Morsels, morsels melting, mm…mm….my-my, mouth-watering melon, mars-bars, M&M’s, Mystic, mangoes, marshmallows, marzipan, mocha, Muenster, mozzarella, matzo, meat, meatballs, malomars, mulberries, mackerel, mint, martinis, malt milk shakes, mouse-meat…

During these past few decades the interest in professional eating has appreciated to a degree of overwhelming value.  It used to be possible to make a simple performance on a street corner under one’s own management, but today that is quite unthinkable.  We live in different worlds now.   From the onset of his binge, the hungry artist was an instant appeal to the children.  Before his rise to stardom, he spent most of his days trapped in the living room, pinned inside the entranceway to the kitchen; a couple of children peeped in through one of the windows by standing on the backs of their friends.  The rest of them ran about yelling, excitedly, “How fat is he?” 

“Can you smell him?”

“How big is his underwear?”

The observers reported their findings in hyperbolized fashion.  “He has horns growing out of his head,” the first kid would say, and the second would follow, immediately adding, “He made a pact with the devil; the contract is hanging up on the wall.”  This had become the tradition of the ages.  Armies of children ran about the neighborhood in search of such a spectacle: men who were incarcerated in their own living space due to the lack of congruence between the shape of their bodies and the pathways throughout the house. 

In truth, it is inaccurate to say that the hungry artist was fat.  He was never fat, obese, overly round, tubby, or wide-loaded; he was none of these things, per se.  The hungry artist was hungry, hungry all of the time.  He was not a person of possession, that is, he possessed neither love nor hate, angst nor obsession, desire nor fear, nor motivation, or so he explained to the children in order to appease their relentless prodding.  In return for his answering their barrages of questioning the children brought him food: table scraps, curdled milk, packaged goods that had outlived past civilizations, and anything they did not trust to eat themselves.  They never asked him what he desired, since he ate everything they threw at him.  Mostly, they threw him Twinkies, synthetic cream-filled sponge cakes gathered from an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of town.  The children were most impressed with this trick of eating the yellow orbs of fluff since not even the current day roaches would touch the mysterious stuff.

When he managed to get out of his house he went to Main Street where he was infrequently employed at Dairy Queen, Baskin Robins, Carvel, Haagen Daz, TCBY or some other local ice cream parlor chain. He was a faithful, competent and diligent worker so long as he was capable of arriving to work.  When he did so, he was always on time, washed his hands after relieving himself, smiled, never miscounted a coin, neither rang up a wrong tab nor stole—he even docked himself the cost of the napkins he used to wipe his mouth—never asked for a raise, and followed orders meticulously.  Customers were drawn to the store because of its unique family atmosphere prompted by the grace of the slightly and clownishly overweight, overaged kid who could not stop talking about sugar and popsicles, fudgcicles, candy, bubblegum, whipped cream, caramel, chocolate, on and on and on from open till close, Monday through Friday.  On weekends, he stole menus to bring into work for comparison.  Of course he sampled products everywhere he went.  He reported back to his employers, impeccably detailing the offerings of the local competition.

While the hungry artist set out to embody the model worker, he could not avoid the effects of eating.  It was not his intention to nibble on everything with which he came in contact, yet he could not help himself, and was really not to blame.  In the presence of so much food and in serving so many customers, his impulses were expropriated.  He was driven to eat excessively, as though he were feeding generations of tapeworms with a communal propensity for every sundae, shake, cone, ice cream soda and sprinkle. 

A few months after beginning a new job, the hungry artist would awake one morning to discover he could scarce get out of bed; upon rolling to his feet and toward the bathroom it would be apparent that he had indulged too much the night before.  He did not hold any general reservations against skipping out on work; it was the children and his boss over whom he worried.  The former were always encamped about the house awaiting the next time he would be imprisoned at home.  In regard to the latter, most of the artist’s supervisors were cantankerous individuals desperately in search of any pretext by which to fire him.  They were spiteful of anyone of greater fortune.  In the hungry artist they saw a man who had something of joy in the world.  When he took time off work to lose weight his supervisor did not hesitate to dismiss him from his position, but not before reprimanding him for his gluttonous ways.

