REFUSAL AS RADICAL ACTION
I woke up hungry, more than hungry. I had a big breakfast and wanted more. I made myself a snack and wolfed it down and wanted more. I made myself another snack and still I wanted more. I wanted red meat, but I don’t keep any red meat in the house. I swore it off a year ago, after reading a book about cows and pigs in slaughterhouses. I reminded myself that any red meat I bought would contribute to the gruesome things that the book described in such painful detail. I still felt hungry. I reminded myself that red meat gave me headaches and heartburn, made me feel sluggish and stupid and fat. I still felt hungry. When I sat at my desk and tried to get things done, the hunger just got worse. When I got up and fed my dogs, I briefly thought about eating dog food.
Now it’s time for lunch. I’ve decided to take myself out for a healthy meal. I step out into a typical San Diego sunny day, walking down a block that’s filled with tanned and smiling people. I’m thinking they’d be disgusted if they knew I wanted red meat. They all look so oppressively undisturbed, so aggressively healthy. When I get to the corner and wait for the light to change, I start to feel relief. There’s a vegetarian restaurant right across the street. I’ve eaten there many times and I like the food, though none of it ever triggers the kind of craving I’ve felt all morning. A tall blond woman taps me on the shoulder. She’s looking at me like I should know who she is, like we’re in the middle of a conversation and it’s my turn to say something. I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. She smiles with all her teeth and says: Don’t forget. Then she walks out into the street against the light and gets hit by a car.
For a second I feel nothing. Then less than nothing. Then a lot less than nothing. A guy beside me pulls out his cell and calls the appropriate people, but it’s clear she’s dead before the authorities come and make it official. Her blood, brains, and body parts are smeared all over the road. I want to cross the street and have lunch but I can’t. I feel sick. I need to go home and think about what just happened. Why was a woman I’d never seen before telling me not to forget? Forget what? That she just told me not to forget? That her teeth were perfect? That she just got hit by a car? That I’m hungry? That I was born in Chicago? That it never snows in San Diego? That waterboarding has nothing to do with the beach? That things aren’t what they used to be and they never were?
I get about halfway home before throwing up on someone’s lawn. Fortunately, there’s a drinking fountain across the street in the park, and I rinse out my mouth and splash water on my face. For a minute the very thought of food is repulsive. But my stomach feels empty, and my craving for meat returns, a cheeseburger with crisp and greasy French fries and a Coke. I tell myself again that such food is wrong, that I need to go home and try to calm down. But my feet are in charge, leading me toward the best greasy spoon in the city. I can already see the neon sign, GREAT! BURGERS. I’ve never been so hungry before. It’s like I’m under a spell.
Sirens approach from several directions. I assume that they’re coming because of what just happened on the corner, but soon it’s clear that they’re also responding to something else. People are stumbling out of GREAT! BURGERS, vomiting on the sidewalk. Across the street at McDonald’s the same thing is happening. Down the block, people stagger out from Wendy’s, Denny’s, and Burger King, doubled over, puking violently. I’m tempted to think that the meat they’ve eaten is making them sick, that in the future people who eat animals will be afflicted with terminal indigestion, driven mad by a nameless god capable of imposing mortal punishments, even if he doesn’t exist.
But this wouldn’t explain my own indigestion. It’s been a year since I ate red meat, though I’ve heard that by divine standards wanting something is just as bad as doing it, or eating it, and certainly this morning I would have made myself at least one gigantic hamburger if I’d had ground beef in the house. People keep reeling out of the junk-food places puking their guts out, collapsing on the pavement, gripping their stomachs, gagging and moaning. An ambulance arrives, then a second one, then police cars. The street is filled with flashing lights, and I hear more sirens approaching, and other sirens far off in the distance, as if there were tragedy everywhere in the city. Has all the red meat in San Diego been poisoned? Or has there been a major shift in universal conditions, making it impossible to eat red meat anymore? I’ve got to get home and get some news from the radio.
When I rush through the door my two black labs look at me like I’m crazy, like I might start eating their food instead of feeding them. They look even more suspicious when I turn on the radio. They’re sniffing the air and cocking their heads and searching my eyes for an answer. I almost never listen to the radio. I’m not sure why I haven’t thrown it away, or why I got it in the first place. I don’t like media noise, especially not in the house, and I don’t think it’s right to pollute my dogs’ environment with the sound of mass information. But right now I don’t care. I’ve got to find out what’s going on.
