Draft 1

I wait to eat until I get hungry enough that there’s no other option. My family thinks I’m strange skipping lunch. An old girlfriend thought I was hiding something from her, that it was a guilt thing where the secret was eating me or something else her therapist had said. We broke up for other reasons, though (her decision).

It’s not like I’m fasting. I’m not some spiritual ascetic rail-thin in a mountain hermitage. I’m not hungry, that’s all. Sometimes I feel nauseated or queezy or can otherwise tell the my stomach is chemically prepared for digestion. But that doesn’t have that same sensation as hunger, that feeling of a void opening up in your belly. Even now, I’m aware that I should eat, that I’ll probably get some kind of awful acid reflux that burns the back of my throat from the excess stomach juices, and that this is the sort of thing that makes my doctor look nervous when they see the weight listed on my charts, and I tell him that I’ve been trying to gain weight, promise, but that I find it quite difficult to really bulk up. I was going to the gym every day, and for a while there I tried eating to the point of discomfort, ignoring the usual signs of satiety and fullness that any sane human would listen to, but I was ashamed – I was telling all this to the doctor, and their face was growing more concerned by the minte – I was ashamed of the way my ribs showed through my pale skin and how I feared that the reason my girlfriend was so distant was that I was incapabale of really filling out a shirt, and how male fashion, at least for those of us not on the runways in Paris, was mostly a matter of just filling out your clothes. I would go on to my doctor who frankly could not have cared less about theories of attractiveness and the dad-bod phenomenon and occasionally he would tell me to shush and put a cold stethoscope to various points on my back, and when he removed the stethoscope from his ears I involuntarily started speaking again. And during this whole conversation I felt that painful buzz in the back of my brain about how little this doctor cared and how if he was really listening he would probably tell me that I should to go to a psychiatrist, that my preoccupation with exceedingly trivial matters was a mark of narcissism probably or sociopathy or some of any number of issues that would be best to talk to a qualified professional about, certainly a professional more qualified for such tricky mind-rummaging as this than he. But he never said any of this, which in fact made me question what a qualified professional he actually was to be going through the motions so swiftly and with so little concern for a clearly-distressed young man with enough physical and/or mental abnormalities to be putting food down his throat with such abandon and yet still suffering from a strange variation of body dysmorphia. But who am I to really tell him how to do his job. Doctors always do that, they’re butchers viewing a carcass. And so after this I gave up on the whole force-feeding myself to gain weight and thought perhaps a more sensible diet would be something much simpler: eating when hungry, abstaining when not. It sounds weird, but I’m the same weight as before, to no surprise as far as I’m concerned. The corollary to all of this is that when one is hungry, one must eat and hold up their own side of the deal with their body, so to speak. Now is one such time. But I should finish writing this first. I have some leftovers in the fridge from Thanksgiving, or the meal-prepped soup I froze in those little rectangular rubber containers that I found online and which were delivered to my doorstep the next morning.

I have been in this room for days. I have enough food prepared to last until Judgement Day. I bought one of those freezer chests along the far wall with enough capacity for a few weeks of pre-cooked meals. Once every few months I buy a half beef and end up with the better part of a slaughterhouse in there. The big bag of white rice from the Asian grocery could feed a small village.

But right now, preparing food feels impossible. I lay here in bed unmoving, tired just from thinking about the prospect. Cleaning up is a pain, and even with those new dishwasher-safe pans I bought I get tired just from looking at them. I will pull the tupperware out of the fridge and then plate the thing and then I’ve got to be responsible for the tupperware and the plate and the silverware and I probably should cover it in the microwave, and now I have a whole handful of unfinished tasks before I can eat and acquire the energy to do said tasks etc. etc. I order food I have to scroll through the endless listings for options that won’t actually be that good by the time it gets here, steamed to mediocrity in the passenger seat of a stranger’s car. I will waste away with sleep for dinner.

