My Guilty Pleasure

"The late nights are mine alone, and I'll spend them however I damn well please"

- By Omar El Akkad

ON THE northeast side of Portland is a pastry shop called Pix Patisserie. During the early days of the pandemic, when Pix was struggling to respond to restrictions, the owner had the idea to install a pair of dessert vending machines in the front courtyard. Today, these semi-brutalist things are probably responsible for most of Pix's sales. They're accessible twenty-four hours a day. If you feel like it, you can go there just before dawn, feed a machine $12 (US), and watch the sunrise while eating a chocolate mousse contraption named-brace yourself-Un Fantôme, Un Couteau, Une Nuit.

Maybe there are better ways to spend your time. I doubt it, though.

There's this annoying thing people sometimes do where they talk about something obviously virtuous as though it were a dirty little secret. My guilty pleasure? Well, sometimes, I do Pilates without even stretching first! This is awful; you should not associate with people who do this.

My guilty pleasure is eating garbage food in the middle of the night. Before we go any further, I should note that both parts of this predilection are equally vital. Eating garbage food at normal hours is just life; eating radishes at three in the morning is plainly sociopathic.