The airwaves are filled with reports of worldwide vomiting, all of it near fast-food restaurants, burger joints, and steak houses. It sounds like the worst case of food poisoning in history, and I hear several experts say that normally they would suspect a terrorist plot, except that the situation seems to be connected to something that can’t be so conveniently explained, reports that people all over the world are seeing things in the sky, not unidentified flying objects, but identified frying objects, gigantic versions of menu items: double cheeseburgers with onions and tomatoes, steak sandwiches with cheese, eggs and bacon popping and snapping in a skillet, Rueben sandwiches, buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken, meatball sandwiches with marinara sauce, pork burritos, ham and Swiss cheese omelets, hot dogs covered with sauerkraut and mustard.
The mere mention of these foods makes me want to go out and stuff myself, even if this means that I’ll spend the rest of my life throwing up. I switch off the radio, grip my chair, close my eyes, and try to find a quiet place in my head. But there’s only random noise—gum jingles, newscaster voices, lines from books and magazines, fragments of popular melodies, movie trailer voice-overs—blending with the smiling face of the woman who told me not to forget. I want to tell her I won’t forget, but I know I forget things all the time, minor things and major things, even when I remember to write things down. Right now I’d rather forget the whole day. I’m exhausted with confusion. I wish I could call my therapist, but I haven’t seen him in more than a year, and besides, I’m drifting off. I sleep the rest of the day and through the night in my chair without dreaming, waking up with sunlight having breakfast on my face.
My dogs jump up and wag their tails when they see I’m awake. They’re hungry. I’m hungry. I go to the kitchen and serve each one two cans of gourmet dog food, then I make myself a huge breakfast, a spinach and feta cheese omelet with a stack of buttered rye toast. I see from the calendar nailed to the wall that today I’ll be having lunch with my friend Craig. We’ll be meeting at The Green World, a health food place where we often get together and talk for hours. Today it’s going to be difficult. They don’t serve red meat at The Green World. It’s going to be hard not to sneak in a meal at GREAT! BURGERS—even at the risk of puking my guts out—before meeting Craig and pretending I’m still hungry. But if yesterday is any indication, I won’t have to pretend. Eating even a huge amount won’t stop me from wanting more.
I spend the morning making my living, editing technical articles online. Since I’ve been doing it for years, I can almost always finish quickly, three hours a day at the most. Then the rest of the day is mine. But today it’s going slowly. I keep wondering what I’m not supposed to forget. I can’t stop making snacks and checking the news. The radio and the Internet make it seem like nothing happened. There’s just all the normal stuff about celebrities, football games, and the fuckedup economy. One local station issues warnings about high velocity winds coming down from the mountains east of San Diego. But there’s nothing about food in the sky, nothing about worldwide i
ndigestion, though I know I heard reports yesterday on the radio. A media cover-up? It wouldn’t be the first time that important developments have disappeared without a trace. But I can’t see why the captains of mass information would want to exclude such sensational material, especially since food was involved, and everyone knows that food imagery is often used to stimulate consumer appetites. Maybe they’re trying to keep the world under control, prevent the kind of panic that leads to widespread violence and chaos. But would a sky of cheeseburgers really be scary enough to freak people out?
I force myself to take a long detour on my way to The Green World. If I went there directly I’d have to walk down junk-food row: GREAT! BURGERS, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Denny’s, and Burger King. I don’t want to see the evidence of what happened there yesterday, all the vomit that might still be on the street. Besides, I know the temptation would be too great, and after I’ve eaten junk I get mentally sluggish. I want to be alert while talking with Craig. It’s no fun sounding stupid when you’re with an intelligent person. My detour takes me through Balboa Park, extending my walk by more than thirty minutes. It’s a beautiful place, filled with lush vegetation that’s hard to find anywhere else in this desert city, and I’m enjoying the view. The wind is filling the trees with sound and motion, making everything look even more alive than it normally does. I pass by the famous San Diego Zoo, the most deluxe animal incarceration site in the world. Normally, I try to avoid it, but today I’m grateful that I’m not near something I can eat. After all, the animals in the zoo aren’t being prepared for human consumption, at least not the kind that involves a knife and fork.
Changing the Subject Page 9