The same year our government cancelled The Federal Writer's Project.
The Maître de's name was Ignacio Nacho Anaya.
To fry or not fry the tortilla.
If you watch closely—a tough thing to do when stoned—you will see that Beavis and Butthead eat only Mexican food, primarily nachos.
I'm stoned right now.
On Budweiser.
In the early morning.
And I know better.
Because I am a registered nurse licensed in four states: Tennessee, Alabama, Arizona, and Colorado.
Nachos, especially their preparation, are a way of making sense in a senseless world.
I have seen people die right in front of me.
Young beautiful people.
Jenny McCarthy was in nursing school but dropped out due to a lack of funds.
She is a celebrity mother.
Concerning her dietary choices she says, “I have my once-a-month nachos, but it's soy cheese and turkey chili on it, so it's somewhat safe. But it's still a big vice for me, because I have a big bowl of it."
MTV is an excellent vehicle for initiating a career.
MTV is an example of fluff.
Of October.
I am slicing up tortillas for nachos and thinking of October, the most dangerous month for whitetail deer.
Whitetail deer have wonderfully clean and pearly internal organs.
Because they don't drink and smoke.
I won't tolerate a nondrinker.
Or a dull knife.
I prefer La Fuerza flour tortillas, from Dallas.
But will eat whatever a restaurant offers, as for tortillas.
Once I ordered nachos in France and the waiter brought me a baguette, sliced super thin, and pan-fried crisp. Topped with anchovies. I refused to eat this, and instead drank a bottle of red wine.
On an empty stomach I might do anything.
I own a completely camouflaged shotgun.
In the next room.
I have stacks of tortillas in the crisper.
After watching people die I would get into my vehicle and drive to downtown Denver (called Lo Do by the cool people) and I would eat nachos:
At Rio Grande Mexican Restaurant
At Castaway
At Croc's Mexican Grill
At the Smoky Sole
If you read this and saw me later during those butterfly moments before the start of a marathon as we were stretching and said, “Hey man. Which of these four restaurants have the grooviest nachos?”
I would answer, “All.”
And I would do some nonverbal thing to get you to leave me alone.
And I would run that marathon. Run it rather well.
And afterwards drink Fat Bastard beer.
And another.
And another.
To wash away all of the death I've seen.
Do you enjoy Beck?
I swear to God that in Williamsburg, New York there is a taquería on the corner of Main and Belington.
Go there and order the Macho Nachos. It will cost eight dollars.
Trust me.
If you are not going to trust me, let's forget this whole thing.
I picked up a girl once at the taquería and we danced to Beck and we (really me, on a credit card) bought a $49 bottle of wine and she took me to the large house she was sitting for and we drank all the wine and snorted crushed Dexedrine and had unprotected sex on a stranger's tall, white bed while the rightful occupants were away on a tropical vacation. The next day I awoke with great self remorse and the sun in my bloodshot eyes; and this girl looked me right in the stupid face and said, “Hey. I'm a drug addict.”
I fell into a crevasse once.
I jumped off a bridge once, right before a train was to hit me.
Jumped off roofs several times.
I have a thing for jumping.
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to nachos.
I fractured my calcaneus right there in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in front of all those writers at the party and now I have to live with that, every day, that pain in my left heel, telling me, “Sean, you did this—every bit of this—to yourself.”
Fool.
If you don't understand the term taquería, you could Google now.
Why you're Googling, also go to my blog: seanlovelace.com
I have photos of nachos.
And a nacho rating system.
I am preheating the oven now.
400 degrees.
In our society.
Killing a human is a serious transgression.
Our government pays humans monthly.
To kill other humans.
In 1943, a group of 10 to 12 officers stationed at Fort Duncan Air Force Base crossed the border for authentic Mexican food and beer.
And whores.
I'm jesting. I am a jester. The wives were along for the trip.
At The Victory Club…The cook was missing!
The Maître de sprang like a (insert type of antelope here) into the kitchen. And, for 10 to 12 blood-lusting gringos, the first nachos were born: Grate Wisconsin cheese. Sprinkle atop a tortilla wedge. Add one jalapeno slice. Place into the Salamander.
Why Wisconsin cheese?
I'm just asking.
The Salamander is a badass name for a broiler, I feel.
That I will not matter is terrifying, I feel.
Nacho Libre says, “My life is good. Real good.”
I wish I could say the same.
