Death by ice cream

My street is one of those charming big-city residential alleys of modest row-houses sandwiched in by stores at either end. The 'NO PARKING' signs everywhere – like the will of the people in Bush country – are often blatantly disregarded. This particular morning, it's noisier than ever and so I do small chores to distract myself. Since it's trash day, I welcome the Zen of Garbage. When I go to put the trash out, I notice a big delivery truck parked right outside the front door of my house, idling in the middle of the block, getting ready to unload stuff, totally obstructing the path of passing traffic.

Curious, I go over to the guy and inquire why he's parked in front of our houses with his delivery truck, totally tying up the street, rather than unloading near the supermarket he's servicing. The other end of the street, he gestures, is blocked by two even larger trucks, and he's prevented from backing in because the noisy jerk of a contractor working next door to me has his crappy van in the middle of the street, too.

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Turns out this driver, a really nice person, is delivering ice cream. How nice? So nice he actually gives me a free case of Cherry Garcia! Eight containers, half gallons or pints or whatever they are. Embarrassed, I thank the driver profusely after telling him really I'd be quite thrilled to take just a small sample. I confess I do feel piggy accepting a whole case of ice cream, rather than just a petite pint, but then he jokes about not looking gift ice cream in the mouth, so I don't.

Cherry Garcia is a magical flavor. How could anyone not love something so meltingly, seductively delicious, named after the Grateful Dead's late, lamented, legendary guitarist. Who could resist this tantalizing taste sensation of thick, rich ice cream crammed with black cherries and chocolaty chunks? I get wordy just thinking about it.

Rather than succumb to the ice cream's super-fatted allure, I am thinking I should donate this unexpected windfall to my friend's 50th birthday celebration – he has pointedly specified no gifts – but this is just dessert! Although I do like ice cream well enough, I've recently lost a significant amount of weight and I'm almost ready to take my clothes off again in mixed company – or at least go to the beach without dreading immediate disgrace or dishonor. Why ruin it?

So I ask my birthday friend, who, it turns out, actually isn't eating ice cream right now because, yes, he's afraid of getting fat, but he'd be pleased for me to bring it to the party for other ice-cream lovers to share.

I think I detect a trend here: Fear of ice cream.

Naturally, this reminds me of the time my dead friend Peggy was still my friend – before she betrayed me, a whole operatic saga best not discussed here right now. Peggy's widowed mother, with whom she had had a difficult, to say the least, and fractious relationship, finally died and they went to clean out the dead woman's refrigerator and found it entirely empty except for – get this – a freezer compartment completely jammed with gallons and gallons of ice cream!

Although Peggy – pathologically afraid of becoming fat again as she had been in childhood, when her schoolmates ridiculed her as "Fattie fattie boomalottie" – proclaimed this was pathetic, actually she was both envious and disproving of her mother's secret ice cream life.

Small wonder the late great poet Wallace Stevens was inspired, the way poets are, by love and death, to write a poem he called "The Emperor of Ice Cream," which proclaims, "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."

Meanwhile, with a few more weeks to my friend's party, that case of ice cream is in my freezer – still untouched as I type this. I pray they never find me the way Peggy's mother went. I'm trying desperately to ignore the ice cream's late-night siren call.

But I swear to you, I can hear it singing to me.