This article in the New York Times got me thinking about a factor I hadn’t fully contemplated as I continue to identify the ingredients that formed the Nihilistics: bad food.
Huh?
Allow me to elaborate.
The book I’m working on – NIHILISTIC – has its genesis in a number of short stories I wrote about growing up, learning guitar and forming bands. One is OUR LAST SHOW, about the night Mike Nicolosi (RIP) of the Nihilistics punched me in the face before we were due to go onstage at the Showplace in Dover, NJ. Another is OTHER CHRIS, about the boarder my mother took in who happened to share my name. But the story that likely will become the first chapter in NIHILISTIC is CAFETERIA, documenting how Mike and I met over (a shitty) lunch at Lindenhurst Junior High School circa 1975, the same year easy availability of ultra-processed food took off, according to the Times.
Mike was the fattest kid in that cafeteria, so obese he was an object of derision. I was not far behind, also openly mocked to my face (including at home, by my brothers). Mike and I had something else in common: we used food to regulate mood.
Someone made fun of me.
I feel shame.
I don’t want to feel shame.
I’ll eat something.
That’ll make me feel better.
You can imagine how that worked out.
Because I was at his house often, I know Mike and ate the same bad-for-you food to soothe ourselves: TV dinners, Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee Ravioli, Spaghetti-Os, Spam, Entemann’s, Hostess and Drake’s snack cakes, Charleston Chew candy bars, and on and on. Yes, my mother and Mike’s cooked and could crank out a decent meal, with a menu leaning heavily toward beef, pork and chicken. But I don’t think I saw a fresh vegetable beyond an onion until I was well into my teens. Fucking Birds-eye in a bag, you want vegetables. And pour on that cheese sauce.
When I got into guitar it was literally as counterweight against my feelings of worthlessness for constantly being told I was, umm, worthless because I was fat. Learning guitar and getting into bands made me feel a bit better about myself. When Mike showed up for high school sophomore year having lost a hundred pounds over the summer (he said his parents put him on a diet: turned out he was a male bulimic) there was also a noticeable change in his previously sweet demeanor. Having discovered punk rock, we were hanging out in his bedroom one night, listening to records, when he said to me The same fuckin’ phonies who made fun of me when I was fat now want to be my friend. Fuck these people.
You only need to scan the titles of a few Nihilistics songs to see how that manifested:
Badge of Shame
Black Sheep
Kill Yourself
Low Life
No Friends
The Misanthrope
You’re To Blame
And we have ultra-processed food to thank. Or blame.