Chicken Burrito, Naked Like My Yearning

I’ve never been to Taco Bell. In fact, not only have I never been, but it is legally impossible for me to go there.

Let me explain.

I never even knew about Taco Bell in Australia (where all my stuff is) until it was too late to go. Travel restrictions here mean I can’t go interstate, and I can’t go to Melbourne, where the only two Victorian stores are. It’s galling because there are two new stores being opened in New South Wales (our cunty upstairs neighbours), which I also can’t go to. 

Feeling a hole in my life, I follow Taco Bell Australia on Instagram instead. They’re announcing the new stores this week, and I sit staring at the opening celebration photographs, complete with foil taco-shaped balloons declaring ‘Taco bout a party’. I try and peer around the balloons to see the menu, to no avail. I wonder what it looks like inside.

Is there anything sadder than watching a party you weren’t invited to on social media? Like someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and say ‘Girl why aren’t you here yet?’ and I can just laugh and put my hair up and some shoes on and go be part of the fun. Here and now, I’m lucky that Instagram will even let me zoom in, but all it’s doing is letting me get closer to the things I can’t reach.

I go to Tacobell.com.au and check out the menu. I’m greeted with the Naked Chicken Taco, the kind of abomination I want to get my hands dirty with. I wonder if it’s really crunchy, or that soft crumbed chicken that melts in your mouth instead. I study the picture carefully. I browse the menu, wondering what I would order if I could go. Right now the Boss Burrito looks amazing, but I know I have days where the Crunchwrap Supreme would be the answer to my problems.

Two years ago there were no Taco Bells in Australia. There are now fourteen restaurants and I cannot go to a single one. Somehow that’s even worse. 

I watch videos on YouTube. I see the guy who, in 2013, licked a stacked pile of taco shells and got caught on camera, and I get it. Imagine soft tongues on rough shells, the heady scent of Taco Bell taco shells right up against your nose, mixed with heat and the scent of saliva, like a passionate, stolen kiss in a supply closet. I briefly watch the video fallout to that incident, news presenters with staid tones, and I’m bored by the bureaucracy. Bored by the drama. Angry at people who went to Taco Bell and used their moment to complain about things that didn’t happen, instead of savouring the things that did.

I lie in bed at night, thinking about what I would do if I could sneak into the Taco Bell kitchen when no one else was there. I think about burying my hands deep into the guac trays, cold, protein-rich sludge sinking between my fingers and under my nails. I think of leaning palms flat into the metal bean containers, feeling their fragile little skins give way under my hands, spilling their pulpy innards into a muck that I squash against the bottom of the tray as my hand slides across the yielding metal surface. Dusty fingers from floured tortillas. Stolen moments with crispy grilled cheese that stayed too long on the cooktop, browned crusty forbidden snacks. Even the drinks fridge is alluring, bright lights flickering like batting eyelashes.

Can a kitchen flirt?

I wonder if they’d understand why I did it. I wonder if it was better that I go to the kitchen when no one else was there, keep my sins to myself, rather than dash in while it was open and full of people. Instead, this lustful night-time orgy of touch and smell, even though everything would be tainted by the weird, muted dusty smell of refrigeration, just one more step into the alienation. I wonder how long I would need to leave these things out of the fridge to feel them at room temperature, closer to the heat of a living thing? Would it be the same if I microwaved them? I’m sure they have microwaves in their kitchens, even if they barely use them. I wonder how many Cheesy Swirls I can microwave at once, and what I’ll do with them when they’re all ready, warm enough to eat, but not hot enough to burn me. Or maybe they will be, and that can be the punishment for my transgressions.

Maybe I’ll eat them as I rest on piles of crushed taco shells, crumbled into tiny sharp points for me to kneel on as I eat my stolen bounty. The pain will remind me that what I’m doing is wrong. That in another world I could have been lining up at the front counter, mulling over my order, changing my mind as each person in front of me was served. Maybe the toughest choice would have been deciding when it was worth the extra $2 for guac (of course it is). Instead I’m sitting here, in my mind, bare legs on crushed tacos in the kitchen of an abandoned restaurant in a suburb where I legally cannot be, hands full of bread wrapped in poorly microwaved cheese, grease running down my hands. 

I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lonely.