A groovy kind of love

"I want you, you know, I want you so bad and it's driving me mad, it's driving me mad." - The Beatles.

It's 2 a.m. and this is not right. A couple sheets to the wind and I get the craving for this - something irresistible as sin. And I can't go and I can't go and I can't go there again. It's too much French-movie debauchery.

But the thought of being back in my room later, with the opportunity to undress and stick my face right in it is too much to bear, the way Friday afternoon work makes you feel the need for release from office tunnel vision.

And, because I'm weak and in need of this kind of love, I'm in my car at 2:03.

I make a left.

I make a right.

I make another right.

And I'm in line, with other guys and gals who heard the late night call of the flesh.

The breakfast burrito.

I remember when it started, this obsessional love affair. It was about April of last year and I was working in Phoenix, coming down to Tucson on the weekends. My friend Mark worked at the kinko's on Speedway and he worked pretty much all weekend, so if I wanted to see him, I had to go to the copy center.

Usually, while we were there, he'd take lunch and we'd head over to Paco's, the taco joint next door. (You know, the one that used to be Nico's and is now Viva Burrito, so many chorizo coup d'etats.)

At the time, I was a big chicken burrito eater, sometimes with sour cream, sometimes not, but all the same almost exclusively chicken. Mark would order breakfast burritos, egg and cheese and potatoes and some kind of meat.

He always seemed to get more pleasure out of the soft, easily digested contents, while I picked out occasional bones and gristle and wondered just how long ago the chicken had in fact been cooked.

From across the table, the eggs et al were steamy and accessible, like a Maloney's patron about 11:30 p.m. when the four gin and tonics taken at Heather's house kicked in.

I tried a bite.

There are great romantic moments in a person's life: the first kiss in the stairwell, the day your high school sweetheart sat down in your science class, the road trip romance of junior year.

But at that moment, these are forgotten. The songs, the letters, the flowers of memory fall by the wayside as the violins of 1,000 Elizabeth Taylor kisses swell and the tongue, the fingers, the soul finds satisfaction.

Not to say that there aren't complications - there are in every classic romantic drama. It is difficult to explain this kind of cholesterol love even to yourself.

You try to continue your pattern of dating, try to keep up appearances over dinner or drinks or a movie. But your heartstrings are constantly pulled by the idea that 24 hours a day, mere blocks from your home, the eggs are ready, fresh, and on demand your spirit and body can be satiated.

You memorize like a lovelorn John Hinckley and know that before 11 a.m. a breakfast burrito at Viva is but a $1.87, that when you go to Los Betos, you should order extra cheese. In the right mood you use the taco sauce, for a little extra spice. But this is no temporary fascination, there is no rut. After a couple of years the spark is still there and perhaps it's simply because this is so illicit.

The love of the breakfast burrito is inherently adulterous. Given the choice, you would turn your back on your love, your friends, the entire human race. But culture, social mores and the attempts we make at living in good taste hold you back - though no human being can possibly have all of you.

Tonight, I have the night off. Probably my girlfriend and I will have a little dinner, maybe catch a flick. Presumably there will be kissing and sweet nothings and about 1 a.m. I will need to feign exhaustion. It's a skill I've worked hard on: the yawns, the watering eyes, loss of concentration. To tell you the truth, eating a hamburger or chicken alfredo or whatever is an exhausting lie.

By 2 a.m., I should be alone, the coast clear, the mouth watering. I feel guilty sometimes, but the thought of curling my arms around the burrito - oh.

We curl up, and put the right Beatles record on and read the National Inquirer together. The violins swell and we are one.

Tom Collins is a former Arizona Daily Wildcat editor in chief and now writes for the Arizona Daily Star. He continues to hope and pray that his girlfriend, Shawn, won't read as far as the third-to-last paragraph.