Then I am Shunned

I am hungry. It is a Friday evening in May and I am starving. By this point in my life I am resigned to the lack of sustenance, and I have become adept at subconsciously avoiding the places, people, and events that remind me of my desperate hunger. My proverbial rug bulges from my years of endless sweeping. Sadly, this effort to need and act as if I do not care has become ordinary after all these years, yet in a secret, basement closet of my mind there is a frustrated, resentful fragment of my psyche that still rages.

My evening is spent alone with ineffectual distractions and wine, and then I sleep the restless slumber of a man with little hope.

As with any other Saturday, consciousness arrives slowly and my previously made plans emerge faintly drawn from my head. I rise and shuffle toward breakfast and the elixir of life with a touch of cream and sugar. Even here my hunger exists, but I grab it by the hair of its head and shove it forcibly beneath the waves of my conscious mind and wade into the day with stiff determination.

Breakfast is a time of thespian artistry. The cook that I have a contract with and I dance and hide and coddle our pride. This is a familiar play to both of us, and we act it out with uncanny precision. There is no thought required here as there was when we first began.

Today is like most Saturdays. The lawn will not mow itself as much as I dream that it might. The May morning air is ideal for outdoor work and chores are, as always, a pleasant time spent in my thoughts. But a dead washing machine has created a mid-day task. I must pick up a washer and dryer that I found on Craigslist.

So I drive, and the trek is short. Only a quarter of an hour passes while I travel toward a previously unknown part of town to achieve the deal of a lifetime in clothes washery. The neighborhood is old with small houses reasonable well kept, and as I make my first turn away from the sale I recognize a street sign that stirs memories.

The sign triggers memory of a cook who many a time offered to satisfy my hunger. Those were times of willpower and strength of loyalty for me. Were it not for those strengths bolstered by naiveté I would have succumbed to hunger. But I had not faltered. I was almost as strong and loyal as I believed I should be and I was proud of it.

I see the sign and then I see the house identified by the car, and my arms swerve the vehicle into the driveway. It is a steep and short drive with cement walls on both sides. Above the drive is a stone stairway to the front door. Parking at the bottom I move upward with sure steps and uncertain purpose.

I ring the bell and only a moment passes before she answers. It is as if I am expected though I had no intentions of being in this location at the present time. I am greeted in a friendly manner and I stammer out some excuse.

“I… I was in the area and I recognized your car…”

My shoulders shrug of their own accord, and despite my outward timidity I am invited inside.

She was preparing something in the kitchen when I arrived, so I follow her in. There is a light, wooden chop board and vegetables being sliced for an as of yet unprepared meal. There is wine, a dark merlot, and she offers me a glass. I drink because I enjoy wine and because it would be impolite to refuse after I have barged in like this.

I sit on the couch and survey the room while waiting. There are random objects to be found in this foreign place, no great riches to be sure, but the personality of she who dwells here is imprinted on every stick of incense and every colored gauze. I sit on the couch and when the offered wine arrives I drink it with my customary thirst, which is to say, I drink it too quickly while she slips back into the kitchen.

A second glass comes and I begin to drink it oblivious to its effects and any unspoken messages I may utter by simply being here in this place. She pads into the room from the kitchen with her own glass and sits next to me. The fuzziness of wine is making me smile and chat with a mellow face as if this is the most common wine and chat occurrence that has ever been.

Suddenly the unspoken offer of sustenance fills the air, and she begins to make seductive moves. I believe I mentioned before how naive I am, but there are no short explanations for my unpretentious state. This is a position where I secretly wish to be, yet I desperately yearn to escape. It is but a breath before my hunger raises its head with a terrifying fierceness that I have not seen in recent years.

Her initial motions are sensuous and slow, and because I enjoy toying with my boundaries I participate in my clumsy, drunken way. She advances with evident mastery straddling me, hands roaming, lips and tongue seeking. This moment is to me extraordinarily wonderful right up until my body, unaccustomed to such fare, loses its restraint in excitement.

Mortified, I push her away and jump to my feet. Surely she does not know what has occurred, but I am jolted out of my reverie as surely as if she has poured a bucket of ice water over my head. My conscience implodes, and embarrassment pours out of me in spades so I run for the doorway in a panic. All the way down the steps she calls me to come back and her voice spurs me on.

All the way home I cry and curse myself for my impotence and inability to hold in the face of temptation. My humiliation is strong, and I aim to use this premature escape as a lesson and demonstration of my strength and loyalty. I arrive home, and though it hurts me I confess truthfully and take ownership of the situation. My excuse if I were to utter it would be, “If only you had fed me, I would not so easily waver at the offer of nourishment!” But this is my inadequacy, and I accept the full blame.

I am berated with heavy words and tears for many days.

Then I am shunned.

My eyes are unfettered, and I see that in my eternal uncertainty I refuse to address my own essentials, and so I suffer at my own hands. The education I now receive, however cliche, is that I must understand my self and seize the day. Acts of boldness and confidence might, at times, fall short, but failure to act at all is the true transgression.