Living on Bread Alone
We were suddenly transported to another world, to
arrivals from another world…It was terrible! To be
transported from the world of living people into
the company of corpses, to breathe the odor of
the dead.
——V. I. Lenin
A big breakfast, a big lunch, and a big dinner.
——Joseph Goebbels
In those days, in that world, it was always a big dinner. It didn’t matter that it was unpleasant. I never had anything to do except come home and talk. To be ridiculed was plenty filling such that I never ate or was bored. It was a world which turned.
And now the marijuana smoke wafted through the portal, into the new world. I was there, on the floor, throbbing and pulsing, exercising the demons. I was sweating near profusely, much harder than anyone else. I was told it was rude. In one half I was ravished and ecstatically puppeted by the man with the table on-stage, doing his damndest. In the other, the smoke took hammers to my brain, and I thrashed wildly to have it lose its grip. I looked up at the laser machine, and, in spite of my showing stomach, came to think I knew that Jesus was proud of me for trying so hard. Just like that He found his way back into my stories and my poetry.
I hadn’t adequate space for the ritual; I was bumping into others’ shoulders. A ways to my front were a group of people brought by an acquaintance. She and her boyfriend were somewhere else, but this group, in the middle of the dance floor, carried a slightly sour look. Around them were gyrations, even if paltry next to mine. But they stood there, in the middle of the dance floor, talking. I was told it was rude.
I was also told there was one among them staring at me. I hadn’t noticed her yet, but she looked identical to about three people I was familiar with, broad bodied, tall, east Asian girls with moon-elliptical faces, though of whom I knew no names. She broke rank and slid up next to me. She caught off me off guard; she called me by my name. What she said gave me an inclination that she was a specific one of the three. I was still unsure, and when I saw her later, the specific one of three, not this one from the dance floor, I broached the subject discreetly. I asked her what she did over the weekend, and she told me she was out of town, two hundred and fifty miles away. So it couldn’t have been her, but who among the gaggle of midwits from the other world, those refusing to participate in one of life’s greatest joys for fear or whatever causes aloofness, who could have called me by my name and asked me the question that she asked? To wit: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, would you live it once more and innumerable times more, there being nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life returning to you, all in the same succession and sequence?” Verbatim.
Upon being posed the question, head cricked to hear it over the speakers and whistle, I simultaneously saw my past and my future:
I was sitting on a Brooklyn street, on the very early morning of New Year’s Day, crying. We had just left the club, or rather, I had made him leave his people at the club to go with me on the street for a breakdown. It was too much for me, all these buildings and people; it made me feel small. In fact, I wasn’t the only heap of tears on this street. I was thinking of the wretches I had seen on the train and the wretches I saw in the club and realized they were no different. I looked up, gasping for air, into the sky for a sign that He was coming back, because I could no longer abide this planet. But, actually, I was Socrates on the porch of the archon, listlessly awaiting my call. I was not crying but maintained a strange sense that the world would be ending soon, and, though without contempt, that it probably should. It was my birthday, which nobody knew. I was on his porch alone. It was evening, and from the terrace of this building in a forgotten edge of the acropolis, I could see the bright orange glow of the sun beginning to set over the sea. Watching those below return home at a leisured pace, I started to wonder if the archon had forgotten me. I had indeed been summoned, and in the mid-morning the aid had said the archon would see me shortly. He said I could wait on the porch. All day I watched them go in and out; none had been made to wait with me. Few noticed me, those who did drew wide gazes quickly diverted. Some had children which were made to hurry along. I was hoping for some help. I didn’t know what to say in front of the archon, as I had no grasp as firm as Meletus on the grand ideas I was accused of violating, or why they mattered. Euthyphro spoke to me upon arriving but had later gone out the side door; I had just wanted some help. Soon, night fell, and the archon and his retinue were nowhere to be seen. I began to suspect that he and his retinue had also left out the side door, probably snickering the while. My eyes were growing heavy, and my gut was growling. It would be better to sleep, I thought, but, surely, surely my students are coming to look for me, and it would cause a great confusion and worry if I shouldn’t be here when they arrive. And, I thought, it would be better to be awake when they arrive, lest I appear the feeble old man. I pulled my himation about me and tried to wonder, despite my hunger and fatigue, how best to defend myself. I was trapped by the Oracle; I’d try my best to show the jury my sincere humility, but I knew it would’ve been better to put on airs when the news came to the ears of the people, to better accord myself with those from whom I’d always felt alienated. Truly, there was little to be done now, if only someone would’ve helped me. As for the youth, why, what did I do any different than every other man in the city? Maybe it was that they followed along me well after their blooming. This had probably excited the imaginations of some of those upstanding citizens. They thought I wanted to overturn the state of things. I just wanted someone to help me. That morning, I watched the sun rise.
