Death By Chipotle

“What are you getting?” Haley asked.

Inching my way forward in the Chipotle queue, I didn’t know I would be better running from the familiar restaurant as fast as my legs would carry me.

I was in Los Angeles for the first time- visiting my friend Haley as a high school graduation present to myself. Knowing that L.A. has some of the best Mexican food in the U.S., my choice to grab chipotle for dinner can only be explained as youthful stubbornness.

Traveling on my own for the first time, I wanted to flex my newfound freedom from my parents. They made it a habit to drag me on walking tours, coerce me into museums, and pick well reviewed local restaurants when we traveled as a family. Picking chipotle for dinner felt like a form of rebellion.

“I’m getting the salad,” I replied, smirking with self-satisfaction at my healthy choice.

“Get the bowl” she said, ensuring me that you get more food for the price. I didn’t listen, and I watched with glee as rice, beans, chicken, salsa, sour cream, corn, and cheese were heaped over a bed of romaine lettuce. That lettuce erased the calories of the extra fixings and turned my massive deconstructed burrito bomb into a healthy side salad for one.

I hungrily ravaged my “salad,” and experienced the slight discomfort that accompanies the completion of a large meal. Haley and I abandoned our nighttime plans and went to sleep that full, content, and ready for the packed day ahead. I woke up a few hours later and proceeded to hurl over the side of the bed, corn and salsa splattering the wall like some sick version of abstract art. Pollock had gotten creative, layering chunks of roadkill among pellets of mouse droppings, curdled milk, and dollops of rotting intestine.

Haley followed the smell of rancid mystery meat to the bathroom, where she found me in my own personal vomitorium. Laying on the cold tile floor, I could feel the E.coli infected lettuce wriggling in my stomach like a pile of hagfish, their slimy exteriors slipping over one another until they were knotted tightly.

“I feel fine!” Haley exclaimed, eliciting unwarranted hatred that boiled up from the depths of my gut like lava from a volcano.

A few days later, I was able to resume my vacation. That unfortunate incident is just a memory I try to forget. I am quite successful, except, of course, when I witness some poor soul eating a chipotle bowl. The content of my stomach threatens to escape. Try as I might, I cannot ignore the similarity between their meal and the contents of the toilet bowl on that fateful day.