I
stood alone, as I often stood during my childhood.
I had just 
purchased
an ice cream cone from a shop along the salty splintery
old New Jersey boardwalk. But alas, I was too eager
to devour my sugary treat, for as I lunged in to take
my first lick, my tongue pushed the scoop of ice cream
right off the cone and onto the boardwalk, where it
silently, insultingly plopped. I stood there, a beardless
boy with an empty cone, terrified and on the brink
of tears. A group of nearby greasy biker types began
laughing at the empty cone, laughing at the blob of
ice cream starting to melt on the boardwalk, laughing
at the little boy's pain...laughing at MY pain.
For
the rest of my life, well into adulthood, I've been
trying to fill the hole in that ice-cream cone. I've
used drugs, violence, promiscuity, parlor tricks,
and every other desperate, self-destructive, attention-seeking
measure my imagination could muster simply to fill
the vacant hole left in my heart when that scoop of
ice cream fell to the ground.
And
yet the answer was there all along. The answer is,
and always has been, ice cream. More ice cream.
So
let us put away our swords and take up ice cream cones
instead.
PEOPLE
SAY THAT I'M TOO NEGATIVE and that all I try to
do 
is
shock and offend. The editor of this publication requested
that I write about something nice for a change--"Like
ice cream," she suggested. So this month--for once--I
will refrain from talking about hate crimes committed
by violent lesbian Negresses. The only negative things
I'll say in this article will be about people who
don't like ice cream.
There
is no such thing as bad ice cream, only bad people.
How can you
not
like ice cream? I mean, really, as a human being,
how can you not like it? How can a person in their
right fucking mind not enjoy a good Nutty Buddy
from time to time? You show me someone whose mood
isn't elevated by a gooey bowl of Rocky Road, and
I'll show you a subhuman monster. Show me a man
who doesn't like ice cream, and I'll show you a
child molester. I'll show you the sort of person
who'd bury a kitten up to its head and then run
over it with a lawn mower. The sort of person who
would have an orgasm without asking their partner
if they had an orgasm, too. What kind of a jackass
doesn't like ice cream? A uniquely barren, soulless,
SICK kind of jackass, that's what kind. What sort
of human being says, "No, I'm full, I think I'll
pass on ice cream for dessert"? The answer is simple:
"No sort of human being at all."
God
exists within ice cream. It's more than a drug--it's
a sacrament. I have tasted my share of hell, but
I've also licked the divine. When one gobbles an
ice cream cone, it's like sticking a piece of heaven
in your mouth. It's like inserting a part of God
into your body. Eucharistic candy for your spiritual
sweet tooth. A hint of the eternal. The unblemished.
Ambrosia. Nectar of the gods. A big fluffy dollop
of Jehovah's cum. There is a bit of Christ's flesh
in every bowl of Dreyer's, a thousand angels in
every pint of Ben & Jerry's. Ice cream cleanses
the palate and refreshes the spirit. It mends broken
hearts and is a balm to the weary soul. The lame
are made to walk, the blind are made to see, and
quarrelling couples are made to see each other's
point.
LET
US DROWN OUR TROUBLES in a frosty ocean of cream
and
sugar. Allow us to gorge ourselves on whipped cream
piled up like cottony heaps of divine ejaculate.
Delightful! Each biteful! Such savory delectable
tasty deliciousness! Such jolly refreshment! Enjoyment,
satisfaction, contentment and an almost tidal-wave-like
sense of being swallowed up and interconnected with
The Light. Little icy creamy cotton clouds of heavenliness.
Miraculous frozen crystals of creamy, sweetness-laden
goodness. You have the ice, you have the cream,
you have the sugar, and you have the flavoring.
How do they do it?
I want to eat so much ice cream that most of my
body is made of ice cream. When I am not near ice
cream, I experience separation anxiety. It settles
me down. It makes things so that I don't want to
hurt people so much.
IT'S A SUNSHINY MID-MAY DAY. The warm winds of
spring are 
upon
us. I leave my bunker and tra-la-la merrily down the
sun-dipped street. I buy some ice cream for myself.
I buy some for my friends. Look at his delighted face
when I hand him a Dilly Bar! Look at her rosy-cheeked
joy when I slip her an ice-cream sandwich! We all
smile. It's nice.
From
across the ice cream parlor, a young girl, fertile
and nubile and filled with pep, wraps her lips around
an ice-cream cone. She winks at me and blows a kiss
with her cream-smudged lips. I gesture down at my
banana split and make several suggestive eyebrow motions.
She asks me to come over and sit with her so that
we can eat our ice cream together. Later that day,
we go back to her place and have sex.
If
only vaginas tasted this good.
Ice
cream comes in many flavors, just like people. Vanilla,
chocolate, and strawberry--the white man, black man
and red man
working together--with a scoop of butter pecan thrown
in to honor our jolly yellow friends from the Orient.
Ice cream celebrated diversity before the rest of
America got with the program--Baskin-Robbins had 31
flavors while the South still had separate drinking
fountains.
And
then, suddenly, I think of the ghetto children who
don't have access to as many flavors as I do, and
I get sad. And I wonder--would Hitler have been different
if he ate a waffle cone a day? Would slavery have
been more bearable had the slaves been regularly fed
big bowls of chewy ice cream? If someone had spoon-fed
Jesus some Haagen-Dazs while he was hanging there
on the cross, would his last hours have ticked by
a little more smoothly?
So
let us celebrate life, but more importantly, the LIVING
of life. Let us continue to eat ice cream and to silence
the cream-negative voices out there.
Shove
an ice-cream cone in your mouth and tell me I'm wrong.
Put it in your mouth, slosh it all around, swallow
it, and then call me a fucking liar, I dare you! Jam
a quart of Haagen-Dazs down your piehole and tell
me it isn't great to be alive. Stick that cone in
your face and start licking, bitch. It doesn't even
hurt the first time.
