HEARTBREAK AT THE HEATHMAN LODGE

Sometimes, there’s an article that you don’t want to write, but it’s simply the right thing to do. For the last, six, I think, years, my family has said fuck it to cooking or hosting our family or any nonsense like that on Thanksgiving, and just gone to a buffet at the Heathman Lodge, a nice-ish, big-ass hotel over in east Vancouver, by the mall. Why do we do this? It’s easy and the food is good. That’s it. Look, we’ve become very low maintenance people, and I don’t have any children we feel obliged to make special memories with, okay. My baby is my beautiful writing, beloved by all, and it doesn’t eat. When I was younger we went to my paternal grandmother’s house, but she’s dead, and the tradition kind of died with her. 

For the first few years, it seemed like there weren’t a lot of people there, but in the last three or so goes around, we had to book a while out, and the crowd fills up the lobby and a big-ass conference room off to the side. Mostly older people, middle aged people, the kind of person who has maybe gotten over ritual and stuff. There’s a jazz duo! 

But, and I’m going to be real with you guys, there’s one reason Big Corbs keeps coming back, year after year. He fucking loves bread pudding, and the Heathman Lodge makes powerful, beautiful bread pudding. I love bread pudding, any kind. Stiff, cakey. I like cold bread pudding. I like french toast that’s KIND of like bread pudding. My dad makes fucking good, crustier bread pudding every Christmas morning. I love it all! Bread Pudding! If you’re serving bread pudding at your restaurant? Corbin’s probably gonna give that bad boy a try. 

But, and I cannot stress this enough, the hotel near the mall makes Corbin’s favorite bread pudding, and Thanksgiving is when they make and serve quantities of it that are so obscene that it breaks him. It’s almost revolting how moist and silky this shit is, people. Pure bread-imprisoned custard, soaked for god knows how long, wiggling down my throat and plopping down into my tummy. The ritual has become very familiar to me-- I walk into the Lodge, sit at my table, eat my cursory dinner-esq foods (Usually green salad, some raviolis, some brie.), but I know deep in my heart that it’s all just pretense, acting out “The Thanksgiving Meal,” so I can make an excuse to hunch on over to the big fucking hot plate full of delicious, delicious bread pudding, the only thing I have ever called a brother in my entire life, and to ladle a truly unnerving quanity of that shit onto a plate, waddle back to the table with my family, and devour it. For the first few years, we did this, I would pull the waiter aside, say, he, buddy, can I get a little do go box, just between us, a conspiracy between pals, and then I would scoop a deeply upsetting quantity of that bread pudding into the little box and spend the next few days occasionally opening the fridge, taking one or two forkfuls of cold bread pudding, eating it, and returning the box to the fridge. I have come to have a nearly religous attatchment to this stupid ritual. 

And so, imagine by anger my PALPABLE SENSE OF DISGUST, when I walked into my YEARLY BREAD PUDDING BUFFET TREAT AND I SAW THIS FUCKING BULLSHIT LOOKING AT ME IN THE EYES. Those COWARDS at the Heathman Lodge must have decided that I was getting TOO MUCH HAPPINESS from the simple, pure act of taking a big fucking spoon and using it to heap DELICOUS BREAD PUDDING onto a DINNER SIZED PLATE, because this yeay, they decided to TAKE IT UPON THEMSELVES to do a LITTLE PORTION CONTROL and CARVE UP MY BROTHER INTO CUBES, DENYING ME THE ONE PURE PLEASURE I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY ROTTEN, STUPID LIFE, THE FEELING OF HEAPING BREAD PUDDING ONTO A PLATE FOR ONE MEASLEY DAY A YEAR. 

Now, I’m using tongs, GODDAMN TONGS to get my shit! TONGS! LIKE A MESS HALL OFFICER! Is there no pure thing in this rotten world, anymore? Am I cursed to lose everything I love to the whims of capital’s foot soldiers, operating on decisions designed to ‘Make it so people take less bread pudding at the buffett’ of life!!?

It was still fucking awesome. Also I put some whipped cream on it this year. I’ll be back but I’ll always remember the glory days…