The Wake

I did it again today. I stole from the union. It was amazing, that flawless theft that can only be for food. That dance with abnormal morals which effects one from lack of nourishment. Some hollow, bitter, cold outside that’s enough to make a man’s guts hungry for anything to take away the feeling; but not hungry enough to drain the check card on essentially cafeteria food. Not seven-dollars hungry.

I should really feel terrible. Committing this unthinkable deed, this sin of universally bad karma. Stealing from the institution that is so graciously handing me a future. But when you really think about it, about “robbery,” about taking that which does not belong to you … Let’s contrast and compare.

Number 1

The food in the union is not good by any standard, it’s actually quite awful. No one is excited to eat there. If you say you are, you’re a liar. There are no fire roasted vegetables, no slow-cured meat, no fresh-baked bread, no loving nourishment; this food has no soul. It is processed filth, a plethora of machine regurgitation and false titles. The sodium and desperation hide the taste, and the taste hides the empty.

Number 2

When I was seven I got hot lunch at school. It cost me a dollar and twenty-five cents, and I got mini-corndogs, chocolate milk, a fruit cup, choice of vegetables and even a brownie. On Tuesdays we had taquitos. I was infinitely more satisfied than I am today. And it cost six dollars less. There is absolutely no way that the food in the union costs even one fourth of what they charge, it is unfathomable. And Flexdine? What the hell is Flexdine? They are asking you to transfer your real money into money that is worthless everywhere else except the union. Wow, great idea, what Carlson alumni came up with that one?

Number 3

In stealing from the union, I am not robbing some kindly old shop-keep with graying hair and a gracious smile. I am not stealing from some Cuban fishmonger, or a shadowy fruit market maiden. I am not stealing from any person in particular. I am stealing from an institution, an institution that is stealing from me and thousands of others on a much larger scale. No I don’t feel bad, not for one second.

My route nowadays is direct, swift and immediate. I burst through the front doors like the four horseman. Rip through those pale faces all sleeping in Ikea, food surrounding plush velvet couch-stools. Food they paid for. No wonder they don’t have any energy; their lives are in limbo, marketing and public relations, and the whole world just talking about itself.

I feel like Jesse James. Slipping away from what looks to be a normal procrastinatic study session into a nourishing theft. Smiling as I just bounce to the escalator—some thick Arabian rhythm blasting melodic minor through my headphones, the illusion of life as a movie. This is how you steal anything small from a public place. You make it smooth and cinematic, one constant act, and close curtain when you’re crossing the Washington Street Bridge, pizza in hand. Until then you’re professional, you’re Rupert fucking Murdoch. Treat every morsel of food as if it’s a presidential election, rob it of its meaning and make it into something worthless.
Sometimes you have an accomplice in crime. Some fiery little blonde atom bomb just begging for the ten seconds of euphoria she can ride from rubbing against the grain. Like the first time she ran away from the cops or the first time she broke a boy’s heart—

this is what females live for. These sorts of girls can prove handy for petty crime, seductive minx. They busy themselves counting change for Diet Coke while you just walk on through and wait for the afterglow. That red faced stuttering cashier continually glancing down the open blouse you insisted she wear, the one that pushes the boundaries of flesh and cotton, the one you’ve ripped off of her a thousand times before. She’s going home with you, and you aren’t going home on an empty stomach. You just glide on through like KY Jelly. Crime is only a small step away from making love: the heartbeat’s there, the tension, the tranquility, the danger. I am a good-for-nothing slut in this business, but I am no Winona. I steal because I have no money and I steal because I am hungry. The feeling of life rushing up to meet you for a few seconds is merely a bonus, just the icing on this half-baked cake. After poverty stares you in the face for a few semesters, stealing groceries seems almost a right of passage, a phantom credit to add to my transcript, skills to take into the real world.

My last three accomplices have been gunned down in the act (the dearest of them quite recently in fact.) I would’ve stayed to mourn and answer questions, mouth full of chicken nugget, but they wouldn’t have paid me the same respect. So I now work alone. There is no use in trying to recruit another partner, another operative, it’s hopeless. I haven’t found a genuine human of the opposite sex in what seems like years. Real girls are a dying breed. False smiles and ATM cards are winning out over coy sexuality and the ability to laugh from the heart. No shallow girl can steal well. They don’t have the character. They flinch up. These girls that stumble home from the bar to find themselves in the arms of the anonymous, these girls are incapable of true love. They are the real crooks, the stealers of souls, these arsonists of human emotion. I know them all too well. And so I have walked away to a life of quiet burglary. Smug in my own wonderful gloom.

Yet … at the end of the night, when the city is all alight with provocative questions—beautiful with no answers, I can’t help but sometimes find myself looking down side streets looming in twilight. Watching for some curious ballerina who sways to her headphones as she sings to herself and walks in the beat. Waiting for that one amazing plunge to sweep her away. The riptide of life. This could be … something. There is hope for all of us. I think. You have just got to take it, and if it’s stealing then you are a thief. Accept it, embrace it.

I almost want to get caught. I almost want for this to get printed, for the jig to be up. Cuff me. Wait for me on Tuesdays. I find myself most ready to fight then, with no taquitos in my stomach. I am the last goddamn cowboy, riding into most certain defeat. If I’m caught I’ll be a martyr. If I keep on going I retire a legend. What’s it gonna be? Pick your poison. No matter what happens at least that second, that moment will be actual and real. At least I will have this; the feeling to look back on when everything else is stripped away. Naked and opaque, the hunger remains.