I entered an Anglican church where an old friend of my had been pastor for a while. As a young man, I valued many, but it was exceedingly rare that one such as him seemed somewhere entirely inaccessible. He often humored me and let me pretend to be a Christian in his presence. He was probably the only one aside from my mother who ever said a prayer for me, for me specifically. I never had the privilege to know him well; there were others who he liked better, and this likely contributed to the outsized opinion I had of him. He didn’t know I was coming. I had kept it a secret that I planned to walk through the dark wooden doors, to see the pride flag flying, to be greeted by the usher, to sit in red-cushioned pews near the back, to stay seated during what they call communion, to effect a bittersweet smile and look down at the ambo while he gave an incredibly eloquent and stirring what they call a sermon, to feel a single tear roll down my cheek at the magnificent organ and choir Wesley reprisal, to feel this music and tear and look at the altar rail and once again become envious of the Protestants. I think he saw me, I think he saw me during their ludicrous consecration, because, while I was off looking elsewhere, kneeling, he stuttered and paused for a moment, and, this pause having caught my attention, when I looked, I saw the kinesis of eyes quickly diverted. During the recessional he stared straight ahead as he walked past me, though, being in the back, he surely could have seen me from where he started in front of the altar. I waited a while in the nave after their mass facsimile. I told myself it was because I was nervous, but, really, I didn’t want to be rushed. In the old days, there was always time for Greek and Hebrew and youth group and Ehrman such that I was always on his footfalls in and out of a building. He wore the same beard and shaggy pony-tailed hair, even the same glasses as he did then. Maybe my high estimation of him was right all along. Though he never told me in such terms, I had suspicions he was deeply troubled; he was often taken to the drink. But, despite this habit, he looked the same as I remembered on the last day I saw him, when we parted with a firm handshake and tentative promises. I was convinced I had become unrecognizable; my impure soul having rendered me sallow and sunken. But he called me by my name immediately when I stepped outside. He took my hand and clasped it, and we stood there for a time, saying nothing. He smiled in a tired way, his eyebrows raised, not showing teeth. I do think he was happy to see me, though: he held my hand in his for so long. I think he felt guilty. Eventually, he released me, and being the man he was, asked after me first, to my chagrin. I stumbled through my paltry story, revealed I had never become what I wanted, and tried my best to avoid signaling to him that each moment was a deep regret, my life an enduring humiliation. He ended up telling me less about him than I told him of myself, which was what I desired to avoid. I teased him for being an unmarried Episcopalian priest, trying to reincarnate our old inter-denominational jibes from days gone by. He did laugh. Soon, the deaconess came along and told him to hurry. He seemed to have lost track of time. I asked him, earnestly, to coffee. Rushing off, he told me he would love to, that he was free for lunch at noon in a week-and-a-half, that we should meet at this sandwich spot just down the road, that he would put it in his calendar after mass. When our time came, I was there, and I waited two full hours before believing I was defeated and going home.
This mysterious girl, I answered her, and I’m still sure of my response, even as I sit here, kneading, rolling, shaping a meal intended for the slumping tribe who eats only autofiction, trying to tempt them with epigraph aperitifs. I expect the same response, though. The smell itself is prohibiting.