But instead I write of nachos:
I returned to the Subaru for another nacho. A rodent hunched in the shadow of my front tire. Chewing on a French fry. Like a tiny ferret, but sleeker, with ruffled feathers of brown fur. A mink! A bit unbelievable. I knelt there, peering under. “Hey! Don't you touch it!” a small woman warned me. “It'll bite your ass!” How did it happen? How did everything spiral its way here? Clutching a bloated Asian carp. By the neck. Hugging its flesh. Now I want to inhale. Now I want to open my lungs and refold them.
I'm not sure what that means.
I leapt at the mink.
Everything above in italics is really about Sara.
I met Sara at a party, over a tray of nachos.
The party was a writer party so you had poetry and alcohol and hardwood floors and leather satchels and something about shadows and I know I heard either the word moon or fabric three times; and also very skinny eyeglasses.
The hostess's dog was racist.
Much to her embarrassment.
I remember how the nachos were symmetrical and I appreciated the effort.
Sara was shaking her head and laughing.
Sara was a shore rippled and titled beneath my feet.
She was from Chile and was once a medical student and had a body like a manifesto but I also admired her inner significance and also she drank a lot and I cannot tolerate anyone who cannot drink at least a lot or maybe even more but that's just me and most likely superficial but God I wish you could see the glow of Sara that evening, ethereal, moon-type, something blossoming in the circle of the earth like maybe just a hint of…
I should have asked her out right then.
Hesitation is a type of death.
Now I've lost Sara.
And it haunts me.
It ruins everything now. It's propelled forward. And I can't let it go, I'm sorry.
I'm going to get another beer and add three types of cheese to my nachos: cheddar, Monterey jack, Rico's Nacho Cheese Sauce.
Back into the hot oven.
I like that wall of heat on my face. It reminds me of something.
On the center rack, carefully and correctly
Don't fuck around. Quit fucking around. That one phrase: fucking around is every single day, and you know it, so just quit.
Stop wasting this very valuable and one-and-only life.
Make nachos, my friend.
Make nachos for every sentence.
For every child who first burned her finger on the oven and thought, “So this is how it's going to be.”
For every croon of cheese. For every vindication. Every blur.
For brown paper bags of spring onions.
For black beans unblocking your chi.
For avocado's formless freedom.
For a hipper beat of lettuce.
For Serrano peppers softly ticking in the cupboard.
For the 26 year old Melbourne man who ate packaged Mexican (Nachos to Go) and is now paralyzed for the rest of his life due to botulism.
(Who the fuck eats packaged nachos?)
For Kenny and Spenny.
For John David Lovelace and his girlfriend. His girlfriend mixes cheese and butter and pours them over her nachos.
(I'm not sure how I feel about the butter thing.)
For nacho cheese.
And cheese nachos.
(they are not the same)
For the world's largest order of nachos, 2,768lbs.
In the Guinness book/webpage if you really feel the need to look. If you must. An urge welling within like tears of a marionette.
Or do you hide your impulses, living an existence of Bad Faith?
If not, be sure to select a 2002 or later edition.
For tarred telephone poles calling friends over to dine.
For when I don't answer my phone even though I know it's my father and he's getting older and what type of person purposely ignores the kindest human being, the truly kindest, on this whole spinning egg?
For taste buds.
For 55 orders of nachos.
(The amount needed to fulfill your daily intake of Vitamin C.)
For my father's house, still and dark.
For Nacho Vidal, the porn actor.
Who is known for his extremely large penis.
Especially its girth.
(16.5 centimeters in circumference!)
Who clearly appears in gay porn but continues to claim he is heterosexual.
Not that I've ever seen gay porn.
(What was that? That cloud, did you see its shape? Greenland, dude. Motherfucking Greenland.)
For Ronald Lázaro García, the Bolivian defensive midfielder.
Nicknamed nacho.
For Ander Monson who has seen me eat nachos in Michigan, in Wisconsin, in Alabama, in Guam.
For glass slides of nachos.
For upbeat, old-fashioned lovely nachos.
For nachos strolling down the avenue.
For the instructional software for teaching undergraduate operating systems courses: Not Another Completely Heuristic Operating System.
Also known as NACHOS.
For the Nacho King kiosks you can find all over the Philippines.
For a slow scream of nachos across a yellow bridge.
For gold triangles.
For Kurt Russell eating nachos in that cool bar scene of Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof.
For baseball park nachos.
For sour cream.
For kawakawa peppers.
For all those worlds of salsa.