Occasionally, he won himself more favorable circumstances when he was hired by someone who felt sympathy for fat folks.  This was the situation at the last ice cream-parlor-chain where he worked.  Here, the hungry artist felt himself at home for he was allowed to grow beyond the popularity he achieved with his customers.  He developed a gut that impeded his scooping arm’s path to the containers of ice cream.  At first this benefited the business of the store by attracting many passers-by.  Locals and folks from neighboring towns gathered about to watch the fat man struggle with the limitations of his own life system.  As he grew larger, it became increasingly difficult for him to carry out his duties relative to the ice cream scoop.  The lines grew greater, but the customers found his condition decreasingly interesting.  They enjoyed his sweating and panting for only a short time.  When they were ready to eat dessert they found his service to be intolerable and made a great fuss about his inefficiency.  Normally, he was fired when this predicament arose, but the sympathetic manager could not bare to dismiss someone on the grounds of obesity.  

Instead, the sympathetic manager gave the extra large employee more responsibility, thinking that might do some small justice to prove the worth of such people, everywhere.  The hungry artist was granted the privilege to gain weight, unhindered, and entrusted with the responsibility of closing shop every night.  This freedom and trust intersected late one evening within an ice cream container located in the depths of the freezer.  All the artist had aimed to create was a small midnight snack before locking up.  Upon bending over into the bin for the scraps of ice cream left over from the day, he discovered that he had not enough muscle to pull himself up and out.  He strained for much of the night trying to extract himself from the freezer.  After many fruitless and painful hours of struggle, the artist decided his only option was to delve in further.  In order to fit in, it was necessary to consume the remaining ice cream.  He achieved this quickly and found himself resting tranquilly inside the freezer.  And then he slept, and dreamt, and perceived a vision.  This epiphany was difficult to verbalize.  At least the artist was aware of something.  As he put it,  “Now, I know something of myself.  Something most men will never know of themselves.”

In the morning the sympathetic manager entered the store to the sight of a spotless catastrophe:  no ice cream.  The hungry artist had licked every lick and any drops of frozen moo-juice that he had missed he had snorted or sniffed off the glass, floor and lids.  The manager understood that he had a problem with which to contend upon viewing the emptied bins of ice cream and toppings all about the floor.  He knew the matter was serious when he discovered the fat employee trapped in the freezer.  Unsure of how to deal with the situation, he paced about in a panic, attempting to formulate some options.  He never considered that the hungry artist might freeze.  There was no reason to worry for he was well insulated by the layers of lard that offered prime protection against cold weather, storms, hail, sleet, snow, fists, low-level projectiles and the interiors of freezers.  The sympathetic manager thought he could cover for the hungry artist.  He told him, “don’t move!” while scrambling in the back for the stockpile of ice cream containers.  The manager was swift, and for just cause; since the owner would be paying a visit, shortly.

Observing the hungry artist in a catatonic state the sympathetic manager thought he could refill the freezer and nonchalantly conceal the hungry artist underneath the containers of ice cream.  This sort of sitcom scheming mentality was not uncommon and prevailed throughout the empire, even in such small towns located deep within the semi-developed sectors.  The hungry artist was not unconscious, his body was expanding and the manager soon took notice. When the sympathetic manager returned with other flavors he discovered that the first crate of ice cream appeared to have been emptied from the inside out, for the carton was crushed yet the lid was sealed.  He asked the hungry artist what had happened but this approach was fruitless.

“Twinkie, you eating the ice cream,” the manager asked.  “Hey, Twinkie, are you up?  Come on get out of the freezer!”  The manager wrote off the experience as his imagination and refilled the freezer with three cartons.  When he came back he discovered the same thing.  All of the containers were empty and the hungry artist appeared to be sound asleep in the same exact position as previously observed.  “I didn’t go to college for nothing,” declared the manager.  He grabbed the flavor that the hungry artist consumed the most and placed it in the freezer out of reach from the overly plump man.  For the twenty minutes that he stood vigil to the ice cream, nothing in the air seemed to move or make a sound.  “I must be going crazy,” the manager yelled aloud.  He walked over to the freezer, prepared to check the carton when, “Get away from there, boy!” boomed the owner as he entered the store.  “Go on, get out of here, you sicken me!  Eating up my profits like that, as though I wouldn’t notice.”