There was a point in time where my laziness about the whole eating thing was overcome by my disdain of sitting in this room for too long – the two have clearly since changed places – and during that time my daily break from work would be to walk down the stairs, out the apartment building’s back entrance, across the parking lot of the dilapidated grocery store, and get a Regular Al Pastor Burrito With Everything, Spicy Salsa, Thank You from the burrito place across the street, along with a can of Dr. Pepper. Burrito order to the tall, severe-eyed bald gentleman behind the griddle who I gathered was Ecuadorian and then repeating Regular Burrito And Can I Also Get a Dr. Pepper, Please? to the young cashier with the white shirt, blue apron, and piercing brown eyes. This whole thing was my daily ritual, even most weekends when I wasn’t working but was otherwise being a wastoid and preparing myself for the weekend evenings when I’d take a few edibles and pretend they were some kind of psycho-spiritual experience, doing a whole ceremony in preparation for taking the damn things which is a whole other story that I won’t get into now. You would roll your eyes at the whole thing, I promise, and I know because that’s what my ex always did when I talked about petty dillemmas like this, but suffice it to say that eating before the edibles actually hit intensifies the whole thing in a way I found profoundly meaniningful at the time for reasons that now escape me. She rolled her eyes about that too. One time she full-on went off on me about it. She had to work some Saturday, a coworker was getting evicted or some random excuse like that and her boss more-or-less demanded it from her, something I told her was practically extortion, another eye-roll, but anyways the point is that she was busy, and no sooner had the notification popped up on my phone was I picking through my cupboard for the little tin of gummies that the dispensary on Montclair sold for a dollar a pop, a price I thought should be illegal for the potential societal damage that ensues from that level of availability of illicit (though legal) substances, and popped one in my mouth and then soon after put caution to the wind and consumed the remainder of the tin, a quantity that shall remain known only to myself and God, but suffice it to say that I’m hiding it for good reason. [TBC]

The burritos were the real draw. I swear. They had this little bit of char on the pork, the tomatillo salsa the perfect level of spice, you get the idea. It’s a waste trying to describe it, you just have to go sometime. I went so often that the cashier knew my whole spiel, knew my order and total and would have it rung up on the card terminal, Dr. Pepper on the counter, before I said a word. I doubt she still remembers me now, after all this time. I’m sure all the faces blur together at some point. Hell, I wonder if she still even works there.

I never really asked how old she was. Never even asked her her name, nor her mine. I always feel weird asking store staff their names or reading it from their name tags. It’s too personal or something. I wouldn’t want a stranger calling me out like that. Gross. But yeah I wonder if she would remember me. She one time asked how I was doing. I don’t remember what I said but clearly it was weird since she never said it again.

Damn it’s starting to get late. I think it’s still open, but I don’t want to be the guy throwing in orders right before closing. There’s no way she’ll remember me. The Ecuadorian cook never gave off that he thought of me at all, despite being surely the most consistent guest for that two-and-a-quarter year run we had. I never saw him smile. It’ll be weird to go back after all this time. I wonder if she’ll say anything. I better take my headphones. It’s a short walk, but I’ll have to go through the Safeway parking lot where that old man with the thin voice and veiny hands asks me for money, and inevitably I’ll have to walk back past him, burrito in hand, and I imagine in his eyes I am acting as cruelly as if I were dragging the body of Hector through the streets.

I stopped going for I don’t remember what reason. I think it had something to do with how she asked that one time how I was doing and I probably just said Fine How Are You? and that was the end of it. I always gathered she saw me differently after that. She still looked me in the eye – she always had – but from then on it was just a Hey and I’d say Hey There and then I’d pay and be on my way, and it felt like I had pushed her away somehow. There’s that wall. You know what I mean right? There’s a contract, rules, norms between us in that situation, that divide that exists when someone is working a job where you sort of stop seeing them as a person and see them more like a checkout machine where there’s a goal and the goal is to abide by this contract where I pay and get my food and then go and she reached through it and it was as if I saw her changing the relationship and said No. I’m probably reading too much into this, as you can tell, but it felt like I wounded her. That’s not what I meant to do, of course. To be honest, I always had a bit of a crush on her. Not in any real way. It’s not like I knew her. But her hair had a bit of a wave in a way I liked, and her voice was cool and charming, soft and almost kind of raspy in a way that I found sweet. So it’s not like I wanted to turn her away, it’s just that that wasn’t the relationship. I wanted to get my food and go, then, and standing in line at the burrito place didn’t really feel like the Time and Place for Contact, right? There were people behind me in line and I felt like I was holding them up and I knew from listening as I walked away that she certainly didn’t ask how they were doing at all and I felt like having some kind of connection with the cashier was a strange special thing that I was imposing onto anyone in earshot. I do the same thing at coffee shops, you know. I stop going to coffee shops as soon as the barista remembers my name. We’ve become too familiar, then.

