The house that hot links built

In my life I have been middle class enough to know what semi "fancy" food should taste like, keeping in mind that the word fancy is being used in a mid eighties Oroville couple with a son would be making for dinner kind of way. Something that would go well with freshly blended homemade margaritas (mix and tequila) served in a wine glass. If it was my fathers choice (which was most nights) it would be some sort of steak, with a side of steak and steak juice to wash it all down with. If it was up to my mother perhaps something a bit more sophisticated like stir fry, you know something light before you sat down to summon the spirits haunting whichever house we lived in at the time with a Ouija board. You  just cant chase down those rascally spirits with a stomach full of pork-chops.  If I had a quarter for every time my mother was possessed by a ghost during a seance (add a little accent above the e) I would be well off enough to pay for therapy. I have also been poor. Poor enough that perhaps my cousins and I would put food coloring in water and pretend it was soda, the thing we wanted to be consuming at all times. So you could say that when I was 22 and moved back to San Diego with no job, 300 hundred dollars, and dreams of becoming a club kid, that I would be prepared to be poor again. I suppose there is no way to prepare yourself to be poor, except for smoking mass amounts of other peoples pot and having no aversion to a diet of jack in the box tacos. like I said...I know "fancy". I moved in with my friend Maurice and supposedly his mother Marion. Though she only stopped by to drop off boxes of Eagles paraphernalia. Not the group, the sports team. What they played I have no idea, but I am thankful for role they inadvertently played in my life in that house, which I'll get to. This house wasn't so terrible. It was located pretty much in the part of San diego that shares a border with Arizona. A good place for people to go to get away from the hustle and bustle that is San Diego proper. You might even have your second home here if you preferred crack heads as lawn ornaments instead of a bird bath or a garden gnome. It had its perks. At the end of my street was a deli housed inside of what was probably the carcass of a long dead taco bell. There was a 7-11 too. Which came in useful when my street was shut down by the cops because of a hostage situation. Time for a big gulp. We didn't complain cause Maurice and I didn't have to pay rent, turned out later that Marion felt that way too. So what money we did have obviously went to pot, booze, and clothes that we cut up and wore to electroclash clubs. No money for food. When your poor, you must prioritize. So we ate would we could find....in the house. not unlike raccoons or a pet hamster you lost and never found. Like that hamster, we got by. It was there that I learned that one could survive on a diet of frenchs' fried onions, bacon bits, and hot links. All of them being well aged. Once those things ran out, then it was time to start getting resourceful. We starting searching the other rooms as if we were the flowers that snuck out of the attic. In Marions' room we hit a jackpot.  One of those giant boxes of Eagles crap, was full of small bags of novelty potato chips. But these things were sacred. These things marion needed. She needed to specially order this box of chips, so at first we treated it like the ark of the covenant. You cant leave it alone but you dare not open it. But you get high enough and you'll do anything. We were careful, one bag here and there and no one notices. Then it got to the point where we had eaten over half the box and it was "fuck it, lets eat this shit" time. And we did. After that there was only one thing left. One thing that we kept in the back of the cupboard because it symbolized the end. The one thing we wanted to eat the whole time, but didn't because we knew that at some point we would run out of food, and wanted to go out in style. So we had to do it. We had to bust out the generic boxed cake mix. It was time. We had all the components because we had no other foods that required them. One egg, that stuck around because what are you gonna do with one egg, really? And water. Yah, one of those real decadent cake mixes. So we got high. We got so high that I swear I heard someone pounding on the door saying something about "rent" and "eviction". Wasted.  After we were good and high it was time to create a masterpiece. We set it all up, followed the extremely complicated directions, and got ready to pour it into a bunt pan, a nice touch we thought. But then I saw it. An old banana. It was like god pointed it out to me and said, "that brown thing, put that in your food." I being the professional chef I knew I was at that moment, listened to him. I chopped up the pudding like banana and threw it in the mix. Excited and proud of myself for realizing its potential. Into the oven and 30 minutes later its ready to be showcased. We took it out and let it cool, talking the whole time about"how good this shits gonna be". It cools and I pick it up, get a good grip, and with a smile flip it over onto a plate. I lift the pan away slowly with an expression of "Look what I did". It was rosemary's baby. What was on that plate looked like something out of the prop room of a USA channel horror movie. Something that would be left behind by the toxic avenger. It even moved. It quivered to the touch. Who knew that baking had to be precise even with a cake where the main ingredient is water. It needed a name, even the un-holy needs a name. We called it the High cake. We consumed it and buried the bones in hallowed ground. We got evicted soon after. Co-incidence? I don't think so.