A History of My Past Few Relationships, Presented in Recipe Form

Hot Sauce Sandwiches

Grad school. People are supposed to be poor during grad school — especially if they’re majoring in something stupid, like, say, creative writing — but somehow, you have taken it all too far. Originally, grilled cheese sandwiches were a food option. But then, the price of Kraft Cheese Singles seemed to magically rise out of reach. So you move down the food chain, and start eating “American Slice!” brand cheese product.

Sadly, “American Slice!” isn’t even officially listed as a “cheese product” or even as “cheese food,” perhaps because it contains 1% cheese, or maybe they just let the finished product sit next to a pile of cheese, in the hopes that it will absorb some of the faint aroma of cheese, in the way that stuff in your refrigerator does, when you haven’t placed that box of baking soda in your refrigerator. “American Slice!” costs only $1.37, though — for a pack of sixteen slices — and is a product that you will only ever see during this time in your life, and which is only ever found in the ghetto supermarket near your very expensive grad school. The problem is, according to the ingredients list on the back of the package, is that it’s mostly made of soy. So when you attempt to heat “American Slice!” to make a grilled cheese sandwich it… inflates. Somehow hot air gets between the two layers of soy and the whole thing inflates, so that it looks like a pillow. A sad pillow made of plastic-y soy. This is never what you want from a grilled cheese sandwich.

It’s time to recalibrate. So you move on, and even “American Slice!” seems a little expensive at this point; stupid grad school. So you begin making “Hot Sauce Sandwiches.” To do this, you toast bread, scrape a little butter onto the bread, and then shake hot sauce onto the bread. And that’s a sandwich, based on the principle that pretty much anything can be a sandwich.

One day, while you are “making” your “sandwich,” your friend Dan enters the apartment. “Dude, what the hell are you doing?” he says.

“Um,” you say.

“I can’t believe you live like this. I can’t believe you actually live like this.”

“Right,” you say.

Dan is so annoyed by the sight of your pathetic sandwich that he won’t stay. Then, he tells his friend Roger. Who tells your girlfriend April. April calls you on the phone.

“You eat bread with hot sauce on it every day?”

“Um…” you say.

There really is no good explanation for any of this.

Hot Sauce Sandwich – Ingredients:

• Whole wheat bread, because that is healthier.
• A very small amount of butter.
• Some hot sauce, preferably “Texas Pete” brand hot sauce.