cosmictuesdays asked:

After I read that submission, I realized I'd never read Dancing In A Dance Club, and went to fix that - and after I read about the state of Julian's kitchen, I remembered that meta you and Lady Yatexel spun about Julian's relationship to food. Is it that he doesn't know how to properly pay attention if he's not eating on a proper schedule? That he got used to not having an appetite and tends to ignore it, and only ate at certain times and never otherwise because that was easier?

Mmm, more or less. My take was that a steady diet of amphetamines and disapproval, coupled with heavy lashings of guilt because You’re Not Eating What Your Loving Parents Have Prepared For You, has given Julian a bit of a weird relationship to food. He just kind of doesn’t care. He’ll eat if he’s hungry, but he has to be pretty hungry to realize it, and he doesn’t really care what it is that he eats. Instant dinner?  Rock on. Fantastic painstakingly-prepared souffle? Great.  Four-day-old-takeout from the House of Honourable Deliciousness (or whatever its amazing name was)? Slick, dish it up. 

He eats poorly and too fast and not as often as he should. Being fed regularly by Garak helps with some of this, although he still inhales his meals.

(Later, when he visits Garak from Andor, Garak chastises him about how thin he’s gotten once again.

“What is this?”

“That would be my right anterior superior iliac spine. Go on, ask me a hard one.”

“Julian.”

“All right, all right. I know I’m not eating enough.”

But he’s not really repentant about it, and Garak sighs: all his hard work undone.)