Sugarhead

 

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Introduction

rules are for fools!
I am the narrator and you are the reader.
Don't worry about first person this, third person that.
Complete sentences. 
Or run on sentences those kinds of books have been beaten into the ground and this isn't one of them and past or present tense are no chains of mine.
This is, however, a true story.

...

O
nce upon a time

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A history

In the mid 20th century, around the time that everyone was trying to kill Hitler and his evil Nazi regime (naturally), America was conducting the Manhattan project. I’m sure you know all about that…But! Surprise! Rather than inventing an atomic destroyer of worlds, the brilliant scientists actually and accidentally discovered something really rather different and unexpected.

It was 1945 and war, war, world war everywhere, when these curious and wonderful, peace-loving  scientists synthesized a super-efficient and high-output micro-fuel fit for human consumption that provides all the essential nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and calories needed for survival. It would expand to just the right size needed to make the intestines happy, and anything that came out the other end was never any bigger than a peanut.  It was highly successful and immediately recognized as a solution to over-consumption of food, obesity, and of course, as a resolution to hunger in the undeveloped world (You know, anywhere not Caucasian).

The scientists who discovered and announced the finding were collectively awarded a Nobel prize and their names were put into history books and promptly forgotten by everyone who wasn't alive at the time! Hitler still killed himself and the war was called off because the world was so excited. It quickly became mass-marketed in capsule form and was cheap and in endless supply, and the United States began producing and passing out magical pills to all corners of the (1st)world. Hunger and obesity were simultaneously eliminated. 

By the 1960's, food eating had become symbolic of rebellion, social unrest, and political dissent. Everyone that didn't eat had become afraid of it, eaters themselves, and the potential consequences that came from eating. Food became taboo. And by 1971, President Dixon declared a "war on food". All foods and especially sugars became Schedule One, the most restrictive of anti-food laws. Programs and initiatives to combat food production, distribution, and use were put into place and heavily enforced.

Between 1980 and 2000, the number of non-violent food offenders behind bars exploded from 50,000 to over 500,000. Political hysteria about food led to implementation of draconian food laws throughout the 80's and 90's, and public concern became the forefront of news, social gossip, and debate. The majority of Americans cited it as the number one problem in America. Coalitions formed, anti-eating campaigns aimed at the youth began to appear, and America bore witness to the militarization of domestic anti-food enforcement.

Today as it currently stands, the United States annually spends $51,000,000,000 fighting food. There are over 1,000,000 adults incarcerated for food crimes, the highest amount of incarcerated in the world.

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Overdose

He was dreaming. It was the soaring kind, shapes not quite fitting, but fitting nonetheless. He was on a game show, he was the star and he was winning! And just perfectly normal as your everyday, run-of-the-mill game show spotlight situations go, he was relieving himself into a solid gold urinal- which he found rather pleasant when compared to the usual porcelain plain-old white urinals that were standard for dream potty breaks. He didn’t find it at all odd that he was being watched by an entire studio audience. They were only there to cheer him on, and he was their champion pisser, with a greater stream than that of the most prized race horse. He would, of course, be unable to remember this later, as was usual for his dreams, but for now he was content and enjoying the attention. It wasn’t every day that he had such spectacular dreams, although he wasn't aware that he was dreaming, nor would he have the opportunity to be aware- for he was suddenly awake.

As would be expected from just about anyone that was one moment lifting his leg, the next being dragged rather violently back into reality, he was confused. He was immediately and utterly aware of the many strange faces of clear authority all talking at once, some calm, others excited. It was only a second or two until he realized that these were paramedics and, to his dismay, officers of the law. Police men and EMTs. Cornflower blue, starched and pressed button down shirts with shiny, golden badges, name plates and rank stitched above the breasts and into the shoulders. There were handguns and utility belts, hand cuffs and radios, a stretcher and medical bags with supplies that he would never know the names of. These were trained professionals, serious and in charge.

"Whoa there, son! You just lie right there now, okay?"

The EMT holds his shoulder down with one hand, a penlight in the other, flashing and looking into the wide, frightened eyes of our friend, the dreamer. He asks him if he knows where he is. He asks him if he knows to whom he is speaking. Question to question, he guides our friend to the inevitable topic that he knows he must answer for. The police are bulging, muscular and angry. They are talking into their CB-radios, short codes for long statements, they’re telling dispatch that he’s alive and awake and aware. They’re telling dispatch that they’re going to take him to the hospital first, jail second.

