Circle Three: GLUTONS

CIRCLE THREE GLUTTONS

Cerebus - Look up (is he the bartender, bouncer, proprietor?)

three hungry heads that are appeased with clumps - his three heads represent the past, the present and future of the narrator. Cerebus was Hades' loyal

watch dog. Guarded the gates that granted access and exit to the underworld.

"Where do you think you're going, bub?" A large hand pressed against my chest with authority, stopping me in my tracks. Whereas once again I'd imagined that

I had been leaving, in fact I'd been entering.

The bar is filled with bankers, financial parasites, drinking blood.

******

an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.

*******

"How much alcohol does one require? There are levels of need. On the one hand, there are those who could go throughout their entire existence without ever

once sampling alcohol." This man, a seemingly homeless collection of skin and rags and filth, smelling powerfully of human excrement, stops in mid query and

picks up the shot glass without reflection, draining it in one motion. Without pausing to even allow the effect of that shot to enter him, he signals

immediately for another. "On the other hand, for some, the alcohol is the blood stream. You see, generally speaking the liver can usually metabolize one of

these drinks; a glass of beer or wine within 60 minutes. So perhaps you can measure the need for alcoholic consumption in hour increments. If you drink

more than this or faster than this, the alcohol cannot be processed by the liver quickly enough. And this is when the blood becomes saturated and the

alcohol finds new venues, like the blood stream, to wait for the liver to process."

He takes the next shot glass and again, empties it in one quick motion.

"How long can you go on like this for?" I wonder absently. "If what you say is true, your blood stream should be inundated in no time at this rate and lead

to alcohol poisening."

"Alcohol dilutes itself in the water volume of the body as it travels through. Muscle tissue contains more water than fat tissue. More muscle tissue is

more water and more water dilutes the immediate effect to some degree. So when I am not drinking, I am exercising. This allows me to drink more."

*****

Around us, the Binge Drinkers. Their leader is a bare-chested man wearing a kilt with an inflamed pancreas which juts out of the side of his torso, thinly

veiled by a yellowish skin, reddened. He occasionally lifts the kilt to emit a bulky, whitish, sticky, greasy, floating, foul smelling stool. All around

him is a small puddle of these stools, a miniscule lake of diarrhea. The new members of the Binge Drinkers club are forced to walk through this bare foot.

It is part of the ritual of indoctrination. I nearly gag watching this.

They imagine themselves enjoying themselves. They are mirrored reflections of a dream that has disintigrated into an incessant nightmare. But

occasionally, they are having fun. They are laughing and never at themselves but perhaps at each other or those around them. They sing songs like "I am

having so much fun!" and "Man, I want to get wasted." The group consists of those who have just commenced their binge drinking and those who stayed on.

Those who have stayed on slur, spit, vomit, pass out. They are continuously replaced. There is a massive queue of people waiting to join in the fun. It is

a queue consisting of men and women. They feel addicted to this illusion of fun. It has become home. The only thing they find discomforting is the nausea

and vomitting that inevitably follow.

"I was part of the Binge Drinkers Club once," he continued allowing another shot of liquid to pass through him although this time savouring it slowly as if

it were his last.

"Why only once? Why did you stop?"

"I detested the social element of it. The people were idiots. They had no thoughts. Look at them, bringing themselves to a lowest common denominator. It

is a nihilism devoid of the acknowledgement of nihilism. A pointless exercise, a superficial convenience that sickened me more than the alcohol." As he

speaks he moves slowly away from the bar and I find myelf following him. His words trail behind him like a series of dead leaves blown along an empty street

on a bleak October afternoon.

We make our way into a corner where he pulls back a curtain and a room of immense light is revealed. In that room there is what appears to be a buffet

table. It is difficult to discern an exact size and dimension as only pieces of it are visible threw a swarm of naked people who are climbing all over it,

swatting each other back, biting each other, making horrible noises of incredibly audible chewing.

When a waiter appears carrying another tray of meat, he is immediately attacked. These are human beings, or have the physical attributes of human beings but

they lack completely any semblance of trained civility.

In attacking the waiter however, they are unaware that they are cutting off their own supply. The trays of steamed venison and stewed pork clatter loudly to

the floor and are swooped down upon by these naked savages. They fight each other off, grabbing at what they can and pushing it greedily into their mouths.

I cannot tell if they are even bothering to masticate what they are pushing greedily into their mouths or if they are simply swallowing chunks of meat whole.

I look back over to the buffet table again and see people climbing over the top of each other, yanking others back by the shoulder to squeeze into a position

closer to the source of the food. They are not saying words but they are grunting and belching and shouting with great abandone.

In sum, they appear to be one living organism of consumption spread out over the entirety of the buffet table. But I can make out the inviduals, or the

backs of individuals. Faces are not visible. The faces are striving as far as physically possible toward the table, the source of the food. Some grab and

yank food right out of the hands of others. This prompts others who are closer to the table to forget their hands entirely and merely shove their faces

directly into the food, gnawing, chewing, grunting.

We watch this spectacle for perhaps 10 or 15 minutes. With the attack of the waiters the source of replenishing the buffet is cut off and eventually of

course, particularly at such a rate of consumption, the supply of food runs out. Some are still chewing and grunting even though there is nothing to chew.

Gradually the notion that the feeding frenzy has ended sinks into them, one by one and one by one, they begin to pull away, sated but disappointed at the

same time, saying nothing to one another, merely slinking off into the background.

