Raw

The raw portion of my raw vegan detox began today. As part of some cockamamie scheme to purify my body--cooked up by raw food guru and restaurateur Karyn Calabrese (whose main qualification to dispense health advice seems to be that she has retained her hotness past 60) and filtered down to me from the BFF--I have abstained from eating animals and their various secretions, not to mention other life-enhancers such as alcohol, coffee, and Diet Coke, since last Thursday. This, however, is not enough to please the tyrants to whom I have surrendered my nutritional choices. Starting today and continuing for the next three weeks (which I have already decided to shorten to two), I am to give up all cooked food as well. What does that leave to munch upon, you ask? Well, so far today I have ingested a green smoothie that looked like something thrown up by Linda Blair, a fruit plate, and a salad. I have been told repeatedly, however, by the BFF and a friend of hers who is also a raw enthusiast, that I cannot expect to subsist on salads alone. They recommend, in addition to the fruits and vegetables you might expect, avocados, nuts, dates, beets, and various medlies marinated (without heat, of course) in salad dressing. Because, honestly, what could be further from a salad than a plate of vegetables covered in salad dressing?

The principal objective of this ghastly little endurance test is to cleanse the colon of its many impurities, so a great deal of emphasis is placed on bowel movements. In fact, during the raw portion of things, I'm supposed to give myself an enema every night to remove nastiness, to be followed by a chlorophyll implant to restore the healthy bacteria my ass apparently so sorely needs.

I'm telling you right now: I will not be doing this. I will submit to an enema or two, I suppose, but at 14 of them in a row I must draw a line. I never thought I'd hear myself type this, but there is such a thing as too much fiddling about in the butt.

According to the BFF and her raw enthusiast friend, a kind of high--an extra pep in the step--accompanies the raw lifestyle and compensates for some of its miseries. Perhaps it's too soon, but I have yet to feel this sensation. On the contrary, I feel as though I've wandered into someone else's S&M fantasy and forgotten the safe word.


ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of the First Folio Shakespeare Festival's Much Ado about Nothing and Ouroboros Theatre Company's Cyrano: Translated are in this week's issue of the Chicago Reader.


[Also, for what it's worth, this is Fool's Gold Coast's 600th entry.]