Cinnamon Roll

By Jason Schwartzman

I fucked up, okay, and I ate the whole jumbo-sized cinnamon roll, which was apparently not meant for me — it was meant for Jonny’s brother’s wife who was pregnant and all she was eating those days were jumbo cinnamon rolls, and yes, I was high, which was why I devoured it, gluttonous, ravenous bite by gluttonous, ravenous bite, but no one saw me or so I thought, except Michael did, always Michael who thwarted me like a cartoon villain and everyone said I was DEAD once Steve found out, which he did the next morning when Michael gleefully told him and apparently I’d done something very wrong and I was scolded and every adult at the table looked at me like cinnamon-roll-scarfing was the eighth, deadliest sin and god, I was humiliated, the criminal of the weekend, a monster, but then everyone forgot about it and presumably they bought more cinnamon rolls and it became a funny story I told in college, even a trademark of mine, with someone once even requesting “the cinnamon roll story,” then college ended and a year or so passed and Jonny died in an accident and now the story is about that, and only that, the last time I saw my friend.

Jason Schwartzman is the author of NO ONE YOU KNOW, a resident of Oakland, and a new dad. 

Photo by Jason Thayer.