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How Eating the Cheese Dribbling from My Skull Explains the Universe in Its Entirety
I have this wound in the back of my head (a drinking injury—more on that later) and bits of food ooze out of it. At least I think it’s food. Anyway, I’ve eaten it. I’m positive it’s NOT brain matter. Let’s get that straight right off the bat. My brain is intact and not leaking from the hole in the back of my head. I have all my faculties for the most part. I lose very little in the leakage.
And the gains are unlimited.
The food is pink, with the consistency of cottage cheese. It tastes like bubblegum on some days and ketchup on others. I think it’s flavored by my mood. Some tastes are familiar but elude me. They’re right on the tip of my tongue.
At times it seems seaweedy, but I could be wrong.
It’s packed with energy. After I eat a few of the little pink morsels I want to go outside and run around. Like a dog freed from a leash. I don’t jog or run toward a favored destination. I don’t have a goal. I just run. Like I’m on fire and forgot to stop, drop and roll. Blazing.
My neighbors probably think I’m quite the manic fellow as I cut across their yards and bounce off their trees like a pinball racking up loud electronic numbers.
I am surrounded by noise.
I don’t think eating it is healthy per se but I can’t help myself. It’s not autocannibalism because it’s not ME I’m eating. It’s a byproduct. Of me. It comes out of me but it is not composed of me.
As far as I can tell.
Sometimes after I swallow, a fog of nausea descends upon me but it quickly lifts. Then I can handle another bite.
I used to dig the morsels out of the wound with a pencil (#2). But the hole produces more and more so I’ve started using a shoehorn to scoop out the stuff.
If things keep up like this, I may switch to a ladle or ice cream scoop.
It’s too much to keep up with. I can’t eat it all.
I’ve begun storing the excess in little custard cups. Single servings. I keep them in the fridge. They line the shelves on the inside door, rows of them. Styrofoam containers with plastic lids. Like when you get coleslaw from KFC.
I thought about labeling them with catchy names like, Handy Dan’s Pons- Porridge or Medulla Ricotta. Head Trauma Softies. Cream of Concussion.
Shit, I’m running out of ideas.
Oh well, I’ll never do it anyway. It would look too crazy. Eccentric at best. What if they found them after I died? I’d be embarrassed.
Not that I intend to die.
Anyway, I’m quite sure it’s NOT brain matter but it’s tied into the brain somehow because some of my memories are growing blurred and indistinct.
I hate to admit that.
I have forgotten my Aunt Rae entirely and must construct new memories using photographs and the testimony of my family.
It’s a shame because I’m told I really loved Aunt Rae. She used to hold my hand at the zoo, I guess.
Now, about the incident that created the cornucopia in the back of my head:
It was an accident. Let’s get that straight right off the bat. It shouldn’t have happened. I’m not one of those self-trepanation freaks. The crater in my skull is God’s will. An accident done with intent. I’m sorry if that sounds paradoxical.
Anyway, I worked in a warehouse last year and we had to work on Memorial Day because we were expecting a big shipment of comical sponges from Taiwan.
Oh, but first let me tell you about Buster Keaton. He was a silent movie comedian and he did very impressive stunts. Pratfalls and that type of thing. The guy was remarkable. He could fall down a flight of stairs with the best of them. And he didn’t just fall down like most guys. He was constantly in motion as he fell. He was an athletic savant.
Anyway, I was thinking about Buster Keaton when our shift ended at midnight. A bunch of the guys gathered behind the building to knock back a few. They called it “Canada Night” as a form of protest for missing Memorial Day. Lance and Enrique had brought a cooler stocked with Molson and Lem contributed a bottle of Canadian Club.
We started to party.
I’m not much of a talker. I mostly just tend to stand around and listen. Some of the guys started to complain about having to work on a national holiday. Barney said he’d missed out on some big picnic with his family. But Lem pointed out that we were earning overtime and sometimes money was better than free time.
And then Barney looked at me and said, “What do you think, Dan?”
And then everyone was looking at me at the same time.
I panicked. I thought a Buster Keaton pratfall was required.
