Man vs Cake
Newsletter 2026-03-08
I had only been away for a quick trip to the restroom. In my absence, a challenge was issued in my name.
I returned to the table. Everyone looked at me expectantly.
“We told them you could finish it,” my wife Lola said.
I looked at the cake. Of course I could finish it. If given enough time, there’s nothing I can’t eat. It goes back to that old joke/philosophical conundrum, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time. There was a guy in France who consumed an entire airplane. He blended it up and swallowed it bit by bit over years, letting it pass through his body in quantities small enough to not be lethal. And people think I have dumb hobbies. At least most of the things I eat are meant for human consumption. I’ve had a few hot dogs that might have straddled that line.
The cake challenge hadn’t been issued with infinite time in mind. We were at a local charity banquet raising money for teachers. The women at the table—Lola and our friend, Delilah—meant I could eat the rest of the cake before the evening ended at the disappointingly early time of 9 p.m., just a few minutes hence. Normally, the ladies in my life try to slow me down before I destroy myself. I’m not used to them egging me on with something that sounded like it would have been my idea in the first place. Everything about this seemed like a bad idea. It was definitely a trap.
I should clarify that this challenge had not been issued with pride. It was said in the same tone that you might use to say that your animal hoarder friend would probably be willing to take in a few more cats. Nobody actually wanted to see me eat an entire cake. When Lola and Delilah heard the other men at the table gripe that they were too full to eat another bite, they sensed weakness. They weren’t so much building me up as tearing those other guys down. They had no desire to watch me physically demonstrate my greatest character flaw, but my second greatest character flaw is that I take all challenges at face value. Lola made a critical mistake by repeating that conversation to me. Now the other men knew that I knew the women at the table had said those guys couldn’t finish the cake but I could. There was absolutely no getting out of this. I had to eat this cake as fast as I could in front of an audience. It wasn’t a trap. It was a dream come true.
Well, almost. My foe was a spice cake, which absolutely no one likes. It was my own fault for delegating the decision. The annual charity dinner always ends with a dessert dash, a competition to see who can overpay for a cake by the most. The table that contributes the highest dollar amount gets to pick from the dessert table first, followed by the table that donated the second most, and so on. This year, we were not at a table of high rollers. Besides Lola, me, and our friends, Peter and Delilah, we were seated with a hodgepodge of random people we didn’t know. They were regular working folk like us, not high-value corporate donors. Lola and I contributed fifty bucks, and the other guests at the table threw in roughly the same. It was a lot for a single dessert item, but not much when compared with the systemic problem of underfunded teachers who can’t afford to buy school supplies. It was the orphan crushing machine meme in real life. I was going to write several sentences explaining it, but I realized that’s the most boomer thing I could do. It’s also a thing I do often in real life in actual conversation. I shouldn’t be allowed to interact with people face-to-face. I’ve been banished to the internet for a reason.
After our paltry sum was tallied, the announcer said we would be picking near the back of the order. None of us was particularly eager to make that walk of shame. We nominated one of the guys we didn’t know, who reluctantly caved in to peer pressure. Lola and Delilah gave him specific instructions on their top choices. At the dessert table, he discovered that all of those were gone. He was now outside the bounds of female guidance, a dangerous position for any man. The volunteer at the table suggested that he take the spice cake. She wasn’t helping him out. She was dumping a dud on a clueless mark. Eager to end the public humiliation the rest of us had forced upon him, he quickly agreed. He returned to our table with the spice cake, the worst of all possible cakes, save for carrot cake, which is just a more specifically flavored spice cake variant. Everyone was disappointed, but there are no do-overs when finishing near last place for charity. This was what we had to eat. I quickly demolished a proportional slice and disappeared to the bathroom for non-cake reasons. When I returned, I discovered the challenge. My very manhood was at stake.
When the other guys said they couldn’t eat another bite of cake, perhaps they hadn’t meant it. Maybe the guy who picked the cake realized his mistake and just wanted to be exposed to as little of the subpar flavor as possible. As for the other guy, I’d estimate he was 6’4 to 6’6 and weighed more than 300 lbs. He was twice the man as me literally and figuratively. He claimed he was too full from the all-you-can-eat buffet beforehand. I hadn’t been watching him closely, but I only recalled seeing him with one plate of food. It was hardly an amount that should have incapacitated a human of those respectable dimensions. The women might not have been calling out the men’s weakness but simply their food waste. The point of the evening wasn’t to get the most value for the money we had donated, but it did seem excessively imprudent to spend that money for a cake that we didn’t even eat. There was roughly a quarter of it left on the platter. Everyone watched me to see if I would actually eat it or if the ladies had simply been full of bluster. I picked up my fork. It was game time.
