Issue 11.1 Fall 2015

11.1 cover image

 

About the Author

Johnny Newport (Moth Ankles) is carrying the consciousness of the oft-failed man in 2015. Strictly from a visual standpoint he looks like he may be kept in a nice package, but this is not so. Johnny Newport has two feet on the warpath and probably smells like last night’s street tacos.

Johnny has short stories published in the literary journals Limestone and The Moth (no affiliation, just the Universe's happy coincidence), a short story is forthcoming in the first anthology from The Speculative Bookshop, his debut novel In Defense of the Moth or a Meaningless Dance in Blinding Heat and Light is forthcoming January 26th, 2016, and he is currently working on a short story collection. You can follow him at www.johnnynewport.com or @mothankles

 

He, Who Controls the Spices

 

Johnny Newport

 

 

An imaginary harness tightened around my head and I felt an ever so slight bugging of my eyes. My temples labored, in and out in painful breath on each side. I’d become one of those niche gourmands who’re susceptible to daily headaches from not only the lack of decadent proteins cooked in various butters and oils, but mostly from drinking insufficient amounts of caffeine. In fact, the headaches were mostly the caffeine withdrawal—the conditioning of my body to revolt in civil war the very moment the effects of caffeine wane—having just recovered from my latest open chest surgery, and out of a recent habit I’d stumbled upon of late.  Unfortunately this addiction, as it seems have matured into, has recently found me engaging in some very low and shameful behaviors: carrying coined money for vending machines, asking for a “to-go” drink at lunch in lieu of a digestif, and even entering into the high-risk behavior of patronizing the insides of gas stations.

 

This whole caffeine situation began innocently enough (as the ugliest and most full blown addictions are known to begin) with a natural boyhood phase that found my seven-year old person pounding full-bodied colas between gelatin-gummed candies while waiting for my video games to load. Anyway, around this time my barrister mother was busy adhering to some probationary obligations which saw her providing impoverished minorities with free legal advice, and though my caffeine routine was abruptly ended at the first hint from my dentist that I might be needing the silver teeth she’d grown weary of seeing on a daily basis, the seeds for the taste were planted. That was mom, I guess. Despite her flair for juvenile oral aesthetics, during that time I was fortunate to at least obtain a proper face that I would carry with me to this day: fleshy and fat, composed of all cheek and chin. As I matured I grew into my oversized smile—the constant sign of my agreeable nature and perpetual desire to make merrier the already merry times—but my favorite feature was the stubbles of hair that sprouted on my face. I felt that my hairs, starting above the lips and traveling downward to my chins gave the impression of a drive up and over grassy rolling hills, and just as existential in its vast openness and scenery. This cherub face of my youthful virility practically screamed to the women, “Windows down!”, and those were good times.

 

Anyway, I didn’t come to terms with this aspect of myself—this addiction to caffeine and butter-fried pork chops—until recently; the other day. I was then still a few weeks removed from the latest surgical repairs made on my circulatory infrastructure and, sitting alone at the bar eating the last of the house special, the familiar cinching around the forehead alarmed me enough to mutter, with the hard-boiled desperation seen from the blue-collared, “I need a drink.”

 

An herbal-green-fruit-bubble-fusion tea arrived in stemware, but smoked a bit like a quaint little cauldron. I had a little sack of white sugar in my hand—the pure commercial stuff, nothing new-age and trendy for a traditionalist like me I’ll have you know—and I popped the sack with my fingernails, flicking at the bottom with the same hard determination used when breaking in a baseball mitt, like the snapping a ball with short and hard throws into the pocket. The granulated sediment settled into a plush pile in the bottom and suddenly I was reminded of the University. I knew a guy, who knew a guy, who used as a euphemism for his drug dealings, the title “He who controls the spices.”

 

As in, “I know it’s five a.m. but can you call He, who controls the spices?”

 

I know, I thought it was ridiculous too until I thought about it:

 

The fundamental human desire to not be content with whatever it is that is in front of us, the instinct to pine for the real feeling we think the next bit of a vague “better” will provide ( “I just need one more tax deduction for this fiscal year and I’ll be fine”, “If I only I had an S-class instead of an E I would be happy then”,  etc.), is never more evident than when studied through the prism of the historical spice trade.
Individual fortunes, sovereign powers, and even the discovery of a new fucking continent (which is and always has been on the same plant earth that hominins have inhabited for as long as hominins had the ability to inhabit, by virtue of materially existing, by the damn way) were the grand results of man’s inherent pettiness. That is to say, counterintuitively, there is knowledge to be gained and power to be had from man’s bratty desire to have the fuel of food and drink that we must we ingest (just so that we can burn even more energy in the efforts to marginally increase our enjoyment of basic, instinctual things) taste slightly better and maybe, barely provide for a more enjoyable life experience overall. Yes, it is the powerful that control the spices. The powerful who can take a simple, brown alcohol and give to the future leaders of the world a fruit-punch flavored whiskey and the powerful who take a natural approach to sex, selected over an millennia of evolutionary workings to have three maybe four pitches in the arsenal if one is lucky enough to master the curve, and provide to our grandchildren the gift of ever-extreme and fetishized pornography.

 

It wasn’t until after my last surgery, or maybe it was just then after trying to drink the froufrou concoction which I couldn’t stomach and had to turn away from while musing the role of spices, that I saw how ultimately meaningless the efforts in trying to chemically morph some sort of fundamental and permanent change within ourselves, by ourselves, were.

 

I tried again but the drink disgusted me.

 

It was only over time that these changes, brought about by shallow desires and earthly spices, could take root and the shifts in our absurd feelings and brains now manifest themselves in everyday modernity.

 

Like when I dump salt crystals on our endless baskets of tortilla chips.

 

Like when I pepper our vodka-flavored tomato juices before having to face people in the morning.

 

Like every time I use a spice to cover up what is front me in search for more than is naturally available in my

boring life of food, and so on and so forth.

 

 I guess the truth is, whether you are spicing the membranes of a nostril or a noodle, in the pursuit of a short-lived quest for artificial meaning, it is pretty much the same thing.

 

But still, here I am, and the drink I’d ordered and subsequently spiced to taste, disgusted me.

 

I finished the scraps of what was once a robust meal (I think, I didn’t actually order it as it was here when I sat down) and my body settled into a reluctant armistice, if not some degree of honest harmony. I was proud of how far my diplomatic prowess had grown as tensions had noticeably cooled since those dark days before my heart reparation surgery. In fact, it was all on my own that I’d come up with the idea to eat a little something and to hydrate myself with something non-alcoholic this time to ease the pressure of my headache; it was just too bad the drink was awful. No matter, it was my own fault no doubt, and so with a determined effort and two sure hands, I pushed my bar stool backwards, rose upright, and then immediately fell into a table by the bar.

 

It was rather lucky the dining portion of the establishment closed after midnight or perhaps I’d have suffered the embarrassment of wearing wine on the pleats I used to hide some of the extra carriage of my middle.

 

I stumbled out of the door a minute or two before last call.

 

As I walked the short distance from the restaurant to my condo, I reached into my breast pocket for a little nightcap and my body began to feel. It tingled with an anticipation to feel a little bit more than a tingle thanks to Mexico’s finest—a spice that was literally refined with gasoline, though finely blended with a tender laxative and the smooth bottoms of steel-toed boots.

 

I pulled out a sack which was much larger than I had anticipated and it appeared dingier than usual. I had to squint and hold it out at arm’s length to read the “Splenda” stamped across the front before laughing and dropping the sweetener to the floor, as my surgeon would have a leach from his tray.

 

 

<< Back

Euphemism Campus Box 4240 Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4240