The Diet

THE DIET

by D. F. Roeder

I am starving into oblivion here. Literally, starving.

The pandemic is already winding down in this country. Fewer and fewer people are getting sick and the mortality rate, which unfortunately for me was low to begin with, has now veered into negative territory. I so long for those good old days (was that really only months ago?) when we could all travel freely again, so that I can finally escape.

I wandered over here on a whim one day by ferry from Indonesia, curious if there were others here like me, and have, inadvertently, been stuck ever since the borders closed. Which was fine at first. So many people were getting infected and I thought it would only be a matter of time before the death toll started rising. The anticipation of an impending feast was almost too excruciating to bear.

Then I was crushed, simply crushed, I tell you, with disappointment when the death toll remained stagnant and no feast materialized. I’ve merely been surviving now on a snack here and there, and cannot wait to get out of here. Tut-tut!

The authorities here are simply too cautious for my liking and are now talking about slowly re-opening travel to places such as New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan.

‘Safe travel bubbles’, they’re calling them.

Ugh! Simply too boring, I’m calling them.

These places are too safe, too similar to where I am currently stranded; there’s no mayhem, not enough violence, not enough hate in these places, not enough fuel for my feasts. Barring any major natural disasters, these places form a collective famine, a drought, of non-events. Nothing usually happens in these places and there’s absolutely nothing for me to eat.

I was almost salivating with excitement when that mosque massacre happened in New Zealand about a year ago. More incidents like that and I would have found a way to move there, stat! But their female leader shot my hopes down, if you’ll pardon the pun, with her immediate and strict legislation against guns. So tiresome. And as for Japan, those daily little earthquakes over there can merit barely a snack because there’s hardly a fatality. Seriously, I’d have to wait donkeys’ years before that brilliantly mouthwatering trifecta of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe occurs again, if ever.

So I’ve been on a strictly enforced diet here and it’s a diet imposed not out of my own volition, mind you.

Anyway, we all appreciate being on a diet now and then, don’t we? Some of us like to diet out of vanity. Not that I need to because I don’t. When you possess the fluidity like I do to assume any form you please, then you choose a passably attractive one. Not too attractive, oh no, that would invite untoward attention and we don’t want that, do we? A pleasantly attractive but completely unremarkable, easily forgettable form; that’s the ticket for safe subterfuge.

So I don’t need to diet. But I do appreciate going on a diet once in a while. The truth is, dieting sharpens our senses and keeps us on our toes.

There’s nothing quite like hunting and foraging for a diet, isn’t there? Those Scandinavian chefs who’ve opened restaurants in the middle of nowhere and who’ve been hailed with Michelin stars for foraging; back then, I used to think they’d been isolated for too long in the woods and were wasting their time. But after experiencing near-starvation in the wilderness here and having to forage for scraps myself, I now absolutely get the fascination. I find myself mesmerized by the superlative symmetry of those severely sparse meals. Oh dear, maybe I am getting starvation brain.

Yes, I have been watching several episodes of ‘Chef’s Table’ on Netflix. Hello, have you been paying attention? There’s nothing else to do here during this ‘circuit breaker’. Tut-tut!

Except maybe watch the news about how other countries in the world are handling this pandemic. Although, to be perfectly honest, I do prefer watching those news reports of how other countries are mishandling this pandemic but then again, those type of reports just remind me of what I am missing and end up making me unbearably hungry.

Take the Philippines, for instance. Always an exceptionally delicious country to visit, guaranteed to serve up an enticing slew of natural disasters each year, a destination which exponentially became more appetizing under their current leader. All those so-called ‘extra-judicial killings’ made for astoundingly juicy meals. ‘Langhap sarap!’[1], as the Filipinos would say. I have to agree because even while still enroute on flights during my travels to the Philippines, my nostrils would already quiver in anticipation at the thought of consuming all that pervasive grief, all that anguish, all that exquisite agony.

