This is why I have no willpower

I ate the airplane food. It was beyond disgusting and I'm talking now about what tried to pass for chicken casserole but was actually boiling cream of mushroom soup with -- Truthfully? I don't even want to think about. Describing it seems like self-flagellation. There was some kind of pie called "Banatoffee" and I ate it, despite the fact that the list of ingredients probably rivals that of the atomic bomb.

Which is to say that when I'm feeling emotionally...fraught, I stop thinking about physical hunger.

Now that I'm back, it's like resetting a wind-up clock, relearning to rollerskate. I'm drinking my seltzer water-tangerine juice mix already thinking about breakfast (oh, thank you, thank you, for American flavored coffee!) and the train I have to catch to go to Sarah Lawrence in time for my classes. When we were just getting to be friends, Phoebe described drinking deli coffee in this context: "I coffee-slum all the time." The longer I drink coffee, the more I lean towards delis. In London, there's almost no choice: Starbucks is ubiquitous, moreso than in New York. So in London, I drink skim lattes and cappuccinos -- frothy espresso concoctions with sugar instead of Splenda and sprinklings of cinnamon on top. Also in London, there's no such thing as half 'n half. In New York, I walk half a block to the Gracefully deli and fill a small cup with Vanilla Nut-flavored and there's no one standing around saying, "More whip!" or "This isn't hot enough. Again!" Gracefully is right next to a rehab center, two flights up on 1st Avenue, and the people buying coffee with me are dusty and wide-eyed. We drink our coffee as if there were something else in the paper cups -- light and sweet methadone, maybe, or liquid gold.