I don’t have any pictures of this cake. I ate it far too fast. It’s why I couldn’t be an Instagram food influencer. Anything on my plate would disappear before the shutter snapped. I’m bad at gauging the dimensions of food because the size doesn’t matter. When I look at a portion of anything to assess whether or not I could eat it, the answer is always yes. That’s especially true with cake, which condenses down to practically nothing after even the smallest amount of chewing. Imagine if that orphan crushing machine instead crushed baked goods. Even the biggest cake could be compacted into the size of an aspirin. I’d love to take a triple decker chocolate cake in pill form. The spice cake wasn’t that wide but was very tall. The first piece I had, when laid on its side, spanned my plate from edge to edge. I excel at comparing items of equally unknown dimensions to keep the picture murky. However big you’re thinking, double it to make this story more epic. It’s not hyperbole if you’re the one who exaggerates on my behalf. The section of cake left on the platter was the equivalent of three or four more slices of that size, amounting to about a quarter of the cake. In other words, it wasn’t enough to even chew.
I ate the rest of the cake, then scraped off the frosting on the platter and ate that, too. The two men on the other side of the table were impressed. No, that’s not right. The word I’m looking for is horrified. Their eyes said, “Well, that’s a thing I didn’t need to see.” I expect they would have had the same reaction after watching a boa constrictor swallow a camel.
There was no applause. The other men quickly left the table, I’m sure for reasons completely unrelated to me. It was yet another moment when I was reminded that my body simply functions differently than most people’s. I don’t get full. I stop eating when I run out of food or when I have to consciously limit myself so there will be enough left for others. My main form of portion control is to simply not be in the same place as things I can eat. That assumes the food actually tastes good. The spice cake had the excellent natural defense of being disgusting. I would have left the rest of it alone had I not been challenged. That’s not to say I’m immune to the laws of thermodynamics. If I eat too much, I gain weight rapidly. I also lose it quickly due to the simple fact that I’m always hungry. I’m starving when I’m overfed and I’m starving when I’m on a diet, so the discomfort of one really isn’t that different from the discomfort of the other. I just have to make sure I don’t accidentally cross paths with food I don’t need. If I should happen to encounter an unguarded package of Oreos, I’ll definitely eat the entire thing.
This begs the question of what would have happened if I had failed to eat the rest of the cake. Perhaps Lola and Delilah would have respected me more. Not turning into a trash panda could have shown character growth. There’s always a chance I’ll spontaneously develop self-control. In hindsight, I misinterpreted that challenge from the start. They weren’t saying that being able to eat more than those other dudes made me more of a man. They were displaying me like a carnival side show. The conversation would have been very similar if I were double-jointed and could twist myself into a pretzel, although they might not have asked me to do that at the table.
The real test of manhood isn’t of consumption, but of strength. I’m still haunted by the time several years ago when I couldn’t open a jar but Peter could. All my years of lifting weights were immediately invalidated. Everyone forgot about it, except for me. For years afterwards, every time I saw a jar of spaghetti sauce, I visibly winced. Peter noticed. Recently, when Lola and I visited his house, he offered me a cup with a lid that he said he hadn’t been able to open. I struggled mightily, but I managed to pop off the top. I’ve never been so relieved in my life. After suffering years of shame, I would have kept applying pressure until my hand exploded. I was delighted the lid gave way first. I don’t have time for another surgery. Even though Peter likely set up the whole situation to assuage my ego, I eagerly took the win. The cake challenge had a different vibe. Nobody who knew me actually doubted I could do it. I was merely confirming their preexisting disappointment. At least I was useful. No one had to deal with the burden of taking home mediocre cake. It was simply gone, never to trouble us again. Not a single crumb was wasted. I might be an embarrassment, but at least I’m eco-friendly.
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.
James
Rats! If you had invited me, I would have gladly devoured a spice cake! It’s one of my favorites second only to carrot cake. 😁 way to take one for the team though, especially since you don’t like it! Congratulations 🎉
Congratulations on both the cake and jar victories! I'm not there yet with the latter, as I still rarely can open these, unlike my mum who prepares them and is the only one in the family to know the proper way of applying pressure.
I had my case of the eating triumph, though, just as my brother. One time I consumed a 1 kg steak in one sitting at family dinner, while he ate a similarly large calzone in a restaurant. For his achievement he was promised an extra internet data package by my uncle, which sadly he never received. Mine, though, was already a bribe prize for doing a favor to my uncle, but sure was he impressed!