Gut Feelings

I’m starting to think that gut microbes control my every move. To listen to those random colon health “experts” that fundraise for Pacifica radio, I could be right. But my theory didn’t take a colon guru, just a trip to a local pancake house on an empty stomach.

I once lived a block way from this Sunset Blvd. hipster-filled pancake joint called THE GRIDDLE — when I lived there, it wasn’t “The Griddle” but a shoe store for sex workers that caught fire and sat boarded up for months as the huge eyesore in the neighborhood. So I was delighted when I saw they were putting up a pancake house where the scorched shoe store stood — and I was equally disappointed at the timing — my first marriage died before the hipster pancake house opened. I was more devastated about the bad timing, than the end of the marriage. I packed my bags and moved from that West Hollywood apartment, never to return to the scene of the crime until this one day….

Driving west on Sunset Blvd — with my second husband— I’m hungry. It’s already a grouchy day. I gape at the rapid development of my old West Hollywood neighborhood, in fact I am spiraling that L.A. is already overpacked, overblown and unlivable! “We have to get out of here!”

The response was definitive. “You need to eat.”

I bristle. So reductive. Sure I’m hungry, but the realization that my city is unrecognizable has me in its grip, or am I just resentful that the residents in West Hollywood have so many new food choices and don’t need to get in their cars to eat—but they do anyway. Or...am I just hungry?

He screeches into the first parking spot—curbside Doris Day parking smack in front of The Griddle. I balk at the black and grey hued line of skinny-jeaned, tatoood, 40 somethings. Intolerance mode. I remark, a little too loud:

“Remember when tattoos meant something?”

Hipsters standing there for hours to eat here— like it’s Warsaw in the Cold War, but it’s not Warsaw, it's L.A. and they’re not starving for bread…they "feel like" pancakes. By the time we get to the front, they have been made aware. I’m the E.R. patient in a psychotic break. We’re rushed to the Emergency Booth and seated — order taken stat! I’m strapped in.

I’m dizzy from self imposed starvation all day. Intermittent Fasting wasn’t a thing yet. You are still shamed for being “too hungry.” Nothing "feels" right and now I can’t decide. How do people go without food — and yet they do. Who am I to be cranky? I let him order. I need protein at this time, but we're at a pancake house and its 1pm and fuck it.

The pancakes came after way too long. As I recall this dish even had a name. Something to do with either a Doctor? or The South? In any case: three plate-sized pancakes topped with baked apple and cinnamon. I feel immediate guilt at the excess.

“America is so wasteful.”

“Eat.”

The waiter instructs us to eat them “from the inside out,” like an acting process? The middle definitely had the bells and whistles.

After five bites, I am full. Sugared up, wheated up…everything was fine with the world. Ahhh. Relief. For about...six minutes.The Seventh Minute after eating the “Doctor… South?” something shifted.

My partner suddenly became (even more of?) a catatonic zombie with nothing further to say to me...ever. I became (even more!) oversensitive, sad, insecure and paranoid.

What started as an inocuous lunch date — became the ruination of two already biologically and chemically challenged “guts.” His past indescretions and relapses came up in traffic. And then it all came up.

Sitting there, gluten-stuffed in Friday L.A. early rush hour, I launch a one-sided, charged conversation about neglect, lost years and what “normal people are doing right!” It seemed the only common goal we shared anymore was the need to get home and pass out. That we did. After the sugar-driven argument, we crashed into the day nap from which there was no recovery.

It has been some time since The Griddle. My Gut provided me with hindsight and clarity of that day the hipster pancake house derailed everything.

“Try a couple free range eggs and a walk in the morning. Life will go differently.”

With pharmaceuticals and weed as common as candy, I can say I have life experience that has convinced me I can change my mind, my mood and my life — not with Efexor, Lipitor and Prozac, but with what I put in my gut.

As for The Griddle: I might go back. And I might have the pancakes.

But if I do…I’ll go alone.