Sesame Chickens Anonymous (revised)

I am a Spice Rice Junkie. I order it at least three times a week,  and rarely deviate from my preferred meal of Sesame chicken with fried rice and crab Rangoon. How sad it is that I am in a Food and Travel class, yet I still haven't managed to face my addiction and try very many other things on the menu. American Chinese food and I have a bizarre relationship. It was my first food addiction, at 11 years old I ha my seminal encounter with the ever popular Kung Pao Chicken. when I was out to dinner with my father and brother at a somewhat upscale Chinese restaurant called Gourmet Garden. That meal is well ingrained in my memory due in very large part to the fact that it was the first social interaction that I had with my father for well over 2 years; needless to say, I remember what I ordered and how it tasted. I had the Ma Ma Lamb and it sucked something fierce. It was too spicy, and had the texture of a broken in baseball mitt. It wasn't a complete loss though: my brother ended up ordering Kung Pao chicken, which was delicious. In fact, it was so delicious that I wholesale abandoned my lamb (my dad wasn't thrilled) and mooched off of my brother. 

From then on, Gourmet Garden became my new obsession. Every time my mother opted to order takeout, I would throw my vote in for Gourmet Garden. Sometimes, I would demand it even when the family already ordered takeout from some other place, just to make a point. I was 11 years old and didn't have any real desires towards females at the point in my life, so I guess I just channeled my prepubescents angst towards Chinese food; I was going to rebel against my family, and their choice in food..
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Fast forward a few years, and Gourmet Garden has shut down as well as my obsession with Kung Pao chicken. I am packing my car for K college, and getting ready to start a new chapter in my life. Or something like that.

It's just after 10PM and I am sitting in my room, sad and a little confused. I did everything they told me, but where were the ladies? where were the insane parties? Why was I sitting in my room alone on my first night of college and what was I going to do about it?
 *Ring Ring* "Andres!? Dude, it's Rick, busy?" 

*Looks around his very bland and boring room* "Not really."
*prays that Rick wants to hang out* "You should come over here dude, we're just chilling."
Rick is an old friend from upstate. He was a member at Brookwood (recall one of my earlier pieces on golf, everything is related isn't it?) for a period of time, and he currently employed at Spice Rice and Budda's Belly.
Four and a half hours later, I am sitting in Rick's living room trying to comprehend life, its meaning, free will, and most pressingly, why I am  so hungry. Enter, Sesame Chicken.

I have had two religious experiences in my life. The first one occurred in the back seat of my car on my seventeenth birthday , and the second one occurred the first time that plastic fork disappeared into my cottoned mouth. It really was THAT good. The harmony of the sweet sauce with the saltiness of the chicken, facilitated by the crunchiness of the battered chicken that is juxtaposed with a soggy lair of fried rice has haunted my dreams and waking hours too many times to count. I am perfectly aware of the fact that I was very stoned the first time I had Sesame Chicken, but I don't think that it had much to do with why I liked it so much. The first few weeks of college were kind of lame because I really didn't know anybody, so hanging out with Rick that night was already going to stick out in my mind; why not Sesame Chicken as well? That being said, I have thought long and hard to find some other reasons for why I am so taken with Sesame Chicken. I have recently come to decide that my lifestyle dictates that I have some kind of go-to shot. I need to have something that I go back to time and time again/ When I first had Sesame Chicken, I was just an awkward high-schooler in a college boy's body. Perhaps in my mind, Rick and his chicken were the first sign that I wasn't at home anymore: college was happening before my very taste buds. since I first tasted Spice Rice, I've ordered it at least 3 times a week, and I never get tired of it, ever. The way I see it, it's chicken, rice, and fish (the crab isn't real), which is about as bad as I would do at the Caf. Rick tells me that the chicken is some of the best chicken I can find in the area, so I'm optimistic about having a heart attack.

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I've also spread my addictions to my close friends; what's the point of burning in culinary hell alone? It helps keep the costs down, and it means that sometimes I can order it without my "tired" ass off the couch at 3 am. An order of Sesame Chicken comes with a pint of friend rice and two crab Ragoon, and will run you about $9.87 plus tip. That's usually enough food to feed two people fairly comfortably, but an extra order of crab Rangoon is another $4 and will make the meal even better.
Above all the money saving and buck passing, I take the most pleasure in the pause my friends and I take when we pose ourselves with the age old question "what should we order?" In my mind, I see a quick film reel of late night drunken tree climbing, or daytime "cruises" through the surrounding neighborhoods before I tell myself fuck it, and respond "Spice Rice?"