Experimental Pizza

Scene: Pizza joint. Lunch break.
Characters: Justin (me), the Girl-Behind-the-Display-Case (We'll call her GBDC), and the Guy-Who-Looks-the-Other-Way-So-He-Doesn't-Have-to-Do-Anything (Extra 1).
Props: strange pizzas on display

"Hey, what's in that one?" I ask the girl behind the display case as I point at a stuffed pizza with strange contents sticking out of it's sides.

"French fries." Says GBDC.





I give some completely forgettable, positive comment, but I use the tone that you would with a small child who drew you a really ugly picture, and on one hand you're offended, but on the other hand you don't want to upset the kid. You know what I'm talking about, right? That kind of tone.

So I point at the next one, "That looks good. What's in there?"

(I'm not some prick who points at every slice of pizza in a pizza parlor asking what the fuck I'm looking at. It was only those two pizzas.)

"That's chicken Parmesan." GBDC tells me.


Pizza stuffed with breaded chicken sounds safe so I order one, take a seat, pull out a book and read, like I'm in a coffee shop or something.

I don't want pizza. I'm not in the mood for cheese and grease and crap, but I need food, I didn't bring anything to eat, every other nearby restaurant is ten times worse than this one and (get this) although I've worked in this grocery store for a while, now; I've never bought groceries at this place. I've seen way too much to assume that any of the food is edible unless you have an acclimated, shit-eating metabolism.

Also, just this morning I saw a huge exterminator van parked out in front of the grocery store.


So I'm waiting for my food, reading my book, and somewhere in the middle of a paragraph I stop, look up and take a moment to realize that I'm in a restaurant that serves pizza stuffed with french fries. At the time it was very profound. Probably because I'd been here a few months before and watched my co-workers make the mistake of eating what we all thought was Mexican pizza. Ever seen Mexican pizza before? Refried beans instead of tomato sauce? It's really good.

This one had what looked like sour cream, but it turned out to be ranch dressing; and the cheese? It was thick, stuck-in-your-throat Cheese Wiz.


My chicken Parmesan pizza arrived. I bit inside and... Do you know those bags of chicken nuggets you find in a bag in the back section of the frozen foods department? Imagine cooking those up halfway and stuffing them in-between pizza bread.

It's exactly what I deserved for being an idiot and eating there.
I paid $5.00 for that one slice, which sounds like what an idiot would pay, and then I went back to work.





Well, that was kind of a downer.
Uh, happy?