The Ater

The Ater


Setting: A shabily dressed man. He has on headphones. A hat sits infront of him and he paces.

Man

Food, food, food. These things are important to me, you know. Sort of like air and water. Food is fine. Food is proof of opulence. Wealth. Flavor. Heath. Weight. Taste. Opulence. What a day, what a day. The things I have eaten. I have eaten many things in my days. I have eaten meats, jellies, pastries, pies, garnishes... many garnishes. I loved the cherries in my father’s Manhatens, I loved the olives in my mother Martinis. Those were the days. Rain pelting against the windows, electric heat, warm inside, cold outside and I would eat the olives and cherries. They would fight or watch the Olymics and the rain would fall. Those were fine days. Ha.

I remember too milk. Do you? Do you remember the cardboard? Do you remember the cold milk containers. They seemed large then, now I see them sometimes and I am amazed at how small they are. Cold milk. Fatty. Funy. It disgusts me now. Wouldn’t you like some milk? We could drink it with straws and laugh and maybe it would come out your nose. I remember girls and milk and their thin hair and eating with them.

Gosh. And beer. Beer used to have a funy thin taste. I mean it shocked me the was soda did. It had bubbles, but it had a weird strong flavor to it. I drank beer i nthe back yard in the summer. I had skinned knees and I was young, before all this here, before beer became what it is now... you know. Beer now is like oxygen, but back then. Gosh. I stole cans of beer, like two and climbed the tree that smelled like walnuts. I’d perch there in the branches and drink beer. I’d finish the can and then lick the rim. Beer was different then. I felt warm and silly and my angry parents who were tired and hating their jobs, eachother and me... they couldn’t hurt me cause I was silly, drinking beer.

Pizza, greasy pizza when food was a bad thing. Remeber hating food because everyone in the halls at high school was fat and afraid of being seen eating? I remember that. I remeber hating food. It was disgusting like masterbating, but it had to be done. It had to be done. That’s when eating with a girl was... crazy! I met a girl, she was small, funy, her parents hated her. She went down town with me afterdark when it was raining. We were two people who felt at home being akward together, what ever that means. We went to a chineese food place and ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, white rice I think. We shoveled it into our faces and giggled when we saw eachother. And when we kissed later, we tasted like rice. Oh I loved being alive then. Salty tears tasted like salt, and it’s then when I realized what salt was suposed to taste like! Like tears!

I don’t remember food for many years after that. I remeber excess, too much food at times, but not tasting it. Like beer, yeah. I had alot of beer, and whiskey cokes and vodka cranberries, but I never tasted them. I just drank them. They filled me up because I felt hollow. And there were girls, but it was about the whiskey cokes and vodka cranberries. Years of that, you know? If I think of those years and what they are to me... what I feel when i htink of them, what thought or feeling comes to mind, it’s those two dirnks. Whiskey cokes and vodka cranberries. Sweet like chemicals or cigar filters.

That’s life. That’s life though. Now it’s cheese. Big hunks of cheese. Cheddar, nothing fancy, fust cheddar. It full musky flavor. I love it. I get it in used paper bags from the food bank. I can break off pieces of it and eat it whole. I can melt it on white bread. It is life blodd, cheddar is important. Cheddar is very, very important. God yes. Cheddar fills the belly, and th ebelly gets as hollow as the head sometimes. It hurts to think or remeber things, but cheddar calms me down and lets me sleep. And if that doesn’t work I still drink beer. But beer is heavy and it makes my head throbb and my mind race in the morning.

Food is now time. It breaks the day into pieces. One meal in the morning, maybe one around two... a dollar meal hamburger. Those are ok only because they are hot. I drink alot from the fountains. Then I can dirnk beer if I have money and I eat a TV dinner and go to my room. Food is/are the numbers on the clock face. It’s years. Food is years and years and years. I like things now like soup I never used to like. YEars ago. I am in soup years now. I wonder what I will be eating in a few years, as my health fades. As my health fades what will I like? Grant, my neighbor who is older than me eats baby food and takes medication his brother brings him. He is in his baby food years. This is it here, the last meal. All of these last meals are the last ones. That’s life.Food is important. It’s how you know where you are going and where you have been. Food food food.