Now, you may ask, why didn’t I maneuver to get stranded in the Philippines instead during this pandemic, thereby ensuring that I would be well-fed during their ‘emergency community quarantine’, when self-serving politicking, grandstanding and bickering would be prioritized by its authorities to the detriment of the health and safety of the very people they are supposed to serve?

Well, as a species, we are fiercely territorial, you know.

My counterparts in the Philippines, while tolerant of the occasional ‘tourist’, were not particularly enamored of my then-intention to become a permanent resident. I was encroaching too much on their feeding grounds, they said, and, rather unceremoniously, they tossed me out.

Hence, I acquired whatever shape or form was necessary while wandering (and feeding) around Southeast Asia. Whenever someone stopped and asked me what I was doing, I would simply reply that I was a ‘digital nomad’ and invariably, these millennials would nod knowingly, and I would fit right in. It is that easy to slip, virtually unnoticed, into your world.

Although I am the only one of my kind (as far as I know, unless someone else like me is skulking around here) in this country, I did encounter others like me during my travels. In Philippine local mythology, the creature that comes closest to resembling my kind is the one in the Visayan language called the ‘Abat’ or ‘Ungo’. Across the Indonesian archipelago, my counterparts are referred to as ‘Wewe Gombel’ while in Japan, our kind is called the ‘Namahage’ and in Taiwan, the ‘Hóo koo pô’. In English-speaking countries, the most convenient, all-encompassing term to use when referring to my kind seems to be the ‘Boogeyman’.  

Upon encountering me, my own compatriots haven’t exactly been hostile, especially when it was clear that I was merely a traveller passing through, but let’s just say, no one rolled out a red carpet welcome for me either. We don’t exactly win awards for hospitality. Like I said, we’re fiercely territorial.

In several cultures, we are frequently designated as female (hmmm, misogynistic much?) while the English term obviously classifies us as male. Please allow me this opportunity to correct a misconception. While we can certainly assume these physical forms, we are neither male nor female. I believe the fashionable classification terms to use these days are ‘pan-sexual’, ‘gender-fluid’ or ‘gender-neutral’, whatever. Gender for us is non-binary.

We have existed since time began. We come from nowhere, everywhere and neverwhere. People in different countries and cultures may call us by different names but there is one commonality that unites our kind that transcends names; since medieval times, people have invoked our specter, quite effectively, to compel good behavior in their children. How many times have parents, grandparents, nannies and babysitters uttered this warning to naughty children the world over?

‘You’d better behave! Or the ‘Abat’/‘Wewe Gombel’/‘Namahage’/‘Hóo koo pô’/Boogeyman/insert appropriate name here’ will come and eat you.’

And here is where again, if you’ll allow me, I have to correct another misconception about my kind. We do not eat children. I repeat and this is not a drill. Child-eating is absolutely verboten, whether the little monsters have been behaving properly or not, okay? That is too repulsive to even contemplate. We are not characters borne by a grim German folktale or plucked out of a Stephen King novel. Our diet does not consist of human blood or human flesh. Excuse me, but we are not savages. Tut-tut!

And speaking of Mr. King, one recent afternoon, while seeking some form of diversion here during this ‘circuit breaker’, I came across an amusing television series, not on Netflix but on HBO this time, called ‘The Outsider’, which I watched in one sitting, eight episodes in all. (Yes, I was that bored but again, there was nothing else to do). ‘The Outsider’ TV show is based on a novel of the same name by Mr. King. The antagonist in the storyline, or the ‘Big Bad’ as they say in showbiz industry parlance, was a supernatural creature called ‘El Cuco’, who can be described as our cousin of sorts from Latin American and Spanish culture. But while the storyline propagated (once again) that old sensationalist myth, that outrageous lie, that creatures like us feed on children, there was one aspect about our diet that the story managed to communicate correctly.

Grief and pain have always nourished our appetites and once we get a whiff of death, especially senselessly violent deaths involving innocents (so singularly tasty), we’re all over it, like carrions on cadavers.

If you’re at all familiar with Mr. King’s books and stories, you’ll know that his work is almost always inspired by creatures like me. Stories about our kind would be fine with me if nobody at all read them. What disturbs me is when a bestselling celebrity author creates stories about us because that kind of wide reach, the power and magnitude of that distribution, only serves to put us in the spotlight.

