I have never had a cronut- nor have I ever had an overwhelming desire to have one.

I’m told that people stand in long lines to get one of those, just like they used to stand in line for the famous Red Velvet cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street. I have to confess that I have had one or two of those, though I got them from Sugar Sweet Sunshine on Rivington Street instead, no line, no waiting. But you are made to think that you have to tip some pierced and tattooed kid a dollar for handing you a three-dollar cupcake on a napkin.

Red velvet cupcake.

The cupcakes are good, but I wouldn’t stand in line for one of them.

I used to go to Teeny, on the other side of Essex Street with my wife, the lovely Danusia and have the peanut butter bomb, a 1,000-calorie plus mass of sugar, fat and wheat that did give me pause about swearing off line-standing.

When I fist saw pictures of people standing in line for these concoctions I thought it was ridiculous, it looked like they were giving away free crack or heroin, instead of charging outrageous prices for a bit of baked goods.

Cronut line.

 But when I thought about it, I know that the combination of wheat, fat, and sugar affects the same pleasure centers in our brains as opiates, it begins to make sense.

I have to admit that there was a time in the distant past where I did stand in line for some of these pleasure-center stimulants, I’m not gonna say which, but anyone who lived on the Lower East side in the 80’s would be familiar with the long lines on the streets back then. I’m happy to say I don’t find the need to do so anymore.

Yesterday afternoon when I got to work, as I put my sandwich in the fridge before I changed into my doorman’s outfit I saw a big box of doughnuts from Dunkin’ Doughnuts. I looked inside and there were a few left out of what had to be a dozen doughnuts. I helped myself to a blueberry one for later.

The boss had bought them for the guys that he called in to shovel snow overnight during the storm. I was lucky enough to not have to shovel, though I shoveled through the last snowstorm, which I got no doughnut for, so I felt I was entitled to one of these.

Not me shoveling snow.

So I took the doughnut up with me to the lobby, and set it on the rack that holds the fire hose to eat sometime later.

At five everyone left and I stayed in the cold lobby alone, thinking about when I should eat my doughnut. Definitely before the sandwich, which I usually have at 9 PM.

I would look at it every time I walked by to get a package or the mop to sop up some of the salty water people were dragging into the lobby, we wouldn’t want anyone to slip and fall and sue the management company, would we?

So I would look at it and think, I do a lot of thinking alone in the lobby; and I thought of the hole in the doughnut, others have thought about those holes too and invented things like munchkins and doughnut holes, and now cronut holes, but what it reminded me of the most was the hole in myself that I had at one time, a hole I was so desperate to fill that I did stand in a lot of long humiliating lines for something to fill that hole with, and hoping that they didn’t run out before I got to the front of the line.

This, on occasion did happen. But I found out that when it did, I did not die; but it took awhile for that notion to sink in.