Taco Hell at Forty
A rotting tooth, a crumbling body, and a desperate journey to Taco Bell in Wuhan become the backdrop for a reflection on health, aging, and the quiet inevitability of decline.
One of my teeth is rotting. I broke it as a pre-teen, and for whatever reason it needed to be fixed only once. Then the fracture gradually started staining, and now things have gotten out of hand and the rot has set in.
I worried about it for a few days and considered whether I should go to a dentist here in China (some insurance) or next time I’m in Canada (no insurance). But then another ailment appeared. After a few successive days of bad food decisions, I began having extremely bad constipation and bloating, which then morphed into lower-back pain, which started radiating into my legs. My body was falling apart.
The first thing to address was the digestive issues. A student who helps me with things offered to give me some laxatives (and for some reason also sent a photo of the box and pills). Ultimately, I decided to stay closer to holistic remedies and to the natural world. Which is to say that I chose to go to Taco Bell China for the first time.
Because I’ve always been an extremely health-conscious person, I walked the thirty minutes to The Bell after chugging a canned cocktail called Rio (ABV 8%). This wasn’t going to be easy. It had been around two decades since I’d eaten at the chain my late father, ever the adept wordsmith, referred to alternately as Taco Smell and Taco Hell. On my walk I skirted around one of Wuhan’s many street-food areas (due to the mixture of smells that sometimes bothers me), and I wondered about the unknown odours I’d be exposed to before long. My legs were feeling better, but my back still hurt.
The restaurant was clean as well as completely empty. I ordered two beef tacos (one soft, one hard), accompanied by French fries and a cola. This was my choice largely because the combo was included in the “Explosive Deals” section of the menu, which sounded promising given my concerns. I added sour cream for the equivalent of about fifty cents. The tacos themselves were fine — they were actually better than I remember from when I was a kid in Hamilton. Still, it was a bad-news-good-news scenario. The bad news was that the sour cream was more like clay or putty; the good news was that I didn’t die of a heart attack on the walk home.
The remedy worked, mostly, but my digestive issues persist. I know how lucky I am that I’ve never experienced any serious health problem in my life. I’ve never broken a bone, never been admitted to hospital, never undergone surgery, never needed to do anything more than talk to a university counsellor about being sad or anxious. I am well aware that this will change, as it does for all of us. To paraphrase Shane Neilson, everyone reading this will someday be considered disabled (if they are not already).
Sitting in the empty Taco Bell, considering how much of the sour cream to deploy, I saw someone’s hunched-over reflection in the mirror. It took a moment to realize that it was me. I’m not overweight, but I’m also no longer thin like I had been for my entire life. It was hard to accept the new figure in the glass. I looked away and took another bite.