Some folks can’t get enough of the sauce—any sauce. They think the toppings party keeps rolling on and on, but for three long years now, Sam McGrady has escaped the condiment-heavy cycle he’s described as “self-abuse,” thanks to the support of friends, family, and his wife, Kim.
Except he’s really in the shitter now, because some sloshed guy dropped his gravy boat at tonight’s Pens game and drenched McGrady in rum and gravy, leading the latter’s wife to believe the 36-year-old has suffered a devastating relapse in his fight against gravy addiction.
Shit, man, that sucks.
“You reek of bouillon and cracked black pepper — what am I supposed to think?!” Mrs. McGrady recalls shouting, as her husband staggered into the car after downing nine beers during the pregame and five doubles in the arena. “You’ve spent years staving off that next umami fix and you’ve thrown it away for a cheap sauce thrill with your buddies. This is not the man I married, the one who slugged a whole bottle of wine and then looked me in the eyes to tell me that I was finer than any ketchup and smoother than any slurry he could ever want.”
McGrady walked towards the arena this evening confident that he would fare just fine, even in a place where thousands of fans would be throwing back the gravy — some in excess at that. Even while having a couple beers and shots at a nearby bar, the gravy talk he heard from nearby fans didn’t bother him.
“I mean, I’ve been to dinner parties with friends. I’ve been offered a gravy or, say, some chimichurri in passing when buddies forget I don’t touch the stuff anymore. I just tell ’em I’m good sipping away on my bottle of Jager, and they get it, so I expected tonight wouldn’t be a problem.
“I didn’t expect the dumbass behind me to launch his rum drink and a gravy boat he had filled to the brim right into my lap when they made that one bad call, though. It’s like, one moment I’m slamming my third vodka soda, and the next I’m having it out with wife who thinks I’m off that savory wagon again.”
Mrs. McGrady insisted her primary concern was her husband’s safety.
“I remember that night very well,” she said, in reference to the time she found Mr. McGrady nearly comatose at their breakfast table. “He had barely pissed himself from the case of Busch Light because his sodium intake had gotten so high. Gravy was everywhere — the floor, the fridge, his face, his jacket, the new pajamas I had gotten him over the holidays. Then what do I find hidden outside under the usual pallet of empty liquor bottles and hundreds of crushed beer cans? The remains of the A1 sauce, dijon mustard, and canned Heinz gravy I couldn’t find earlier that week when I wanted to use them in a dish. It’s a moment I still remember very well and I never want Sam to go back there.”
For his part, McGrady assured his wife that he “did not nor will ever again touch the brown stuff” and intended to prove it by spending a weekend at a local gravy detox clinic, just as soon as he finished the fishbowl-sized Long Island he had just poured.
