Eating alone

I like to break bread with others, don't get me wrong. But there's something liberating about eating all by yourself. You can eat whatever you want--peanut butter and banana sandwiches fried in butter appealed very strongly to Elvis Presley, for instance. Ice cream for dinner, eaten out of the carton, slathered in chocolate syrup and chopped walnuts, is tasty and filling, and there are no killjoys emitting negative vibes to take the fun out of it. My brother the genius had no dishes in his apartment when he was a graduate student. If he wanted something to eat, he opened a can of tuna fish and ate it over the sink. What did he use for utensils? We can only speculate. It is a mystery in the same category as the problem of Jack Reacher's underwear or lack of same. I got home the other day ravenously hungry. Some leftover two-day-old pizza, thoroughly dried up, was in the refrigerator. I thought it might be salvageable if covered with melted butter. So I buttered a couple of slices generously and heated them in the microwave. They were delicious.