump truck.

Then came hope, and the renewed promise of tomorrow. Hanging out in Eastern Market, I wandered into one of those high-minded, might-as-well-be-vegan sandwich shops (where you order roast beef because it’s the only thing you recognize) to find the sweetest of sweets listed on the menu. Took all of my willpower to keep from squealing with glee as I muttered “I’ll have the mousse” in my best faux-casual voice, trying not to let the waitress see in my eyes just how bad I wanted it, how bad I needed it. Have never wanted a mirror to see my own smile before but I have to imagine I looked ridiculous eating that thing. The last time an inanimate object to made me that happy it was a Darth Vader action figure and the Redskins hadn’t won their third Super Bowl yet (twenty plus years is a good run, kudos to you Hasbro). I don’t know what kind of joy parents feel the first time they see their child, but the smart money says this is likely the closest I’ll probably get to it for a minute.

Better still, just when I thought I had reached the peak of contentment, wandered into Silver Diner to find the sweetest of sweets listed on their menu too, in pie form. That makes two mousse sightings in one week, after four years of relentless can’t-believe-it-really-bothers-you-this-much-Michael/well-it-does-so-shut-your-face-please nothingness. Not even sure how to act right now, it’s a little unsettling when things you’ve always wanted suddenly start falling in your lap. The only time I see things working out for people like that are at the beginnings of horror movies, just before people start getting cut up and/or dragged down to basements, or in war movies, where the guy always seems to get a sweet letter from his girl right before his plane gets shot down and he gets dragged to an enemy detention center for a few years of quality gruel and Geneva convention-violating tender loving care. Since I don’t seem to have a plane, military commission or any business in Hanoi, and don’t hang out with anyone who owns a secluded enough basement to execute a proper live dismemberment, appears I’ll have to give Fate the benefit of the doubt for the time being and just enjoy my dessert.

With the sweetest of sweets so readily available now, find myself simultaneously at peace with the world but also at a loss for words realizing I’ll eventually have to dredge up some new unattainable thing to obsess about. Why? Because I’m a comic and comics don’t have the slightest clue what to do with more than a few moments of happiness at a time. Besides, should probably always have a white whale in front of you, what else is there to do down here but go after stuff and sit around with your friends trading stories about how much you got manhandled while going after stuff? A man is only as good as that which he chases. I just spent the last four years on dessert; think I’m going to spend the next little while holding out for a lactose-free clam chowder.

Stay hungry my friends.