  ODE TO A CHOCOLATE PECAN PIE Jeff was out of the country helping third world people build ovens. I was still a Web design student at The Art Institute of Atlanta and to this day, I still don't understand why the "The" in "The Art Institute of Atlanta" is capitalized.
Sometimes I used to lay awake in bed mulling it over in my head until I thought I might lose my mind, but I digress. I was typing code on my computer. TIPPITY-TYPE-TYPE! TIPPETY-TYPE-TYPE! The door bell rang and it was Jeff from down the street. Did I want to go to dinner? Sure. We drove over to East Atlanta in his retro station wagon as he inhaled on a cigarette and introduced me to he who is known as Radiohead. We dined at new restaurant called Twang. I liked to say the name and did so many times that evening. I would always say the name with an echo as if I had just tapped a tuning fork. "TWANGGGGG! " We had a delicious, unforgettable dinner.
(Don't ask me what it was. ) For dessert, Jeff chose watermelon sorbet, but with one look at the menu I saw the one word that makes me smile bigger than a cat seeing a quad amputee rodent hopping across the kitchen floor.... chocolate pecan pie. Mmmmmm.... I can close my eyes and smell it even now. My tongue longs to know the textures of the pecan ridges and melted chocolate chunks again. I ate it slowly and investigated every crevice of my fork with my urgent tongue the way most bio-hazard teams mop up a toxic spill.
The next day, lust was in my heart when I thought about that pie. "I must have it again," I thought to myself. When Jeff returned, we flew over to East Atlanta in my Miata, eager to share the secret joys of such a heavenly concoction. With each passing block, I could feel myself once again experiencing its chocolatey pecanessence, but alas, when we walked up to the door of the restaurant, it was boarded up, closed and cold. There was no longer any warmnth from freshly baked chocolate pecan pie issuing forth from Mama's oven.
I grabbed the door firmly and shook it so hard that the alarm went off. Defeated, I hung my head and wept. "Curse those Roman barbarians! " Jeff pulled his baseball cap down on his head and drug me down the street to Grant Central and the police arrived. Inside, he ordered a pizza for us to share. "It's a pie to," he offered cheerfully. I half-smiled back and thought to myself, "Yes, but it's not the same thing.
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