"If we wait long enough," Hierbringen tells me with the authority of experience, "eventually the waiters will emerge again carrying trays of food to

replenish the buffet with. And eventually another horde of people will discover this and you will see the entire scene played out all over again. The funny

thing I've noticed though is that it never seems to dawn on any of them that the buffet will be replenished. To them, the supply is finite and once the

supply has been consumed the best they can hope for is to move on to another room in search of another buffet. But this is the only room with a buffet and

although they don't realise it, they continue to return to the same room and the same buffet...." His shot glass has been replaced with a large snifter

which he sips from liberally.

******

"So, how would you like a little liquid Lysergic Acid Diathylamide to ease the dull aching brought on by all this drinking?" Hierbringen has grown impatient.

We are back at the bar and he is tapping his index and middle right fingers incessantly against the counter. He has two drinks beside him already, the

large snifter and another shot glass. "I'm bored..." he explains apologetically.

He's noticed of course that my own pace of drinking has slackened. He has taken note and is now proposing a deeper phase, concerned that I too have grown

bored with both the drinking and the sights around me.

I say nothing but follow him. He has already decided on his own that this is the next step to take and so he turns from the bar, grabbing a bottle off the

rack to take with him.

"I cannot remember my troubles," he hums to himself. "I am no longer chased by a horrible thing..."

We walk through a series of hallways, each emitting a strange series of lights of varying colours, pulsating to a beat that does not exist. There is no

silence but there is no music. Everywhere around me I hear shouting both in anger and in happiness yet I see no one. It as though the empty hallways we are

passing through are haunted with the ghosts of dead revelers. Perhaps it is only their echoes.

Finally we exit one hallway and enter a cavernous bar area, another extension. This one has large picnic tables which are filled with alcohol and food and

people consuming both simultaneously. It is a joyless consumption. No one is speaking. There is music filling the room, a dull, hypnotic music.

Hierbringen stops me with a hand to my chest. "Some of these chaps are rough," he explains. "They don't know you and might take offence at you or worse,

might believe you have come to take some of their supplies. The addition of another person signifies to them a decrease in supplies. Allow me to do the

talking. Just wait here."

He disappears into the throng. No one notices me standing there alone, sipping my beer as inobtrusively as possible, pretending I don't exist so that no one

would notice me. I could hide my face behind my hands and feel invisible.

After a few moments, Hierbringen returns. "It's all arranged. But the dealer insists on meeting you first before he will give me anything. He doesn't want

any of his supply falling into the wrong hands."

"The wrong hands?"

"There are spies here, don't kid yourself. Spies are here among all of us and they are checking in to make certain that everyone is consuming their maximum

intake. Believe it or not there are times when even these people need a nap. And when they do, the spies appear, materialise seemingly from nowhere but in

fact they are all around us. If someone passes out or naps, they are immediately awoken, brutally at times, to make sure they do not stop consuming."

He leads me to one of the tables and there is a parting of people to allow us the space to enter their circle around the table. At the forefront is a Jabba,

his clothing covered in food stains, his shirt unbuttoned to the belly which is like a huge medicine ball. His face is pockmarked by blisters and angry red

blotches. His hair is greasy and so full of dandruff that the dandruff accumulates in small piles on the table in front of him.

"A visitor but not a spy, so Hierbringen tells me," he mutters, nodding over at me and shoving a piece of chicken in his mouth, taking a sip of white wine.

"What is your name, visitor?"

"He doesn't know." Hierbringen intervenes quickly, nervously as though I have been lying the entire time and once I open my mouth, my lie will be mercilessly

exposed and crucified. "He simply woke outside without knowing..."

"What?" he spits food out in various directions, muttering again something unintellible but to himself. "Let the visitor speak for himself Hierbringen, I

don't trust you..."

"it's true," I begin. "I don't remember my name."

"And so how did you get in here?"

"I was delivered here...by Kinderton..."

"Kinderton?!" he bellowed, more food falling from the corners of his mouth. "Kinderton has been dead for years! What kind of lies are you telling me?!" He

demands now, no longer a simple line of enquiry. Those sat around us have stopped eating and drinking momentarily and as they do, the spies appear like

ghosts to poke them with sharp sticks and motion for them to continue.

"I only tell you what I know. I woke with no concept of who I was or how I got there and the next thing I knew, Kinderton was bringing me here..."

The Jabba chewed thoughtfully for a moment and swallowed another half glass of wine. Slowly he reached a conclusion and picking at his teeth, he nodded for

me to sit down beside him. "Let's have a closer look at you then..."

After I'd sat down beside him he poked at me, suprisingly gently given his girth and demeanor. "You seem to be made of flesh and bones yet the tale you tell

me implies you are dead, that you are a ghost guided by that Ghost of Ghosts, Kinderton, so I am rather puzzled. Just what is it you are doing here?" I nod

over at Hierbringen. "I was told we were going to be able to obtain liquid LSD from you."

"And if I were to give you a quantity of liquid LSD, what would you do with it?"

"I would take it of course."

"All of it, no matter the quantity?"

I said nothing for a moment, looking uncomfortably at Hierbringen whose own eyes were furtive and nervous. "I would take what you give me," I said finally

after that pause. The Jabba guffawed and slapped his fat paw on the table sending glasses of wine flying in all directions. "You are either very stupid or

very trusting but in any event, I will give you what you like on the condition that you leave from here immediately afterwards. I don't know who you are and

you are making me uncomfortable. Do you understand that? You are making me feel uncomfortable and I don't like that feeling at all visitor. I'd just as

soon eat you as look at you but I am afraid about the indigestion you might cause me. So take this. You and Hierbringen take this and fuck right off out of

here and I don't want to see either of you again, ever. Is that clear?"

"Clear."

The Jabba motioned to one of his subordinates who pulled a vile out of his pocket and handed it over to Hierbringen. We left immediately as the group around

the table returned to their food and wine.

*******

******