I have become hopelessly addicted to Einstein Bros. Power Bagels (not toasted, thank you) with peanut butter and grape jelly (light on the peanut butter, please).

Those damn hand-held seductresses, with their sweet nectar oozing out the sides with each rapturous bite, have me in a grip from which I cannot escape. Their siren song compels me from my path each morning to indulge in their hearty, dense flesh, imbued with the sweetness of raisins and dried cranberries, a cinnamon bouquet redolent of Ceylon, and the piquant nuttiness of….well…nuts. I arrive at work late, reeking of peanut butter, trousers stained with large dollops of grape jelly, acting hyper-normal in hopes that my coworkers won’t notice anything abnormal about my abnormal behavior.

“What?” says a friend, as I pass. “Einstein’s again?”

I glance down at the 32 oz. Diet Coke (with lemon) in my hand, the cup emblazoned with the Einstein Bros. logo (two little men peering into my soul through bagel monocles). “Uh, yeah,” I fumble, trying furiously to think of something that might explain a normal person’s serial dining habits. “It’s, um, it’s right on my way to work…”

“Well, you must really like it,” he offers.

I smile the half-smile of a man who is no longer a part of this world. A man who has turned himself over, body and soul, to his wanton lust for tasty baked goods. Some may pity me, but this is a culinary prison from which I have no desire to be freed. If this is hell, I have no need for a heaven.