So I toppled straight back and smashed my head open on the edge of a granite slab.
I blacked out.
The other guys decided not to call an ambulance because that would involve cops and they were drinking alcohol on company property. We’d all be fired.
I was unconscious for around ten minutes while they discussed this.
When I came around I was sitting on the curb with the other guys gathered around me. Lem had packed some funny colorful Taiwanese sponges on the back of my head and secured them with a shoelace.
“Stay still, partner,” said Barney. “You have a hole in your head. Probably a concussion too.”
So I sat there for a while and the other guys started drifting away and heading home.
Lem said, “You okay to drive?”
I assured him I was.
He handed me the bottle of whiskey and said, “Keep the faith, brother.”
Somehow I made it home. I drank a few shots of the Canadian Club and went to bed.
I awoke with a bloody pillow and a raging migraine. The funny, blood-soaked sponges had come loose during the night. They had expressive faces painted on them.
I stayed in bed that day. I didn’t return to work. Lem called me in the afternoon to check if I was still alive.
I told him I was.
I didn’t see a doctor because our health insurance wasn’t the greatest. But that became a moot point since I lost the job when I failed to report to work that day. I should’ve called in sick. Or used a personal day (I still had three).
But hey, I had a goddamn hole in my head. I wasn’t thinking clearly.
Anyway, I decided to let the injury heal on its own, using the free curative of time.
Except it didn’t heal.
Wouldn’t heal.
Oh, the pain went away. So that was good. And the bleeding ceased. I thought I was in the clear.
Then on the third day it started to itch. I chalked it up to the healing process. The hole closing on its own. Tissues regenerating and whatnot.
But it wasn’t. And the itching was driving me nuts.
One lonely night I was doing a crossword puzzle at the kitchen table and the itching was really getting on my nerves.
So I scratched at it with the point of my pencil. It was a mindless, automatic action.
The pencil entered my head up to the halfway point. The hole was still there. It gaped.
I was understandably distressed by this.
When I removed the pencil I noticed a little pink globule on the tip.
I thought it was brain. That I’d accidentally poked out a piece of my consciousness.
That little glob of goo may have contained the memory of my beloved Aunt Rae.
So, I ate it.
It was an instinctual act. Like when you nick your fingertip and stick it in your mouth. It was an attempt to keep a part of myself from getting away. It was pure.
That first bite was like a jackhammer to my taste buds. It tasted like an explosion, if that makes any sense.
I became instantly addicted.
The aftertaste reminded me of Hydrox. Remember those?
Fun Factoid: Hydrox came first. Oreo copied THEM, not the other way around. Most people don’t realize that….
Anyway, I suddenly felt metaphysical strength boiling through my bloodstream. I immediately got down on the floor. I felt compelled to expend energy.
I did forty-seven push-ups that night. I hadn’t done a push-up since gym class in high school. And that was over twenty years ago.
Now I can do those push-ups with the clap in the middle.
I started digging into the head-wound with the pencil every morning. Eating the preternatural cheese. I never wanted my head to heal.
And it hasn’t.
Now let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: I may be an addict but I don’t believe that that’s necessarily a negative thing. Sometimes an addiction is the best course for survival. To negate pain. To maintain psychological homeostasis. As long as its negative impact on your life is kept within sustainable limits.
My drug of choice is free. I make it. Same as semen or urine or feces or snot.
Imagine if heroin addicts got their fix from picking their nose and eating it. The world would become a saner place. Fentanyl deaths would plummet.
I believe I am consuming the Food of the Gods.
I believe I am ingesting monads from the birth of the universe.
Essential ingredients.
I will live forever.
The creamy filling in my head is the stuff that resurrected Jesus.
It sustained the Buddha under the Bodhi tree just before the Awakening.
It is a channel to the Infinite Singularity that started it all.
I used to survive on frozen dinners and beer. Twinkies for dessert.
Now I eat Galactic Ambrosia and it is sweeter than any Twinkie. And I own an endlessly flowing tap straight from the Source.
And let’s get this straight right off the bat:
No, you can’t have any.