no fat chicks

20 oz. of deep fried chicken breast (3 breasts total)
smothered in mozzarella cheese, way too many strips of bacon, a pile of mushrooms, and and amount of french fries that can only be considered excessive.

finish it in under 30 minutes and get a free t-shirt!

i have never eaten anything competitively before. i've drunk competitively, usually with good results. i often hearken back to the old times at city limits sports bar in baltimore, where the measure of a man was his performance in two-tiered chug-off tournaments. chugging 2 pints of beer in about 3 minutes is no small task, and i don't like to brag, but i was the best of the best.

so when i jokingly suggested getting a "fat chick" from benchwarmers of ithaca (god what an awful website), and was subsequently pressured into it by sam, sarah, and jonathan, i was confident. maybe too confident. but i wasn't the slightest bit worried that i couldn't finish the sandwich. after all, it sounds like a delicious enough sandwich if it were normal-sized.

then the thing came out and while i was not incredibly impressed with the size of the sandwich, i was impressed with the amount of french fries. probably a thousand french fries in all. at least 20 fries for everybody in the restaurant. it was ridiculous. i had to eat a pathway in the fries just to get to the sandwich. the sandwich was an island volcano about to erupt with cheesy and chickeny magma, surrounded by an ocean of starch, with a steak knife stuck through the middle for effect.

it was extremely hot. prohibitively so, especially since i had just had a cavity filled and was still somewhat sensitive to hot/cold. i dug in with fork and knife (lifting this monstrosity was positively out of the question). it actually was a tasty sandwich. it was a shame that i had to eat it as if it was going to run away. as promised, there were lots and lots of mushrooms, which was good. the chicken was way overfried and hard on the outside. i don't even remember seeing any bacon.

i ate the entire sandwich in about 20 minutes, moistening my palate with a beer and then switching to water. this left 10 minutes for the plate full of fries. i don't really even like french fries. and after sitting on the plate for 20 minutes, they were a big mound of dry starch. i think i got it down to about a hundred or so fries before my eating slowed to a crawl. eating was no longer fun. swallowing was painful. in retrospect, i think it was mostly psychological (think of when little kids say "i'm full up to here!"), but there was definitely a physical aspect to my condition.

my pyloric sphincter was the bouncer of a club that had just reached the fire code limit for capacity. if anybody else showed up at the door, they were going to get turned away and sent back where they came from.

i came extremely close, but ultimately failed. this is the worst kind of failure. the waiter offered that the t-shirt (the one that says "i ate a fat chick") was only $12. i did not buy it, because i didn't deserve it.

the rest of the night i was nothing short of comatose. i attempted to play some foosball at the bar, but i could hardly concentrate on the game. i was full. painfully full. as i played foosball i noticed the waiter smirking whenever he looked over. he had seen this before. pure schadenfreude. i went home and lay down for the rest of the night, still feeling it when i went to bed 2 or 3 hours later, vowing never to do something that stupid again.

after recovering from the initial trauma (it's been almost a week now), i am more determined than ever to eat a fat chick. i realized that my strategy had been all wrong. i did not respect this beast. i was neither mentally nor physically prepared for the trial that was ahead of me. my initial failure has taught me never to underestimate any challenge the reward for which is a free t-shirt.

i will go back, and this time i will be ready.
"i ate a fat chick" is a slogan that one day i will proudly wear.