For Jimmy Eat World front-man Adam Lazarra who says, “We tried to eat nachos every single day. I have no idea why — maybe to unwind from being on the road for so long — but we would eat nachos every day. Oh, and I got some caps put on my teeth. And I got a haircut."
For every Sara.
For every Sara.
For every Sara in your life, you could have, and should have embraced.
I finished my fourth beer now.
I feel it now, inside me.
Along with my usual state: a vague feeling of disappointment.
Friday's nachos are a disappointment.
Applebee's nachos are a disappointment.
Any order of nachos in England are a disappointment, but particularly avoid The Monster Mex in Edinburgh.
I shit you not.
I will not lead you astray.
I will not lead you.
I once ate nachos for 41 consecutive days.
Nacho Vidal married a supermodel and lives in a mansion.
So the idea of leading a life of questionable actions and then bad things happening later doesn't really apply.
If you carried around that idea.
And think porn is a questionable action.
Why I am writing about porn again?
Freud noted that every day, every second we are trying desperately to keep a lid on our inner drives, our urges, mostly for:
Power.
Sex.
And hunger.
Having eaten only a small part.
Having eaten only a small part of all possible nachos, men rise up and disappear as smoke, knowing only what each one has tasted.
Who drinks this early?
I will sell you my shotgun, for money to fund the writers.
There goes my last beer.
There goes my jangling leash.
Where are you, mother?
I am removing my nachos from the oven now.
I am adding much more hot sauce that you would.
Hot sauce makes me feel more alive.
Opiate receptors do glow.
Serotonin shivers.
Behind a wall of hot sauce, I found another beer!
I suppose this is an achievement.
I feel alive now.
I am alive now.
I am becoming full.
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I love nachos.
if this story were nachos and I at the top chips, would there be less cheesy goodness inside? I think not!
This is great. I love all the divergences and non sequiturs, which somehow hold this together. And nachos are always a worthy topic...
this is the best story I've ever read about cheese foods
If I email you and ask you to write a story about...say... soy cheese, would it be as juicy? My guess is no. You only write this brilliantly about real cheese products, right?
This is great. Am I right in guessing, assuming, who asked you to write about nachos?
i found this little dive tex mex place in southern michigan called the cowboy grille. they serve these cowboys nachos and they're pretty good. i wish i could mail them to you for the star rating but by the time you get them they would not be good. if you're ever in michigan let me know and we can eat cowboy nachos.
I think SA has the best tortillas in Texas. But I have not had tortillas in the border towns in years, so I could be wrong. Still, I think the tortillas in SA are better than the tortillas in Dallas.
I like this a lot, and I like reading about Jenny McCarthy.
The ending is really something. I read the last part quickly, because the momentum was getting me to do that, I think.
So, this reads the way I feel I am when I am drinking and feeling very smart, but it is probably much smarter and more fun (funner?) than I am when I am drinking.
I like the declarative sentences. That is something I do, speak in declarative sentences, when I drink.
Not that it matters what I do when I drink, just that I think this piece has verisimilitude. It has depth but it is also fun to read.
Oh, boy. I read this after Marcy's "Cow Juice."
Sara, indeed.
This is smart and and funny and sad and interesting. Follow-you-anywhere writing and I like that you the pilot know that.
I wouldn't have been able to not try that baguette.
Thanks for the comments folks. Sonora Review just took this essay!
Cool.
I bet AZ knows nachos.
Sean
oh, I really like this!
Love this piece, how you string all the sentences out like this, what you make of the word association, how you make me think maybe I should love nachos more than I have.
Congrats on Sonora Review -- this is terrific writing! Love all the directions it took me in (and I haven't even been drinking...yet). I was born in Colorado and now live in New Mexico -- nachos are a very important food group!
Sean, this is the greatest nacho essay of all time.
That's awesome that Sonora took this! Loved it. Jealous of it. Want to write something like it. Copying you. Copying...
Fun writing, with great diversions and pith amongst the grease. Lots to love in there. Why not half as long, though? But I see it's already been published, so right on!
Funny and scary.
There was talk at the Baltimore 510 readings (or at least the drinking establishment thereafter) that Blake Butler was the true expert on nachos. He did nothing to dissuade such talk. Just putting it out there for consumption.
"Body like a manifesto" is an awesome line. This is poetry, yes? This should be in a book so I can turn the pages instead of scrolling downwards. This poem needs to be on pages that turn.
Obviously I'm hungry now.
Blake Butler knows nothing about nachos.
My kind of story!
Brilliant and riotous!
Thank you all for the comments, very kind.