I went back to the Mexican joint. The one with the shrimp.
You know the place. It’s loud. It smells like lard and cleaning products and the heavy, desperate perfume of a Tucson Saturday night. I walked in alone, because a meal like this isn’t a date; it’s a goddamn ceremony. It’s a funeral rite for the American consumer I used to be.
I sat in the booth. The vinyl was sticky. The lighting was bad. It was perfect.
I didn’t look at the menu. I knew what I was there for.
“Camarones Costa Azul,” I told the waitress. “Jumbo. Wrapped in bacon. And bring me a tequila. No ice. No lime. Just the glass and the poison.”
When the plate arrived, it looked like a heart attack on porcelain. Six massive, prehistoric shrimp, strangled in thick, crispy bacon, swimming in a pool of melted cheese and butter, flanked by two different sauces that probably have a half-life of a thousand years. A scoop of rice. A scoop of beans with that little crust of cheese on top.
It was beautiful. It was ugly. It was the United States of America served on a hot plate.
I took the first bite.
And let me tell you, it tasted like sin. It tasted like every bad decision I’ve ever made, deep-fried and salted to perfection. The grease hits your tongue like a heavy blanket. The sodium spikes your blood pressure in real-time. You can feel your arteries tightening, protesting, screaming, “James, what the fuck are you doing? We just lost forty pounds! We’re trying to go to Vietnam!”
But I shut them up.
“Shut up,” I told my liver. “Tonight, we eat the enemy.”
This wasn’t just dinner. It was an exorcism. I was eating the excess. I was eating the gluttony. I was eating the sheer, unadulterated waste of a culture that thinks “more” is the only direction on the compass.
I ate the shrimp. I wiped the sauce with a tortilla that was probably bleached with the same chemicals they use to clean the floor. I drank the tequila.
And as I sat there, heavy, sweating a little, feeling the weight of that meal sit in my gut like a lead anchor, I looked around the room.
I saw the fat families. I saw the couples staring at their phones. I saw the “low-hanging fruit” sitting at the bar, looking for a savior. I saw the franchise logos, the neon lights, the whole crumbling, beautiful, sugar-coated empire.
And I realized: I am full.
Not just physically. I am spiritually full. I have gorged myself on this country for fifty-seven years. I have eaten its steaks, drank its whiskey, bought its houses, screwed its women, and chased its dollar. I have cleaned my plate.
There is nothing left here for me to taste.
In Vietnam, it’s going to be different. Pho. Greens. Broth. Lightness. Food that fuels the engine instead of clogging the pipes. A life that moves, not one that sits in a booth and rots.
I finished the tequila. I put the gold card down on the table—the Captain paying the final toll.
I walked out into the Tucson parking lot. The air was dry. The stars were dim. My belly was tight, a final reminder of the gravity I was about to escape.
I burped. It tasted like bacon and regret.
Goodbye, you beautiful, greasy, gluttonous beast. I loved you. I hated you. And I ate the whole goddamn thing.
But now?
The kitchen is closed.
