Eat

I have no appetite lately. Anything I eat tastes like dirt. I’ve never taken a particular joy in eating. I consider eating to be as much of a bodily function as defecating. I mean, I don’t think that’s a particularly controversial point of view when you really think about it. But it is probably not the way people think of eating most of the time. It is described as a sensual delight, orgasmic in nature. I have had moments of foodgasm, I think. Experiences of extreme satisfaction at a food experience that “hit the spot”, to use the cliche. But for much of my life eating has been a chore performed for the sake of staying alive. I told my mother this long ago. I think I was in high school but maybe it was college. I introduced the matter by somehow finding it appropriate to say that I had an aversion to food. I said this not to make a statement but to express concern over my weight, which was ridiculously low. Whatever my intended point my mother took offense. I don’t how many times she did this but when I said I couldn’t eat or wasn’t hungry she would sit there, stare, and yell “EAT!” as if that was going to loosen my innardal inhibitions.

I used to be so fucking thin it was scary. “Thin as a rail”, as my dad used to complain. “AIDS patient thin”, a college friend joked. It wasn’t until I started drinking beer in my late 20s that I ever put on any weight, and most of it is in the gut.

The gut is where this aversion to food came from. I think it was emotional constipation. I would have preferred to eat alone but through 8th grade the nuclear family had dinner almost every night, all four of us, talking and expriencing what I guess could have been interpreted as moments of familial happiness.

But there was also the gut stuff. The stuff that I know now caused me anxiety and made it hard to eat. My father endured almost nightly humiliations from my mother and sister, and probably myself as well, though I seem to remember being on his side with certain things. But at my age given my innate unassertiveness I did not have a chance in standing up for him in the crossfire of the others. He faced mockery for his salary, his job, his manlihood. but I think the incident that put him over the edge and caused him to leave the family involved the swimming pool. Sister said one night that she thought she heard someone swimming in the pool late at night. After some discussion it was revealed that daddy was swimming in the pool at midnight — naked. He did this at midnight so none of us would see his bare ass, or any other unspeakables. “It makes me feel free”, he said, to extended cackling laughter from my mother and sister. I think it was that round of laughter that represented the last straw for him. I remember how he sat there in silence, quietly and alternately staring at his dinner plate, at the wall, rinse lather repeat. He left a few weeks later.

I can see where my sister and I might have gotten away with laughing at this. I do not specifically remember laughing but I must have. As children we could have gotten away with laughing at the idea of daddy skinny dipping — just because nudity is a funny concept and naked parents are a particularly sensitive matter. Nudity is essential to the comedy genre, after all. But why our mother would laugh like that, and for so long and so loud, is hard to understand. I just remember daddy sitting there looking like he would rather be anywhere else, and soon enough he was.

I think it was the emotional uncertainy of dinner time that made it hard for me to eat. Eating on demand, or on schedule, has always been a problem for me. I remember reading that Horowitz had trouble eating at restaurants when there was classical music playing. Music turned something in his gut, it seemed. The muscles needed for ingesting and digesting food worked against the muscles that kicked in when he heard music. I feel similar conflicts over talking while eating, or eating in any place where there is noise.

…

I was at this bar last night. I overheard a guy talking to the bartender. He was bragging about dumping his girlfriend. He backed up this bragadoccio (can’t spell that) by adding that he was swiping like a madman on Tinder, Bumble, and a bunch of other dating apps I’d never heard of. He was making it sound like he was gonna show her, gonna get her, gonna prove to her… I’m thinking man, what a fucking jizztrumpet. Vengeance dating isn’t going anywhere good, nor is bragging about the misery inflicted on your ex. He kept saying, with a smile, “Oh she’s fucking angry as hell.”

It had me wondering if I’ll ever be ready for dating again. My heart still feels murdered from a previous experience. I’ve swiped here or there on a couple of those dating apps but they are just a waste of time. What meetups have transpired on account of those apps seem to have been with women whose only interest in me was to gather material for stories they were writing about dating apps for Marie Claire or Cosmo or whatever magazines. And I always felt like I was drowning, even as the conversation was always good.

Funny, a girl who looks like she is 17 just came in to this bar and said “I’ve been coming here since I was 17 years old.” You;d think this was an Irish bar but no.

…

I spent the day gathering sound. It is scary to think what these Links are capable of. At the flip of a line of code someone at CityBridge could turn on audio surveillance. Today I had as many as 21 Links feeding audio into my field recorder. It sounded awesome at times, noisy as hell at other times. but the potential for this kind of surveillance is scary, and that is why I am doing this. By connecting a Link to a certain phone number I cam secretly record everything that happenes in the vicinity of said Link. I basically had third Avenue from 60th to 34th Street on conference call today. It’s a neat soundscape except for the unfortunate fact that sound quality is usually horrible. Only the loudest noises cut through. I am looking forward to hearing what came through around 1:45 into the recording. I spotted three girls talking and laughing around a Link. I think they were Googling some dude who had asked one of them on a date. Can’t wait to hear a piece of that. They were talking straight into the Link not knowing that a phone call was connected in the background. Which sounds creepy and if I don’t intend for it to be that way then maybe I do just to prove that CityBridge is capable of initiating this audio surveillance any time they want.