Our confused and aware friend is starting to cry. He feels the tears coming on and he knows that he can do nothing to stop them. He is in a kind of pain that he didn’t know existed. It isn’t pins and needles so much as it’s rusted nails. It’s dragging the skin of elbows and knees across a sidewalk under the summer sun. It is wet and it smells and he is crying. 

“You need to tell us where you got this sugar. If you cooperate, you’ll make this a lot easier for yourself later on. But if you lie, you’re going to make things really hard for yourself. Now tell us where you got it, son. Where did you get the sugar?”

 

Our friend looks from one officer to another, his eyes dart from officer to EMT and back again. He is sweat, he is panic, he is stress; he is fear, he is pressure, he is caved. The only thing he can hear is the heaving, sobbing, screaming of his wife. His poor wife, red eyed and swollen from grief, she is screaming at him, yelling at him, demanding of him. She is hoarse, her voice is all throat and air from the bottom of her stomach. He has never seen her like this, and he will never see her like this again. 

“Tell them! Tell them where Matthew is! Tell them, John! Tell Them!” 

Matthew. He forgot about Matthew. He doesn’t want to talk about him, but he knows he has no choice. He knows that he is giving up his friend’s freedom along with his own, and he only cries the harder. His eyes move still from wife to EMT to officer to officer to EMT to wife. Everyone is talking, his wife is sobbing and hysterical, three hundred and sixty degrees of Who, Where, When and Tell Them Tell Them Tell Them! 

He has no choice and he knows it. And so he tells them.

*****

The last thing he remembered was a spoonful of sugar, raw and brown and crystal. He remembers savoring it, trying to imprint in his memory just how sweet and delicious and warm it felt dissolving on his tongue. And his tongue! Sore and tired from all the licking and tasting and swallowing. He remembers that he had been eating sugar and honey all night and into the morning. He was alone in the basement, teetering on the edge of a massive bowel movement, afraid that his wife would see him and know exactly what he was doing, and why he was waddling from the basement to the backyard, perspiring and wheezing. And as if that weren’t enough, he also had to go and drink up a gallon of Uppy Green Fuzzy, his favorite soda. So more than ever in his entire life, as far as he could remember right then and there, he never had to urinate quite so badly. He was dancing and tucking his hands between his knees, suffering through the pain, all the while thinking that if he could only just pee, all his problems would be solved. 


But he can’t. He knows that he really needs to get to the backyard. It is absolutely pertinent that he get to the backyard. He needs to dig and squat and try to avoid getting it all over and back up onto his pants and socks and shoes. Always with the backsplash; diarrhea and earth; collateral shit. His property is a graveyard of defecation. He suspects that his wife is beginning to inspect the lawn a little more closely. You can really only dig up so much grass before people start to notice. You can only blame it on the dog so many times. A dog, after all, doesn’t put the grass back after he digs it up. His lawn is holes and mounds of dog shit and human shit and wrappers, and he knows it’s only a matter of time before he is caught. It is his only option: there is no way that his toilet is equipped to handle anything larger than a peanut. 

He has been eating all night and all morning, and sleep finally catches up to him. He lies down thinking how it will only be for a minute, and anyway it will help him get his mind off his bladder for a minute, and he really just needs to rest his eyes for only a minute. He’s so tired, so sleepy, so worn out and full of sugar and honey and soda that he just closes his eyes and that is all it takes. One minute. He is dreaming of the golden urinal and game show. And then he is awake, surrounded by officers and EMTs, barraged by the questions and the surge of remorse and regret and, well, embarrassment. He has, after all, shit and pissed all over himself in the middle of mounds of his addiction. He is carried out on a stretcher and placed in an ambulance. The EMTs are urgent, the police are stern; his wife is hysterical. 

*****


This is John Smith, sugar addict. He has been arrested a dozen times on various charges of possession of sugar, honey, and soda, the most addictive foods. He has been over the legal weight limit for five years, unable to stop eating despite being on probation and threatened with prison. He is only one of millions of criminally fat Americans, along with his supplier and long time co-dependent sugar addict friend, Matthew Mark, struggling against the relentless tide of the law. The law is thin and sinewy, hard and just, backed by millions of dollars in taxpayer support and an entire industry of for-profit prisons and over-time happy police, prosecutors, and judges. Crime will not go unpunished, and the War on Food is a crusade.

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The state of things

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Judge, ______, executioner

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And so he tells them

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Miranda who?

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Crime and punishment

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~

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