I never eat pineapple pizza. I made a laminated card and show it in public. It reads: Please do not offer me pineapple pizza. I am not Italian.
The last time I ate one, my father actually came back from the dead—well, part of him did. I spat the pizza into the toilet; when I flushed, my father’s hands found their way home through the drain. My mother screamed. It was all the pineapple’s fault. In 1998, the doctors had warned her she was allergic to pineapple.
The time before that, I fainted after eating one and woke up married to a woman named Fan. Fan was allergic to romance. She left me for a man who only ate cheese pizza—a steady, decent man. I still receive postcards from her, all from Hawaii.
I thought I was special. Later I met others. Every Saturday we gather at the Pizza Hut across the street from the church next to the shopping mall. We sit around a table and confess our experiences with pineapple pizza. We eat Pizza Hut hamburgers.
There is a girl in the group named Margaret. She has never eaten pineapple pizza; she is only curious. When someone vomits, she says, “Pineapple is a delicious fruit.”
I tell her, “You cannot understand pineapple pizza. It is a completely different species from either pineapple or pizza. It is a disaster.”
She asks where this disaster comes from. I say, “Hawaii.” She laughs. She has been to Hawaii. There is no pineapple there, and no Italian pizza either. There is sunshine, seawater, alcohol, and the air of holidays. I don’t know.
Now I never eat pineapple pizza. But occasionally late at night I order one. I leave it on the table. I smell the pineapple. I remember Fan, I remember my father’s hands, I remember Margaret’s face. I wait until it has gone cold and inedible, then throw it into the kitchen waste.