And other times, I eat no dinner at all

"It is inconceivable how hearty I eat and how comfortable I felt myself after it."
-James Boswell, London Journal, Dec. 25, 1762

This sentiment could well sum up my entire experience living in France for the past six months. I have pushed the limits of ingestion in every way possible: quantity, quality, frequency. I have eaten more fine meals, stuffed with richer ingredients, more often, than ever before in my life. And all the way along, I seemed to be developing a constantly increasing tolerance for this diet, indicated by a complete lack of the typical bouts of indigestion that I typically suffer. I reveled in this newfound ability to eat massive amounts of fat and drink large quantities of wine late in the evening and then sleep peacefully afterwards, without taking so much as a Pepcid. I ate constantly questionable things, too: barely cooked eggs, raw shellfish, bloody meat, chicken that had been just lightly kissed with heat. I felt in better health than ever before. This was my own version of the French Paradox.

Then, on Saturday, the sun went down. I climbed into bed, and then proceeded to spend the next fifteen hours huddled in the fetal position or hunched in the bathroom, green and pasty and miserable, undeniably a victim of food poisoning. I'm not going to go into where I got it and how I know for sure, because I don't think it's fair to lay those sorts of accusations on a specific restaurant when it's an almost impossible thing to prove.

I consider food poisoning to be the toll I must occasionally pay as I spend my life traveling along the Great Highway of Joyous and Daring Eating. I am fairly paranoid about it, and often try to order things sensibly in order to cut down on the possibility (going with the house specialty rather than choosing some arcane item off the dusty back corner of the menu is one tip I can offer), but in the end, to go to a restaurant means that you agree to relinquish control over what you are eating and how it may have been prepared. You have to accept the risks as you enjoy the benefits.

Food poisoning brings you in touch with your animal self. Your body commits atrocities you didn't think possible. I have endured a fair number of poisonings already in my time; there was the rotten cottage cheese in my hippie co-op in college, the month of increasingly debilitating campylobacter after an ill-chosen chicken dish in London's Chinatown, the day of horrific purging after James' boss succeeded in poisoning his entire company and all their loved ones with room-temperature meatloaf at a cheery spring picnic in Seattle. It is always undeniably awful.

Lots of people think Paul Theroux's a jerk, or at the very least a killjoy when it comes to writing about travel, but I disagree. I have always loved the chapter in Fresh Air Fiend entitled, "Fever Chart: Parasites I Have Known." There is no better way to get through a nasty bout of buggies than by curling up with good old Paul and reading about the time Malawi Bob had to dig forty maggots out of his back by candlelight. That's apt to make anybody feel more positive about their situation. (And yet, even Theroux himself distances himself from my fascination for the gory details; "Who wants to read about it?" he asks. I do, Paul! I do!).

But maybe you don't. So I'm going back to bed now.