A Little Out of Touch

I’m in the supermarket and I’m looking at the bar of chocolate sitting there on the shelf. It’s one of the big ones. Fruit and Nut.

“Hey Gerry,” It says to me, smiling and jiggling its little corners at me. “Hey Gerald.”

“What do you want from me?”

“You know what I want. Come on; touch me.”

God all the things I’ve lost; my job, my car, my dignity. I’m thirty two, unemployed, going bald and I’m hideously fat. Now to top it all off I’m talking to a piece of confectionary.

“Hey! I’m talking to you. Come on buddy, put your hands on me, touch me. You wanna see my baby brown skin don’t you? Come on feel my nuts.” The chocolate has a heavily accented voice that I cannot place.

“I can’t!” I squeal at it, my voice rising up in a little note of desperation, a simpering whimper that makes me feel like even less of a man than ever.

“What are you queer is that it? Ooh little Gerry can’t even make happy with something he wants. You gotta’ take what you want Gerry you know that. You’ve been losing weight recently haven’t you? You’ve been doing really well haven’t you? You’ve earned this. Do it. Unwrap me. I want it.”

I hug myself, grasping my sausage meat flesh. I know how I look; I’m a whale, a big fat beast who makes people feel ill. I can’t help it if I comfort eat. It’s the only thing left for me now.

“Gerry let’s do this! Take me I’m yours,” the chocolate bar starts jumping up and down a little on the shelf and making orgasmic groaning noises at me like some mackintosh wearing deviant who’s just found a dog eared porn mag in the trash next to the bench he’s sleeping on.

“I hate you!” I hiss, drawing a look from the girl standing in the aisle next to me with her mother who’s trying not to look my way. People often do this. They take a look at my tracksuit trousers hanging low beneath my corpulent torso and they look at my trainers with my huge load bearing feet stuffed inside them, spreading the tongue and laces of the shoe wide, forced apart unnaturally to fit me in them, and they quickly look away. “I’m a man!” I scream at them, “I did this to myself!” I bellow, “I wasn’t always like this!” Then I wake up.

“Quit whining,” it says.

I know it’s looking at me so I just go on and thrust a hand out, picking it up and unwrapping the black and blue outer wrapping and the golden foiled inner layer.
There’s a lot of groaning going on as I shove it in my mouth and chew down on the nutty gorgeous milkiness but I don’t know if it’s coming from me or the chocolate bar.

It’s over pretty quickly. The girl is looking and I smile down at her. She smiles back, an empty mouthed gummy grin that reminds me of my elderly neighbour Gladys. Gladys has no teeth and always talks to me about the weather. “It’s a cold one tonight Gerald!” She often roars at me, for she’s partially deaf too.

The girl does nothing but look at me and my chocolate smeared mouth, smiling with her eyes as well as her gums. I look after the mother as she leads her daughter away then and I think of Carol from work. Her curls, that smile, her business suits and her high heeled red shoes that made me think of things that wouldn’t normally have occurred to me, the seedy pink of a neon sign, the deep red of the London underground logo, my sisters heart shaped calculator and the red of my own burning cheeks whenever I’d speak to any woman, least of all her.

I’m in the bread aisle. The Pastries and the cakes bubble around in their little containers with Perspex lids, like popcorn they fizz and jump about. I don’t wait for them to speak, I grab a jam doughnut and a pecan slice and I eat them. My eyelids flutter and I feel tremulous and weak at the knees. I forget my diet, I forget that constant fear of what people think. I remember that life is for living and doing what you want and I remember that what I want right now is this, even if it isn’t human contact or comfort, but just the sensation of taste. At least it’s something tangible and constant, transgressive and brilliant, something man made and all for me.

I wipe my hands on my brown t-shirt, the pastry flakes floating down to the tiled rubbery floor of the supermarket. I shuffle on, dropping my original basket, the cans of tuna, the chicken, the skimmed milk and vegetables rattling about like lobsters in a fishermans cage.

I need more. I open up a packet of biscuits and I quickly consume them all.

“Do it do it do it!” scream the Digestives.

“I am!” I wail, crumbs flying from my mouth and peppering the laughing packages on the shelves in front of me. I drop the pack to the floor, half eaten, half broken, giggling to itself in a mania entirely of my own making.
I remember my office. I remember Carol smiling at me. I remember her bringing me cups of coffee with a little Rich Tea resting on the side of the saucer. I remember the little smiley faces she left on the post it notes she gave to me when she took one of my calls. The little love hearts she did over the tops of all of her letter i’s instead of dots. She had large teeth but I liked that about her. She wore white blouses and blue skirts and she snorted through her nose when she was on the phone laughing as she sat at her desk on her lunch breaks, not knowing that I was watching, unable to tear my eyes away from her.

“Yeah baby! Faster faster faster!” The crisps section is a particular low point. I eat about eight packets, sitting on the floor right there with the grease coating my fingers and the salt stinging the little coldsores that rest upon the corners of my mouth like twin barnacles.

Then I hit the fizzy drinks, I hit the cheeses and I hit the cured meats. My T-shirt is soaked in various stains and is sticky to the touch and my breathing is laboured and inconstant as, my mouth crammed full of produce, I am forced to breathe through my nose which is blocked with the cold I’ve been struggling to shake off for the last couple of weeks.

And then I’m sat on the floor, my fist plunged into a jar of strawberry jam that’s moaning softly to itself and crying out my name and laughing and telling me that it doesn’t mind if I want to touch it. I take another paw and scoop it into my mouth and I feel like a bear. A disgusting bear.

And yet again I'm finished and I toss the jar aside, ripe with shame and saturated in crumbs and filth. Then just as I feel that pang of disgust I turn my head and I realise I’m being watched. Two men stand, one wears the incongruously coloured uniform of the supermarket, he’s young and open mouthed. The other wears a dark woollen jumper and peaked hat, he’s proud of his job as an enforcer here and his arms fold slowly. He makes no effort to hide his contempt for me. I don’t blame him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Eating,”

“Well are you going to pay for any of that?”

“To be honest I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“I think you’d better put that down and come with us sir,”
I try to get up but I can’t so I roll over on my front and push myself up onto my knees with my hands. I then stand up with a little assistance from the younger of the two. Brett, as his name badge declares, is a young man whose hair is tightly gelled in a series of spikes that are dyed blonde at the tips. I can tell he does not appreciate this situation being a part of his day, his breath smells of mints and as he looks down at me his aftershave is overpowering but not strong enough to stop me looking up his nostrils and being shocked at the vast quantities of nasal hair that exists there.

“I’m sorry about this,”

“Well, that’s ok, but you really need to pay for this stuff.”

“I’ve been feeling a little out of touch lately.” My brow’s pouring with sweat and all I can think of is Carol’s beautiful plump behind on that final day at work as she stood at the window pulling the blinds in my office, my hand itching and making that fateful manouevre, groping and grasping for her curved leering femininity and not knowing what it was going to cost me. And I also hear the chocolate bar all over again as I remember what I did, and the moment in that office when I knew I was going to do it. What are you queer? Go on touch me.

“Well you can’t go around just taking in sight you know,” said Brett.

“I know that.”

“You’re going to have to come with us.”

“Yeah,”

Brett walks first with the security guard following, polished shoes tapping on the linoleum floor, his breath on my neck and his hand on my shoulder. And I look then, at the gleaming lights and the ringing tills and I listen to the murmur of the customers and the squeaking of the trolleys wheels and I swear that I can hear the distant laughter of the food ringing in my ears.

“Do it!” It cries, “Go on do it!”