Ben Segal
[Below are three shorter fictions. Enjoy!]
Robert Helps a Synagogue
There were eight of us and I was speaking. We were circled on chairs with metal frames and beige injection-molded plastic. Mid-week the run-down Beth El basement hosted a rotating string of such circles, each freshly and uniquely depressing. AA and NA and Grieving and us.
I was saying something I meant about my mother. David's eyes had strayed and fixed on a loose patch of wallpaper. Elaine ground her tea-tree stick to splinters. I kept talking, tried not to be irritated. This was hard enough for all of us. Murray, meanwhile, had worked his hand into the denseness of Jessica's hair and slowly pulled a fistful to his mouth. I caught on when I saw the sweep of black from his fat lips to the back of her head. I watched the silent movement of his jaw and wondered when Jessica would notice.
*
We were the group for folks who ate the wrong things. Not fatty foods or drugs but wrong wrong things. Clint ate the butt ends of cigarettes and little swiss-cheesed shards of volcanic rock. Elaine ate the foam of her sofa and Jessica indulged cravings for terra cotta. Michael was addicted to paper products—tissues and books and take-out menus. He made smoothies of free-bin novels from the charity thrift store.
Robert was the most worrisome though. He ate art.
As a young man, he'd wanted to be a draughtsman. He'd draw for hours, fine and intricate work, detailed plans for whole imagined cities. But eventually he'd see a smudge or a stray pen stroke. He'd see a curve that felt wrong, a block of improperly fanciful buildings, some inevitable something off. Disgusted, he would crumple his drawing and stuff it into his mouth—an act of self-punishment, a guarantee of the offending work's destruction.
In Robert's words, he got a taste for it. The inherent imperfection of any rendering made ingestion inevitable, so he ate through his ouvre and carried on to other images—posters and reproductions in monographs, a few signed prints he'd acquired during an earlier time of youthful enthusiasm. Eventually he consumed his home's whole assortment of works on paper. Naturally his appetite didn't end at his door. He chipped the edges off paintings in coffee shops, sprinkled flakes into lattes. He salivated in museums and at openings, licked photographs in unguarded galleries, was caught often gnawing sculptures in public parks.
For years he claimed it was part of a performance, a committed institutional critique in lieu of exhibition. He'd even been lauded for his practice in one or two of the more self-consciously avant-gardist magazines. Here in the basement with the Pica Group he was all shame and tearful apologies, self-loathing tirades that could run unimpeded for an entire session.
*
But here I'm speaking about a time when I was speaking. Robert's turn was still to come and he sat hunched and semi-attentive with his hands folded over each other. I was explaining my realization that my problems started with my mother's injunction against nail biting. My instinct had been for autophagy, but the maternal taboo had blocked that avenue and I can recall distinctly the way that first sliver of trimmed nail called to me from an untended desk during an otherwise unremarkable third period in the seventh grade. I remember plucking it up and swallowing it in a single motion, too afraid of being caught to savor the texture. But I did like the thrill and so began scouring spaces for others' bodily discardings.
I was telling about how I longed for barbershop clippings and callus filings, rising to a high pitch in my catalog of desire, when Jessica finally noticed that Murray's mouth was half-stuffed with her hair. He spat it out when she screamed. A soaked and ragged swatch hung too-short from the left side of her head. Strands and chewed shards flew from Murray's teeth and settled on the ground. Detached from a living body, the hair no longer held any draw for him.
I, however, was unable to contain myself. I leapt to the floor. I was ravenous. We were all moving and yelling and frantic. Shag dripped from my lips. Robert saw my tattoo and turned away from temptation. Jessica, distraught, pulled a fresh flower pot from her purse and began to nibble the rim. For several minutes there was chaos, but the commotion eventually subsided and we settled back in our seats amidst a swell of apologies.
It was at this point that Rabbi Kornblum entered the synagogue basement. He'd heard our shouts and come down from his office.
"What seems to be the problem?"
Rabbi Kornblum was looking at Robert, so Robert was the one to answer.
"I eat art."
The rabbi smiled.
"Oh that's not a problem at all." He gestured towards a mediocre oil painting that hung in the back of the basement. "Take this,” he said. “It's insured for more than double what we paid."
The Movie Bug
Now that I’ve moved back to Los Angeles, I would very much like to discover a new species of insect. I would name it the movie bug. That way, when I met someone at a party, I could say, I came back to LA and caught the movie bug. And if they asked me about it, I could explain about its carapace, its shape. The contents of its stomach.
But I am not an entomologist. I just go around my apartment trapping the bugs I find there. I pace the streets with clear plastic cups. I am careful. I bag and pin and label. I glass over. I bell jar even. I catch bug after bug, waterbugs and ants, a box of mosquitos. A school of silverfish. I ship them weekly to USC.
I have not, to my knowledge, caught the movie bug.
The Identicals Have Been Criming Again
Released again, the identicals go criming. Once more we corral and cart them to the station. Another lineup and the woefulness of the sheriff bathed in laughter. Woefulness of the townsfolk. Crime and mirth of the identicals. Woefulness and mirthful laughter. Identical lineup. Identical lineup. Families abandon as they can. The sheriff wears the same game face. We are sad but fair in our carriage of justice. It has always let us down gently.
This is the story that repeats: We see a crime in daylight and call it in: 'An identical has crimed!' The sheriff rounds up the identicals and the lot of them stand chortling. It could have been him, or him, or him, or him. The witness is baffled, contrite. The identicals drive off in their van, sometimes criming even en route to their family home. And as we can, we leave. We move to towns with less scrupulous police, towns where looks-like is good enough for jailing and we needn't fear the lawful workings of the law.
And this cycle has cycled until now the sheriff and me and the identicals are all our town has left. We cook meals together and shovel out from snowfall. I call in crimes and identicals arrive and leave and even drive the sheriff home after.
There isn't so much woefulness these days; it’s more a kind of pleasant resignation. It's not even that we like each other now. It's that we all know where we fit. And all of us—we do like that.
