Ftrain, by Paul Ford

My lowest moment of the last several months; [Wife] is asleep. After a moment of contemplation I grab a Austrian chocolate-backed gingerbread cookie--the one I got with my stocking. I know without asking that I am not supposed to eat this thing under any circumstances, but its gingerbreadness has been screaming at me all night. I take it, along with a book, into the small bathroom and lock the door. There is less chance of being scolded here. I disrobe and sit on the toilet. Making an effort to be quiet I pull back the plastic wrap and peel off the paper Father Christmas paper sugar-glued to its front. The cookie itself is chewy and unsatisfying; the gingerbread is subsumed by the staleness. But it fills my mouth with simple and complex carbohydrates and hardened icing. Finished, I pull a toilet-paper tube out of the trash and put the plastic wrapper inside that, then put it back into the trash. Sated and sugared, I relax and finish reading my short story, an alternative history of Rome in which the Jews never escaped Egypt. Then I take my shower, and feel calm enough to sleep in fits.