Culture . 04/21/2008 01:16 AM . Matthew Zehnder

Returning from a recent 4 AM trip to Dulles International to drop off a friend who had visited for spring break, I indulged a desire that I frequently satiate on early morning airport trips and rarely at any other time. Stopping at McDonald’s, I ordered a sausage, egg and cheese McGriddle, two greasy hash browns and a cup of oily black coffee. Anyone who knows me will tell you that such eating habits, for me, are quite out of character. Having once escaped the college-student dependence upon cafeteria slop, pasta and Taco Bell, I eat quite healthily as a rule. Breakfast is typically grapefruit or a banana, lunch a salad or some other form of vegetable and dinner, if eaten, slightly heartier but still wholesome. Other than the aforementioned McDonald’s extravagance, I haven’t eaten fast food for six months. As to the watery black liquid that McDonald’s passes off to consumers as coffee, well, my coffee snobbery is such a highly cultivated art as to be nearly a part of my personality.

Even so, the enjoyment of fast food is not an atypical vice. Practically no one raised in the America of today can grow up without at minimum an infrequent and actively suppressed enjoyment of the excessive salt, artery-clogging grease and sugar and caffeine charged beverages that characterize this cuisine. Considering my background, my nationality and the rarity of my indulgence, I don’t fault myself the enjoyment. I did notice very quickly, however, that my trips to McDonald’s for hash browns and greasy breakfast sandwiches dwindled until they occurred, seemingly by a somewhat subconscious design, only as a companion to early morning trips to the airport either to pick someone up or drop them off. These were by no means the only opportunities I had to visit the golden arches. I am frequently up early on Saturday mornings for various errands and previously neglected responsibilities and a quick trip through the drive-thru would seem like a perfect accompaniment to that sort of activity.

Another aspect to the picture, however, is that despite the guilty enjoyment I experience from McDonald’s breakfast, it is never complete. No matter how thoroughly I feel the circumstances justify my indulgence, the pleasure is always marred by the distinct impression that while devouring the food I am behaving as a, for lack of a more delicate term, shameless consumer whore. Think about it. McDonald’s is a chain of fast food restaurants whose food, far from providing any nutritional content, actually deconstructs the essential composition of the human body through excessive quantities of fats, sodium, refined sugars and other toxins. Chemicals, dyes and preservatives foreign to any molecular structure found within the human frame fill the processed meats, frozen potato substance, heavy oils and bleached breads that compose the typical McDonald’s meal. In addition to the poor quality of the food served is the nature of the establishment itself. A faceless, repetitive and mass-produced chain, McDonald’s offers no connection or identity with its geographic locale, nothing unique or particular, nothing to recommend it beyond convenience, ease and the ability to easily satisfy a gluttonous rapacity.

Reflecting upon this most recent trip to the airport and accompanying run to McDonald’s for breakfast, I was finally able to pinpoint why I am able to comfortably enjoy a trip to McDonald’s on my way home from the airport but feel intensely guilty, even sacrilegious, doing so at any other time. This realization came when I remembered the last McDonald’s breakfast I had eaten, at five AM, directly after driving all night to return to Virginia from visiting my parents for Christmas break. The same fundamental and deep-seated loneliness and individuality that grips the early morning airline passenger or the all-night driver also touches the soul of the solitary consumer of fast food, and the sense of identity thus created makes the two activities a natural fit.

Indisputably, a very strong underlying sense of individuality lies at the very core of the American identity. Americans, no matter the effort they put into community-building, the emphasis they place upon family, or the rewards they grant to the performance of civic obligation, fundamentally believe themselves autonomous individuals. As such, however, the distant yet very real possibility of isolation and loneliness is a constant and accepted part of their existence. The average American, for whom this potentiality rarely if ever manifests, never considers it in his active and day to day life. Even for those who never encounter the full realization of this outcome, however, the threat of it still lurks behind the veil of existence, creeping out at odd moments and in odd corners where the cracks in the weary façade of their existence are most prominent. Driving alone on long road trips. Flying solo early in the morning, leaving the warmth and light for the cold and the darkness. Acquiring necessary human sustenance without the equivalent and accompanying necessity of human companionship. This hidden, half-acknowledged part of the modern American psyche lurks in uncomfortable tension with the overall pleasant face of our existence.

I believe this is why I can enjoy the early morning ritual of trips to the airport followed by indulging in a McDonald’s breakfast meal without the pangs of conscience that would accompany the latter behavior under any other conditions. While uncomfortable and unpleasant, the sense of isolation, of aloneness, of literally existing solitary in one’s own universe that comes with this sort of activity is a direct derivation of the same fundamental elements of modern American culture and society that has produced Wal-Mart, congested highways, peep shows, iPods, cell phones, handheld DVD players, drive-thrus, and McDonald’s. As such, while uncomfortable and unpleasant, while perhaps making us feel uneasy, it is also an essential undercurrent of our cultural heritage and thus our individual identities. Dr. Jekyll may have been ashamed of and appalled by the actions of Mr. Hyde, but he never stopped consorting with his violent alter-ego. On some instinctual level it felt natural to become Mr. Hyde, because Mr. Hyde was an essential part of who he was.

Matthew Zehnder is a freelance writer.


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