You see, one reason why we’ve managed to survive for so long among you is because we’ve always just lurked in the shadows or hidden, unnoticed, in plain sight.

Despite the dietary misapprehension I just pointed out, I must admit Mr. King was a little bit too on the nose about us with his ‘El Cuco’ narrative. He may claim his story is fiction but the fact that it’s out there, being read and viewed by millions, makes me distinctly uncomfortable.

Perhaps I should pay Mr. King a little visit in person and convince him to correct the glaring misconception his book perpetuates about my diet or, even better, persuade him to simply stop writing about my kind altogether. I can be very, very persuasive, if I want to be, if you know what I mean?

Anyway, now that the authorities here will be lifting this ‘circuit breaker’ very soon, my first order of business will be getting on the first plane out of here and returning to the United States of America.

The glutton in me always retains fond memories of the U. S., you know, especially after that magnificent Manhattan banquet years ago called 9/11. Oh, how I feasted and gorged on that one! I was satiated for months and months afterwards.

The adventurous gourmand in me though desperately yearned for more variety in my diet over there. My diet was getting a tad monotonous. All those school shootings, nightclub shootings, church shootings, synagogue shootings, concert shootings, cinema shootings, even Walmart shootings. Tragedy, pain and devastation caused by nothing but guns, guns, guns and more guns. Make no mistake, I was getting more than my fill; my belly was never empty there.

But maybe because these occurrences were happening with such frequency, people’s minds and senses were becoming numb. Their emotions had dulled, and their grief and outrage seemed muted. I mean, I could literally taste their bland resignation to it all. And frankly, my palate was by then in dire need of a cleanser. I sought a sprinkling of spice, a little bit of heat, a smidgen of flavor in my diet. That’s why I moved overseas for a while.

But now I’ve had enough of my starvation diet here. Maybe this is what a detox feels like? Because seriously, for the past few months during this ‘circuit breaker’, I feel like I’ve been cleansed. And now, I’m raring to go, bursting with a deep, impatient need, ready to devour the world in all its jagged, broken, ugly beauty. I will be insatiable.

Those ‘low-hanging fruits’ over in the U.S. will be refreshingly welcome indeed. With the pandemic’s skyrocketing mortality rates over there, my appetite will be restored to normal in a jiffy. And because it is the U.S., I know I will never starve.

I can always count on the mass shooting sprees, for example.

You know, it wasn’t until I moved overseas that I realized weekly mass shootings are not normal occurrences in other countries, that school children growing up outside the U.S. don't undergo 'terror shooting drills' on campus. In some countries, such as in Japan and in this one where I’m presently stranded, regular citizens aren’t even allowed to carry guns? What a load of nonsense. No wonder I’m practically starving here!

When back in the States, I will once again appreciate those weekly mass shootings; I view them as delectable supplements to my diet. And I know the American male leader, unlike that tiresome female in New Zealand, will do absolutely nothing, blissfully nothing, to restrict the use and ownership of guns. Oh, what glee!

Oh, I do hope the current White House occupant gets re-elected! I can imagine it already: non-stop feasting on a buffet of toxic misogyny and racism with a dessert fountain of overflowing hate, fury and violence, the amuse-bouche of broken families and babies in detention centers, an à la carte menu of the dis-united states of chaos and rage, grief and immense suffering, available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, for four more glorious years. It will be my diet’s version of the American dream. I can’t wait.

Oh, excuse me just for a minute, will you? I’ve been placed on hold here for what seems like forever but now, I think someone’s finally picking up…

#

‘Hello, is this Singapore Airlines?...No need to apologize for keeping me waiting, my dear. I’ve been here ages but it’s absolutely understandable with everything that’s going on. Tut-tut!..Yes, you can help me. I’d like to book your earliest available flight to Los Angeles…First class, please, my darling. I’m a creature of comfort, you know… Oh, that will be divine, thank you.’

THE END

[1] Tastes delicious