God damn, is it that late already? Jesus. I wonder if she’ll mention it, the absence I mean. I didn’t stop going back because of that or anything. I didn’t really stop going back for any specific reason at all. I mostly just stopped feeling like it. It got expensive, too. I mean, fifteen dollars for a burrito is pretty nuts. And so I started figuring out how to make stuff at home, and got pretty good at it besides. But if she does mention it, what does one say to that? I’m sorry for leaving you. How romantic. I don’t think I’ll figure it out sitting in this room. Just let me find my shoes and we’ll be on our way.

Ah, okay, there we go. I have at least the few minutes’ walk to figure it out, what she might say and all that. She could say nothing. I hope she says nothing. I hope I can go in and get my food and feel the steam from that huge spatula-full of marinated pork on the griddle and I can see what earrings she’s wearing today, maybe those dangly emerald ones that remind me of – who am I kidding, I hope she does say something, asks how I am. Lord knows I need a win. She has a nice voice, did I say that already? I hope it’s as pretty as I remember it. It’s easy to get lost like that in another person. Other people are so much easier to love. The messiness of their mind isn’t just hanging out there for all to see, the ugliness and the pettiness and the little hatreds that eat away inside. We don’t see those for everyone else. That’s why it can be so nice to just say Hey There and Thanks when the payment goes through. I wonder if this time I should say See You Tomorrow, give myself another reason to get out. Maybe she will be the one to say something, maybe she’ll ask if I’ll be back. Maybe she thinks of me too. I don’t mean to be all dramatic about it, but it really has been a while since I was there, and little tells can really give people away. Little shifts of the eyes, what they do with their hands, the fine musculature of the face telling all. I don’t want to give too much of myself away, I’m like a spy gather intelligence. Maybe that’s my move, perhaps I don’t even go in at all, just walk by and peek in through the window nonchalantly, and maybe I walk in the front door not so head-on but from the side, like I was on my way somewhere and had the thought to eat beforehand and there I am. It’s a whole different persona to embody, something more cool and casual than my current self which reaks of earnestness. Without that story I don’t think I’ll be able to cover my own tells and will give away it all, give away my hunger and desire, and then if she does rememeber me and we dance our little dance I’ll know then that it’s all out of pity.

Fuck, I better not mess this up. I’ll say a few words out loud on the way there. Get my vocal cords warmed up before I get in the door. Already half way across the parking lot, maybe I do a lap around the block for extra time. Who the hell gets nervous ordering a burrito? And anyways it’s not like she thinks of me. In fact it’s almost rude of me to even impose like this on her. How pathetic to have this hole in my chest so glaring for everyone to see, and how ugly and stupid it is of me to fill it with a smile and kind words from the woman at the burrito place who is by all accounts a stranger to me. What could someone know about me from my burrito order? It’s not a horoscope. She’ll probably just say “Eleven dollars and eighty-two cents” like always, or maybe it’s different with all the inflation hitting lately, and then I’ll pay and she’ll say Have a Good Night and I’ll say Thanks and her eyes will glaze over to the next customer, her brown eyes that come to think of it have that pretty ring of green around the iris, or at least I think so, or maybe I’m mixing them up with her earrings. She probably sees right through me, performs these little acts of kindness not out of any particular interest in me but out of habit, or worse out of pity. She might even see how I look at her, might even see in my eyes the way I look at her eyes and see how I crave her attention. How pitiful it is to need something from another person. I don’t want to depend on the world. It will fail me. I know that these little interactions, the glance of an eye, the small acts either of romance or mercy, that craving these consents to their broken existence. I should have stayed in my room, should have kept myself above it all and eaten what I had prepared. I do not want her to see me as I am.

I’m already in the door. I didn’t even think of what to say. Shit, I can’t just stand here. Fuck. Yeah Can I Get A Regular Burrito, Al Pastor. Yeah With Everything, And The Spicy Salsa. Hey, How’s It Going. Okay Cool. Thanks.

Draft 2

I don’t want anyone to see me. I don’t often need to go outside. I have food enough for a small village, prepared and packed into the top-load freezer in the back room. I look out from my apartment window, watching the fog roll in over Twin Peaks and seeing people below on their morning run through Dolores Park or milling around the grocery store across the street. I like to watch the human world below from up high in my bell tower (though in my case, by choice) separate from it all.

