You cannot get a Twinkie in the Greater Binghamton area.

I was driving home this past Sunday when I got a yen for a Hostess Cup Cake, something I hadn’t had in well over five years. The chocolate sponge cake, the faux fondant frosting and of course the cream filling were three key instruments in the symphony of succulence that I wanted performed for my taste buds that evening. So when I stopped to fill my tank, I went into the store to make my much desired purchase ‘ but there were no Hostess products.

I ended up stopping an additional five times: four more gas stations and one Wegmans, but I couldn’t find the Cup Cakes anywhere!

My next move was to the Internet. I checked Hostess’s Web site: it was there, and it was enough to give me a glimmer of hope that the company still existed.

It wasn’t until Monday afternoon, or 14 cupcakeless hours later, that I was informed by the good people at my local Giant grocer that Hostess had decided to pull its product line from the Binghamton area and I would have to go to Syracuse to buy them. As an alternative, they pointed out that there were plenty of other sugary and fattening snack cakes to fill my craving.

So that was it ‘ I wasn’t sure if this was a positive or negative thing that Binghamton could not prove to be economically viable for a snack company. Does it mean this area is really that downtrodden? Or are we taking a turn for the healthful?

I looked disdainfully at the ‘treats’ that lay before me. All of the products had the same vacuum-sealed plastic package, many had the same shapes and colors, and every ingredient list had high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and a sneaky little guy called sorbate. But they were not the same. Drake’s, Little Debbie, Tasty Cake and a bevy of other options, but I did not want coffee cakes, Swiss cake rolls or diarrhea ‘ I wanted a Hostess Cup Cake.

Amidst my own angst and remorse, I began to wonder what the children growing up here would become without the Hostess products. What the hell are they going to eat while they are sitting in their darkened TV room playing X-box instead of being outside and being active? What will mother do when she realizes that bananas are far more difficult for little Jimmy to open than the vacuum-sealed package of a 220 calorie cupcake? Is this the end of the prepackaged consumption era?

Nope.

For a brief moment, a very brief moment, I thought about driving to Syracuse. And by this point it wasn’t just for cupcakes, but the whole product line! Twinkies, alas! What will I eat if there is a nuclear war?! I felt motivated. I thought I should contact the company, inform Washington, write a column! Then I realized how f*cking ludicrous it is to get the urge to march on Capitol Hill over the removal of something that can easily shorten one’s life, no matter how delicious.

I’ve also noticed how, while I feel very strongly on many issues that are currently floating around the world today (war, global warming, free speech, etc.), I was driven into a near craze, not by the impending doom of the country, planet or my rights, but by a cream-filled cupcake. I found that a bit depressing. General Electric puts out millions of tons of toxic waste a year, Halliburton manipulates the reconstruction of a war torn country and the only company I think about calling is Hostess.

While artists and writers may lay claim to understanding the human condition, I think this experience has made me consider the possibility that it is snack-cake manufacturers that truly understand humans. We want fat and sugar ‘ if you can make it sexy, all the better then. I still want a Hostess Cup Cake.