Berkeley type
There’s a man with thick silver hair who will save me. I’ll run into him at Good Vibrations or while thumping melons at the Berkeley Bowl. Eyes quizzical, brow scrunched, I'll ask his advice as I peruse the erotica or the tomatoes. “How do I pick a ripe one?” I'll say, then press my lips together in anticipation, run a nervous hand through my own uncombed mane, worry the tear in my formless tee.
He’s capable, my man with silver hair, knows what I require. “I haven’t read this stuff in years,” I’ll tell him, batting my innocent eyes. “A girlfriend of mine recommended the selection here. Do you have any recommendations?” Or: “My naturopath has finally given me the green light for nightshades, as long as I don’t combine potatoes and tomatoes in the same week. But how can you tell when a pineapple tomato is ripe?”
He’s firm, my man with silver hair. Turns out his name is Nathanial and he stays away from pornography and tomatoes. He scrapes a thin layer of coconut oil on his multigrain toast and makes his own organic soy milk. He lives in a house constructed of bales of hay coated in plaster, collects the rainwater and the grey water to pour over his lush, nightshade-free garden. In a far back corner of his yard, a former girlfriend has constructed a pyramid of empty television sets and we sit and watch in calming yogic poses, balancing our diminishing frames on iron loungers furred with ivy.
Nathanial leads me away from temptation. He slices layers of butternut squash, thin as sashimi, dries them in the sun, and layers them with nut cheeses and frothy cucumber juice: lasagna! With him I learn the taste of a peach, the value of chastity, the length of my arms from fingertip to fingertip. During our monthly fasts, we see visions, hummingbirds like fairies in the passionflower, fabulous eagles, strong and formidable, emerging from sketchy fog. And my parents appear before me, penitent and humbled. They kneel at my feet and I dismiss them with a forgiving wave. The vision repeats and I never tire of it, my power, the moment of clarity.
When it’s over, when I am saved and clean and about twenty-five pounds lighter, after my visions start to wear thin, Nathanial will move on to the next orphan. He is evangelical, gathering souls away from processed foods and packaged T&A, a beam of light that moves from soul to soul. I want to warn them, the lady paused in front of the cornflakes, the college boy reaching for a six-pack of Milwaukee’s Best, the skittish dog-walker about to cross Dwight: It isn't us he wants. It's the karma.
From a prompt last summer: I am counting. Despite the first-person point of view, this is fictional. Just a reminder.
Image: The infamous Berkeley Bowl, from a 2005 New York Times article.