The Food Store Diaries: Hunger
by E.A. Midnight
He hovered over the curvature of the barrier. A bird beginning its pecking dance. The cooled choices glistening under the glass, separated from his ravenous body. His fists remained balled and burrowed in the pockets of snug-fitting jeans till the plastic-clad person behind the counter asked and he answered. His bony finger pointing till it bonked into the divider. The Meatloaf.
His shirt wasn’t as tight as the jeans, but one could still see his hunger underneath. You have to be really good at looking at someone to see where the poverty ends and where obsession with the body begins. She was really good at this. Or maybe she was good at looking at him. She, after all, had a year of practice. A year that began with casual flirtations at the front desk, then meandered into mouths consuming one another and hands sliding up skirts in dim lit back streets. Their dance had grown into a kind of unspoken agreement, halved into their public and perceived platonic friendship and their private, stolen rendezvous. She would disappear from her life into his basement garage, and he would appear at the car window. He would pull the door open and press himself into her. The harsh fluorescents never doing any damage to his chiseled features. They occasionally would watch a movie when his roommates were out and she would fit into the cavity his body created for her on the couch. But mostly, they fucked. They fucked in his room, the kitchen, the shower, the floor in the living room, against the door, in the garage, in alleys. Anywhere they could. Anywhere they were just out of the space surrounding anyone else’s eyes. It was easy to get lost in one’s appetite.
But as his lips bent out the word, meatloaf, she began to feel bored. The consistency of the word, mushy and malleable, in her teeth. Two blue-gloved hands reached into the chilled chamber and gently began plucking out rectangular, wiggly slabs. He held up four fingers to the eyes that peered over at him for some kind of confirmation to stop. She could already taste the ground bits in his mouth. She leaned back away from him and the glowing options, fighting a gag. Protein, he shrugged at her. The meat pile giggled in the clear plastic container that was placed atop the barrier. The separation between where one’s day was over and the other’s was ongoing.
She wanted to spill out a story from when she was twelve and first learning to cook. The clean Better Homes and Garden New Cookbook, 12th edition, handed to her as a present. A pretext to domesticity. To what would be expected of her when she was one day in the position of being another’s. Her mother took no active role in the process, other than presenting her with the book, and buying the ingredients. Or maybe she objected to any assistance from her mother and thus was left alone to experience learning on her own. Her quick-to-please-and-leave brain lusted fast through the directions and changed the ¼ a cup of carrots to 4 cups of carrots, creating the carrotloaf that remained a family joke to this day.
She wanted to unbore herself with him. Create a cavern where he would need to come looking for her, where he would take more than a bodied interest. An investment in a woman who couldn’t cook for shit but could keep him entertained in other ways. Instead of relaying intimate details of who she was before he knew this body, she said nothing and pulled her phone out of her pocket. Pretending to check her texts. The glass object only reflected the ceiling lights back into her face. She clicked into the messaging app, hoping that she created for him a portrait of vague disinterest. An expanse in which the pin prick of diverted attention was hot enough to burn the tongue. A gap for him to want to enter. To dig into. Desire, the backbone of hunger. She subway-eyed him, but he was gathering his meat container and rustling with the items in his hands. When his eyes met hers, a weak smile limped across his teeth, and he started to walk toward the checkout lines. The wake of him in front of her would quickly be filled by someone else.
She didn’t move. Instead, she stared at the smudge which was the transfer of oils from his callused finger lingering on the glass of the food barrier. The residue from him, the foundation of memory. She knew soon she would cling to him tight, which would cause him to push away in search of new, and likely younger, feasts. But for one moment, everything she had of him was preserved right in front of her. Before she had the chance to lick it up, the person behind the counter appeared again,
Anything else?
Isn’t there always.
E.A. Midnight is a neurodivergent artist specializing in multi-modal, cross-genre hybridities. She is a strong advocate for challenging the boxes creative bodies are put in. In 2017, she was the recipient of the PEN North American/Goddard Scholarship Award and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She is currently serving as the Assistant Editor for the literary project, The Champagne Room. Her manuscript, landscape of the interior, was longlisted for the Dzanc Books 2021 Nonfiction Prize. A full list of her published work can be found on her website, www.eamidnight.com. E.A. Midnight resides in the Colorado wilds.