“But sir, I wasn’t doing anything,” the sympathetic manager mustered.

“Bzzz, bzzz,” he was rebuked by a bee noise and hand motion.

The owner locked the store and pondered.  “Before I had walked in I was ready to introduce my penicillin enhanced ice cream, but with this, this, this beast of a man! What need!?”  The hungry artist broke out of his meditation for a moment to share his epiphany.  “I am an artist,” he stated and then resumed his consuming meditation.  And the owner ruminated for thirty seconds then rang up the register in his head.  He stepped outside and found what he expected, the former manager groveling at the entrance to the ice cream parlor chain.  “Spread the word,” the owner boomed, “spread the word!”  Thus began Twinkie’s professional career as the hungry artist on the same day the owner became his impresario.  It all began with the announcement of the talents of an artist the likes of which could only be explained by current society.

 The impresario put the hungry artist on tour, setting up performances at local carnivals.

* * * * * * *

The hungry artist's earliest memory was of himself consuming McDonald’s French Fries amidst a tsunami of televisions tuned to different channels, a collective of images hodgpodged in his mind like an indigestible mush of food lubricated by an indecipherable stream of audio.  In-between periods of his meditative binge, he told his audience such tidbits of his life.   The artist was happy to answer any questions that his audience posed.  They often induced him to explain how it was that he could eat and breathe at the same time.  No one believed his answer that he did not do them at the same time, but that the process was one.  For those who did not accept this explanation he deferred them to a note and diagram that described and illustrated the physiology of the artist.  By the time people had finished scanning their eyes above the fleshy flap of his body that extended from the back of the artist’s head and covered his shoulder blade, they had forgotten about the note and were drawn instead to the sets of tiles marked with different colored numbers.  The hungry artist explained that the doctors expected him to die within the number of days indicated by a red tiles, while the green set counted how long he had been fasting.  The days alone did not alter the conjecture of when the artist would die.  After one week of study the doctors put up a third set, a complex group of symbols that explained an equation developed to determine the value that was displayed by the red.  “There is no doubt that he will die,” the doctors announced each morning.  “The difficulty in specifying the day is due to the tremendous amount of variables involved in the equation.”  They originally estimated that the artist had one year left to live. 

This attracted little attention, so the impresario wisely put the artist on a strictly saturated fats diet.  A tub of butter was designed for the artist to swim in and eat from, thereby maximizing his body’s ability to create cholesterol.  After one week the doctors were horrified to learn what he had been consuming and at what rate of consumption.  “He should be dead,” they cried.  The artist was too focused on his craft to take notice of any examination of his physical being.  Mostly, he conducted his meditative binges inside his ice cream freezer; no one could say for how long each one would endure.  There were periods of limitless liquid consumption:  R-C-cola, Sprite, Pepsi-cola, Seven-Up, Coca-Cola, President’s Choice Cola, Pathmark-Shop-Rite-Acme-Edwards-Food Emporium-Price Chopper-Generic-Brand Colas, Snapple, and Mountain Dew.  There were binges on Hershey’s, Nestle’s, Ovaltine, Swiss Miss, Tollhouse, Pepridge Farms.  There were many phases of bingeing and many things upon which to binge; these were endless days.

 By the thirty-ninth day of his binge, the artist was discussing his spiritual ideology before the crowds; he explicated to the people that there was no body, no true form.  “A man is not a man.  A womyn is not a womyn.  We can only fight Buddha so long until we discover that it is only his finger with which we engage in combat.”  Incidentally, when the artist began such proselytizing the owner-impresario stopped the binge.

On the fortieth day, the overheated freezer was opened, spectators filled the store, a sound system played a military tune, an extensive unit of medical specialists surrounded the artist to measure the results of the fast, which were later announced on the local television news, a whaling device was prepared to lift the artist out of the freezer, and, finally, a small army of children arrived, distracted long enough by the promise of ice cream, toy guns and video-games to help transfer the hungry artist to a sterilized table in a sterilized bubble where a carefully selected set of sterilized instruments and virtuoso surgeons were prepared for an unusual procedure, the first in what came to be known as The Traditional Liposuction Celebration. 

