Benjamin Chadwick

I wrote this around 2001, thinking it would be a pretty nifty idea to write a story about the way our taste buds can trigger a memory (or possibly a hallucination). I later discovered that Marcel Proust had vastly outdone me, by about 3500 finely crafted pages, on the same topic. Oh well.  This appeared in TQR Stories in approximately 2005.

As The Flavor Runs Out
By Ben Chadwick

He studies the Bazooka jar longer than society would call normal, in his thirty-third year. Inside, a pile of rock-hard bubblegum slabs, individually sheathed in red and blue wax paper. Still only five cents apiece. They’ve waited untouched at this Amoco for decades, surviving a million families in the interstate wasteland, kids begging Mothers for change to blow on petrified pink; —no, she said, always no It’ll rot your teeth and it’ll rot your brain. Now his hand dives in, grabs a fistful, drops twenty-four on the instant-lotto countertop. It’s his decision, as an adult. Off he goes smiling, breathing the earthy fumes of gasoline before climbing into his Lexus.

Bazooka! Shaking fingers strip one down as the car climbs the on-ramp. Three parallel ridges. A faintly sexual pink. The wrapper floats against the windshield, buffeted airborne by the heater. An advertisement beneath the cartoon: Amazing Binoculars; send $4.95 and 38 comics. He’d done so in 1985… The sun is melting on distant western mountains. He roots through his gum-choked pocket and floors the accelerator.

One cannot chew Bazooka immediately; one must first soften it or risk shattering teeth, mandible, skull. His tongue roams the arid surface; flavor floods his mouth, wholesome, then nostril-widening, buzzing, cloying, excessive. It burns the gateway to his throat, but then, at last, salivary saturation– his eyes blissfully swirling, the gum and spit in equilibrium. Shamefully, he proceeds to chew. His molars fold the gum into a torpedo; he tosses it from left side to right. As he pops a second slab, he unwraps a third, steering with his knees.

He tosses the gum to and fro, trying to work left-jaw equally with right– though one side is always favored subconsciously to the point of pain, and he slips another gum slab into his mouth with his right hand. Now things really get rolling, as trapped flavor crystals are set loose, free to meet up with family and have little barbecue picnics in his tastebuds. They join together and party, sharing buckets of fried chicken and lemonade at an outdoor table, dancing in the muggy summer heat to Springsteen or Squeeze and whatever else is on the radio. There’s this wet rhythm behind the music, like New Wave synth-pop, bookachik, bookachik, bookachik. His older brother suggests they go down by the river. Grabbing his swirling rubber beach ball and a bucketful of sandcastle toys, they journey from the picnic table to the water’s edge, where roots snake and slither in the shadows of a thick oak tree overlooking riverwater the color of apple juice. He swings from a rope and splashes into the cold water, cuts his toe on a mussel shell. He slaps water onto the shore but his brother refuses to join the swimming, instead tossing stones at his head.

The sky goes gray and overcast as the beach ball floats out to sea, too distant to rescue. Soaked and slimy he grabs his other toys and his brother drives him homeward, stopping to pick up the fat girl from down the street. Bookachik, bookachik, from the car radio. Now, on the back porch, he’s the watchman with Amazing Binoculars, drinking river-colored apple juice from a Hardee’s Jedi glass. Mission: protect the tree-fort. No parents may ascend. In a half hour his brother and the girl will come down and relieve him of duty, so they say.

Nothing’s happening. Bored, he signals with his walkie-talkie ($8.95 and 64 comics). “Come in, Agent Orange.” Static. He goes AWOL at the sound of thunder, retreating to his bedroom. His joints are stiff anyway, the bookachik flagging. Through gauze curtains the cloudy white goes gray; a tabby flaps its tail on the bed. Wrapping himself in a cozy down comforter, he shoves the binocular lenses flat against the window.

Dim light in the tree-fort, an orange pinpoint glow that brightens and fades… His loins tingle. Rain on the roofslats adds snares to the soundtrack. His jaw still pumps, mechanically. Around him, a landscape of He-Men, giant G.I. Joe hand-me-downs, even a topless stolen Barbie, frozen in mid-play amid mountains of clothing. And a stash of unopened Bazooka… He can’t bear the thought of more gum, his jaw’s so very tired…

And yet the act has become a compulsion…

The rain’s falling so hard it seems water’s leaping upwards from ground toward sky. Bookachik, bookachik. He’s on his thirteenth slab and his expanding cheeks feel like frozen meat. Again he spots the glow in the tree-fort. “Come in, Agent Orange,” he says into the walkie-talkie.

At last, brother’s giggly response: “that you, Agent B-Joe? Where’s my security fringe?”

“C’mon Charlie, it’s raining…”

“I don’t give a rat’s fuck about it raining…” and a slew of laughter from him and her.

The girl’s laugh is a low, dimwitted muh-huh.

“Yeah, do your brother a favor,” her voice says, “make sure no one comes up.”

“I’ll make it worth your while. You can take her for a spin when I’m done.”

“You are such a jerk ”

“I’ll watch from my window, okay?”

“Good plan, Agent. You better not look inside.”

He waves his flashlight– $3.95, 40 comics, batteries not included. Sadly, there’s too much rain for the light to reach the fort. But then brother dangles something white outside the opening. It’s a brassiere The girl’s bare arm stretches out after it, searching aimlessly into space like a cartoon paw. Finding nothing, she reaches farther, making another desperate grab as brother teases her more and finally, she puts her body out; pointy breasts dangle freely and rainwater splashes and drips off her nipples– awestruck, the jaw stops chewing– but brother holds that brassiere out just a teensy bit further; she goes for it, leaning precariously, too far, she slips, oh god, she falls fifteen feet, smacks her face into a root, transparent blood-rain on her forehead, twisted, a laugh still on her lips but she’s not moving, and brother, peering down with pink eyes, orange glow tumbling from his mouth, pulls back inside, his voice on the walkie-talkie crying “call 911… No, don’t, oh shit, oh shit… You saw nothing!”

He defies Mother’s questions but somehow she knows. Paramedics haul the girl to an ambulance. The gum has lost its flavor. He hugs his Mother’s legs, tears flying from his eyes. She’ll ground Agent Orange for months but she’s furious with the watchman, too.

—You are pathetic. Never, ever, EVER try to hide things from me.

“But…”

Gum wrapped on tongue, he blows, inflating twenty bars or more; he’s lost count, suffocating, breathless. The Bazooka bubble fills the car and bursts and he gasps. He’s swimming in exploded chunks of goo that wrap him warm and wet in his wool coat, binding him tight.

—I’m ashamed of you.

He’s ashamed of himself. No matter how hard he struggles, he’ll never earn her love; he’s stuck out here on the highway, drifting slowly forward, rumbling on the shoulder, grinding to a halt, parted too early from a world of nickel candy. Night has fallen; the clouds above are pink. Cars rush by outside.

My short story “The Power of Fiction” has just been published online at Rough Copy — “The online magazine for creative writing, short stories and artistic expression.” (Many thanks to Janet & Dani!)