The Hunger

Joe slouched his way down the sidewalk, stepping with a slight limp. This new pain, on top of all the others he was currently dealing with, was caused by the hard ground he slept on last night. At this point, however, it didn’t really matter. He was still making progress getting to where he needed to be. The pain originated when someone swiped his mattress from his cardboard shelter several weeks ago, so he’ll have to swipe someone else’s. But pain kept him alive, just like the hunger pains he was currently experiencing. Pain is the world he lives in and has only known. His stride became a zigzag motion, so timing was important. Forcing him to step out of the way or change his erratic gait when a group of young, excited workers getting off work approached. The women avoided eye contact; the men challenged him not to avoid a collision. He just wanted to see what was cooking, literally.

It was Friday night; the lights always seemed brighter and the sounds happier. He soon found his spot, watching a chef and his cooks prepare for the dinner crowd’s arrival. It was a perfect spot to watch the show, an alley that nobody wandered down and a window that looked right into the cook’s workplace. Where the action was, he watched the chef pull a tray of steaks from the refrigerator as if the cook had taken the steaks from a king’s royal hunting grounds. When he first discovered this place, you could only watch; the only sense needed was the eyes. But Joe soon found a way to enhance and go beyond the eyes. He worked a hole into the caulk and made a pathway for the aromas to follow. A pathway that snuck its way up into his nostril, accurately placed through trial and error to catch as much of the wonderful cooking smells, the spices and herbs and fats and everything that these gourmet chefs could put together to please the well-heeled guest that arrived.

As these aromas entered Joe’s olfactory system, he became delighted and overjoyed, and accepted the pain that had begun to build in his stomach. His heart raced, and his breathing slowed. His eyes itched, watered, and hurt. All of this as he watched the steaks cook, the fish fry, and the smell of a pizza that the cook retrieved from a brick oven. Every part of him hurt, from the legs that grew tired of holding him in the perfect position to his stiff neck that never allowed his head to turn or leave his view and the head that pounded and sweated. He relished it because his Dad raised him this way.

Joe was born in poverty. His parents were very religious and always believed that having next to nothing was what God had intended. In fact, Joe literally had nothing because his Dad made him think this was how life was supposed to be. His mother had maybe two dresses and nothing else. Anything he had to play with, his mother snuck into his bed, where he would find it at night. Once, it was a toy truck; another time, it was a few toy soldiers. Just a few days with these treasures would spark his imagination, but what they actually became in real life was a source of pain, true pain, and at the same time joy.

Joe knew he had to keep them away from his Dad, or else there would be trouble. His punishment was getting smacked on the butt, forced to hold the toy while his Dad completed his punishment. But to young Joe, each spanking was like a ritual that his Dad was performing; it never really hurt, just stung. And after a few years, he knew that his six-foot-four-inch father was not really trying that hard. While getting spanked, holding the toy, and whatever pleasure he once found with this toy became synonymous with pain. Joe was too young to understand what was happening to him. He was growing up, learning to feel nothing. As he got older, however, he started to see himself in his father. And he soon found that there was very little difference between pleasure and pain.

As Joe got older, he became more useful to his father. He worked on the farm and soon found a few simple pleasures in his work. He loved to watch the animals as he fed them, the chickens scrambling to peck at the feed he spread out. It was like watching a group of women scramble to get the freshest produce at the farmers market. The unintelligible cackling from downturned heads. He got bigger and stronger, taking on more each year as his father became more immobile, the pigs snorting with delight at the sound of the corn hitting the feed bin, bouncing off one another like bowling pins, striving for a prime position to eat.

In the evenings, his Dad would come home drunk and angry. He found pleasure in his beating of his mother. Joe soon became a wall blocking him, and accepting the blows meant for her. Each swing took a lot out of him, and most nights he was weak, and Joe felt little, like fending off a small dog whose bark was the worst part of the attack. Guiltingly, Joe felt some pleasure in these blows, but it mostly came from knowing the old man was unable to complete his destructive objective.

On the morning Joe turned eighteen, he looked out his window and watched the sun rise. He was not going to see this land again, this unimpeded stretch fading into the distance. It seemed to Joe that, in the end, there would be nothing, but his mother taught him about the city not far off, where he would find people he could trust and become friends with. He would find life worth something other than the misery he found here. This sun found its way up, offering a clear glimpse of where the end was. Joe needed to get to this end and discover what lay before it. He left with nothing but a water bottle, some clothes, and some hope.

It wasn’t long before an older man in a pick-up picked him up. He was on his way to a horse auction and not far from the city limits. The older man dressed in overalls and a T-shirt that was no longer white could barely see the road and seemed to be driving by memory. He talked non-stop about what Joe would discover. The parks were beautiful with grass and trees and children laughing, the buildings that seemed to touch the sky, and all the people running around like they had a place to go. But best of all, he said while running his tongue across his lips, is the food. You can taste anything you want and have it cooked the way you like it. The older man had never peered over at Joe since Joe climbed into his truck. He would have seen a poor person dressed in old, faded clothes and shoes that were on their last mile. It was all a lovely dream, Joe thought.

Being broke and unprepared, he quickly saw his dream collapse and found himself living among people experiencing homelessness. It was not unexpected; he tried several jobs, and working at a fast-food restaurant was one of them. He was able to do the work but found little pleasure in it. He quit after several weeks. He tried several other mind-numbing, low-paying jobs but found the pleasure only came from failure. He loved taking on his boss’s ranting and raving and making sure he knew he was worthless, a confirmation his Dad had made sure he understood.

Arriving back at his tent city, he crawled into his wad of moldy blankets, lay his head down on the flat pillow, and felt confident that his joblessness had not changed his current stature. When the beatings started by the entitled youths who roamed the homeless tent cities, Joe started to see his life starting to take shape. They were taking out their own hostilities in a form of revenge that he found solace in. The beatings, which could come on any night, landed on him with sharp and painful consequences and gave Joe, suddenly, a sense of worth. He found his place in giving someone an outlet to vent their frustrations. He found he had reason to live. He found joy in the pain.

The hunger and all its bastard side ailments became a part of him. They would never release their tentacles that held him bent over, drooling and in constant agony. But at the same time, alive, in semi-unconscious wonder and love. The pain of hunger gave him knowledge of being alive and the joy that it, in itself sends. So this is what makes Joe painfully walk to this place of beauty, shining in the window before him, the white-clad gentleman moving like an angel under the glare of lights and filling his head with the aroma of life.

Joe slouched his way down the sidewalk, stepping wit…

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