I have a secret that is small to me, but it would be very big to the world. People do not think me to be a keeper of secrets. When I am honest about certain things: that I never knew my parents, that I grew up an orphan on the streets, that I would sleep in the basements of the places I worked; when I am honest about these things they think I am honest about all. But I have a secret that is small to me, and I do not intend to keep it any longer.
My secret is small to me, but it is very big for me to keep it. No one has ever seen me eat. Of course it is because I do not eat in the ordinary way. It is easy to keep such a thing from, say, my coworkers. They will think I’m a man who works through my lunch break, or eats in my car. It is hard to keep such a thing from a woman. They will want to sit across a table from me. They will want to have me cook, to see me lick my lips and lean back in contentment. Usually I tell them that I have difficulty swallowing, that I am allergic to this and that and that I am an embarrassment to dine with. And that is not entirely untrue. But I do not intend to keep this secret any longer.
I dated a woman for four years. That is the longest time I have seen a woman. She came to my home, and never did she anything amiss. That is because I learned early on that even though a woman will not suspicious that you will not eat, she will be very, very, very suspicious indeed if you do not have a refrigerator. And so it was not a big expense to buy a refrigerator and keep it stocked with whatever seemed innocent enough. It is strange that a woman will be suspicious if there is no refrigerator, but she will not mind if it only has mayonnaise in it. But then again I am a man, and women are so infrequently surprised by men.
After four years that woman left me, and I was alone for a long time. I moved to a different city, and I found a different job, and a different apartment, and I bought a new refrigerator and some new mayonnaise. I was alone for a long time, and then I met a woman with red hair.
I was alone for a long time, and I did not like my new job, and I did not like my new apartment, and I remembered that I had not liked my old job and my old apartment. I do not eat in the ordinary way, and I do not need to eat in the ordinary way. I wondered why I worked with my hands, exhausting myself, when I did not need to reach, to grasp, as other men do. When I was an orphan on the streets, I was not happy, but the wind and the rain did not bother me, and though I did not tell my secret, I did not keep it either. And now my secret bothers me because I keep it, and my home keeps me from the wind and the rain, though I have no need for that. And so I wondered why I made the sacrifices that other men made.
I left my job and then I opened my refrigerator. I threw away my mayonnaise, and then I threw away my refrigerator, and then I left the apartment. I went to the sidewalk to sit. And then somehow, even though I was a man with no job and no apartment and no mayonnaise, somehow I met a woman with red hair, and I decide that I would again make the sacrifices that other men make, and I would do them one better: I would tell her my secret.
It is no good to tell a woman your secret right away, so she heard the same story everyone else hears; the story that makes me seem so honest. I never knew my parents, I grew up an orphan on the streets, I would sleep in basements of the places I worked. She stopped me when I told her about pickpocketing, about cops and security guards. She told me she was intimately familiar with all those things. I almost told her my secret right there in the laundromat. I do not eat in the ordinary way, nor do I need to, so I did not pick pockets out of necessity. I make the sacrifices other men make, and when I was young I made sacrifices in a different way. The other boys wanted to see pockets picked.
The woman had red hair, a big curly mass of it. She came from a different city. She had run away from home to live in the closet of an apartment building a clean the floors and take out the trash. Her secret was very big to her, but it was small to me. She told me that men did not come to visit her any more, and that was why her clothes were so worn and patched-over. The men who visited her had filled her closets with things to wear, and she repaired them over and over and their bright patterns grew more and more disjointed, without harmony, frayed edges merging with crisp hems. Her dresses made her seem to move in a hundred more ways than she did.
This was her secret and it was a small thing to me. She sat in the laundromat and on the couch and on the bed, red hair and kaleidoscope and told me this story again and again in different ways. I had not yet told her that I did not eat in the ordinary way. She knew that I was not hiding something, but I was not ready yet, and in gentleness she told enough for both of us.
In September I told her, and she did not understand, so I said I would show her. I walked in the evening to the flower shop. I bought half a dozen roses. I walked to the corner store. I bought four lemons. I walked to the stationery store. I bought a package of different colors of paper. As I walked I saw an orange reflector that had fallen off a bike. I took it.
All of these things I took to the woman’s apartment. I laid them on the kitchen table, and I told her to see. She watched me, curious, her dress blaring, and she did not sit down as I sat down.
I opened my eyes, and then I opened my eyes in a second way. The lights went out in the kitchen, but it was not dark. No highlights popped from the polished surface of the table, but the air was clear, and the colors all around me were broad and steady. Then the objects on the began to glance and shudder in their hues.
I have never observed myself eating, but I believe my eyes saccade about, leaping from point to point as I drink the color from the world. This is what I mean when I say I do not eat in the ordinary way. I have a mouth, and a tongue, and borborygmus fumes from inside me, but I feed upon something other than food. The colors of the things before me flipped off like a light.
My body pulsed with warmth. I knew now that my mouth would no longer remain empty, and the love I felt would soon allow to produce saliva for the first time, and I would feel the satiety that other men feel. The things before me were gray and their texture was as dry rubber.
The woman looked astonished, attentive, amazed, but I saw that her hair was gray. Her dress had no pattern, and was gray, and hung like burlap. She smiled broadly, and her eyes struggled to shine, and her teeth were like cinders, and her tongue was like a wet sock, and I hated her, I hated her.
Return to Stories
Return Home