I enjoy my solitude, but I wasn’t always this way.

Wedding Day

Her mother sat futzing with the train as she looked in the mirror. As a young girl, she had imagined her wedding day to be one of unimaginable promise. White roses and champagne and the vaulted ceilings of her childhood cathedral in which she would be taken into the arms of a man who, as a child who could not have known to whom her life would lead her, was handsome but who in her memory had no specific features, simply that those around her, her bridesmaids and aunts and family friends, would look at her smiling with joy but with their eyes tinged with jealousy at her elegance. And while the present day did have much of that, while her mother tugged and pulled at the hem of her dress and spoke softly of how beautiful she looked, her mother’s voice tinged with the poison of nostalgia for how her own wedding day had felt and the recgnition that age had played its part on her body, the mother’s, while the moment had been arranged perfectly, the young bride felt a kind of centerlessness that would not leave her be.

She looked at herself in the mirror, at the dress and the veil and the bouquet, and all that entered her mind was a strange dis-ease that circulated somewhere between her navel and her solar plexus. It hung in the air and bit at her skin, but most importantly of all this feeling festered inside of her, and as her mother spoke of friends and relatives who traveled so far or of how handsome the groomsmen are when finely dressed, it spread and lodged itself in her chest. Anxiety lives not in the mind, she was learning, but in the body which excites the mind.

Her wedding day was turning out to mostly be concerned with the future. She was a young girl freshly graduated from college, and marriage was not uncommon but had slowly delayed itself for many of her friends. Even with steady beauxs she witnessed delays of many years, and for many of them this was the wise choice. It’s difficult to know what we are like until after we have changed into something else, and the creatures that mnay of them metamorphosed in the years after graduation was scatter-shot, some rising to the challenge of the boundarylessness of adulthood while others were overwhelmed by it, falling backwards into mundanity. Weddings are border days, days which define transitions from the old into the new, and our bride finds her mind wondering if she has fully witnessed her own transition yet, or even that of her soon-to-be husband. He was a good man, she thought, and she could not imagine him idle or unpleasant. He was the sort to keep himself busy, with an expansive suite of interests and hobbies. He had a stable job and so on and so forth, though for the purposes of our story suffice it to say that he could provide for his lovely wife, that the two had spoken liltingly in each others arms of their eventual children and house and a sort of idyllic carrying-on that they would do together, the sort of thing young lovers say to each other without having been thrust into the myriad and endless choice and opportunity of adult life. And she had hardly given it a second thought.

Her father knocked twice loudly on the door and was greeted by the futzing mother. He was a boulder of a man only slightly softened by the years, the kind of strict, severe father who nevertheless melted at the sight of his daughter, an almost sitcomic sort of father figure. His lip quivered in a smile seeing his daughter in her wedding gown, and as he pulled away from the hug she felt a tear of his stain her cheek. Her mother playfully swatted him with a handkerchief and doted after her daughter’s makeup. The two of them made it, the bride thought, but she hardly envied their relationship most of the time. There was little that was particularly bad about their relationship, and with the number of divorces and scandals and fights she saw among the other couples she watched as a child, she felt it the closest thing she had to a model of a modern marriage, and yet she could not shake a certain dryness to the whole thing. She wondered, and it felt the sort of question that one should never so straightfowardly ask, and certainly not to one’s parents, whether they loved each other. She wondered if they were happy. She could not shake the feeling that their lives were unremarkable, that noble as it is to raise children one becomes almost indebted to them to live for you, for you sacrifice so much of one’s peak physical and mental abilities to the raising of those children, and by the time one gets on with your independent life again some 18 years later one may find that those years have left one neutered of promise. And how could one know, after all, what to do with oneself after all that time, that so much has been given to those children that on the other side of it all, one’s whole personality has been the raising and cultivation of them, and so one comes to find themselves with little else to do, hence the cliches of fathers filling afternoons with golf and with mothers doting after their grandchildren perhaps more closely than they did their own children, for they see ni them their whole life.

From the other side of the door, the chatter of the wedding party grew louder and louder. It was a popular pairing, you see, and it was a pairing universally approved, something not so common with families like theirs where the status and preciousness of their oldest children, the first to marry, felt paramount without limit.