If it has been some long time since you ate pizza, you are in for a shock. You will be cavalier, never once registering just how long it has been since a stone-baked wedge of righteousness has been shoved into your stupid, stupid mouth. As a result, you will likely take your first bite as you back your car out of the pizzeria?s parking lot.

Fool. A pox upon your recklessness.

Reverse direction. Park your ass down. Turn off the radio. There is pizza in the house.

You were not prepared for an encounter with the mystical, were you? Heathen troll. If you could get onto your hands and knees, you would, non? That tomato sauce had you at hello. What is that taste sensation? It?s not oregano, it?s not red pepper--- something fragrant and rich and mysterious is buried into that tomato sauce, but you?ll never know what it is. You?ll only know that it was meant for your mouth alone.

Perhaps this is what chocolate fanatics experience. But you wouldn?t know as chocolate does not have this power over you. Only one thing can wrest you to the ground like a rag doll, only one delicacy has you offering up your soul as if it were nothing but a fistful of weeds gathered from an abandoned lot, well two, actually: the crust and the cheese.

Who cares if it sounds like a documentary of a boy?s locker room? You would crawl a mile for crust and cheese like this. The dough was so obviously made with care, with love, with no refrigeration. It was brought to life and lifted high again and again?filling itself with air and light and ecstasy. And the cheese was freshly grated before being scattered loosely yet with the fine, uniquely skilled intention of a seedsman sowing flax.

And the oven that accepted the sweet, round offering was hot. It ravaged that soft, white dough with its burning heat and transformed it into a perfectly crusted, perfectly chewy, perfectly oily sumptuous creation from above.

As you try to slow your breathing and regain your equilibrium, you know you will never allow yourself to traffic with supermarket salads or gas station sandwiches or crappy soup from that crap local restaurant ever again. No. Never.

There is only one lunch for you. There was always only one.

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