The impresario thought the artist would corroborate and the audience would applause in rounds of furious appreciation for the spectacle provided.  Yet, the hungry artist had no interest in shedding his skin.  He was happy with what he had accumulated since his awakening as a being of art and artistry.  His impresario would later explain to the investors, “The bottom line is we made a profit,” and, “The product was not well packaged.  The product was not well packaged!” and, “You have to understand the different forces at work here.  Short term loss for long term growth,” and so on.

Thin and sewn up, the hungry artist escaped his impresario and took to the road, a vagabond.  Between each town he put the weight back on, consuming by the smell:  birds’ eggs, grass, sunlight, pesticides, paint, rubber, plastic and the sort.  The hungry artist was left to his own devices in this public space where cars carried drivers who were too scared to give a pedestrian even a once-over and the municipalities were separated by the color of the street signs, the font of the lettering that identifies law enforcement vehicles and the denomination of the local church.

In every new town he entered he was immediately greeted by the owner of the local ice cream parlor chain, fast-food chain, supermarket chain, health-food chain, diet chain, pizza chain or any food related chain store one could imagine.  These owners immediately took care of each of the hungry artist’s needs and made sure that he looked his most presentable.  He was set down in one of their storefronts to perform his art.  Ads were placed in the local paper and by word of mouth the news was spread that a man of pure consumption was on display on Main Street.

As the hungry artist’s flesh expanded over the course of weeks, the crowds grew greater.  The hungry artist was displeased with himself for indulging in the attention of the crowds that swarmed about him.  He worried that it would detract from his professional integrity and yet he felt himself loved and admired by his audiences. These periods of enthusiasm-muddleheadedness for public performance were outweighed by the torture he endured at the hands of the local business community.  The impresario-owners hired speedy architecture firms to reconstruct their storefronts in order that the correct measurements were installed in time for the hungry artist’s entrance to town.  By the time the artist walked down Main Street, the community artery was blaring and glaring, overshadowed by gorgeous, awe-inspiring-plastered-billboard-towers advertising his arrival. 

He remained the talk of the town throughout the duration of his binge.  When it was time for the Traditional Liposuction Celebration, the hungry artist’s mood was transformed and in place of a jolly mass was an irascible behemoth.  It made no sense for him to end his binge, right when he was in his best bingeing form, or, better yet, almost quite at his top bingeing form. He could not comprehend why they would not let him break his own record.  Not only was he the largest and heaviest person who, without any glandular difficulties, had managed to come into existence, but he had the longest running binge in history.

The hungry artist grew to be legendary within the realm of the carnival.  Elsewhere, however, he was feared and loathed.  At every buffet restaurant, a sign was placed at the entrance; the hungry artist’s face with a circle and a line through it indicated that he was banned from such establishments.  Not that he could have made it through the door or even afforded to pay for any meal.  A fat tax in many towns levied heavy fines on individuals who cracked sidewalks and could consume hotdogs from vendors just by walking into the aroma of the mélange of fetal pigs, cow lips, rat chips and squirrel bits.

The obese people of these communities became the scapegoats for, among other things:  crime, hunger, obesity, disease, and poverty, .  It was reasoned that the hungry artist was nothing more than a con at the top of his game, garnering food for free, selfishly eating everything, making a mockery of the human body by letting it consume for itself whatever whenever so that all that was distinguishable of the hungry artist’s physical self was the rhythmic waves that undulated across his outermost layer.

At the height of the hungry artist’s career there were many hungry artists, on corners, at carnivals and roadshows.  They performed street binges, going about the town consuming dogs, cats, the elderly, the disabled, homeless, trees, and water, or so they claimed.  No one took them up on their grandiose declarations but paid them in coins for their entertaining value.  These claims of monstrous consumption later contributed to the demise of the craft and virtue of the artist.

In the realm of the youth, hungry art was immortalized as a chic-underground style to be recycled in the next thirty years and every subsequent thirty-year period.  At night the local adolescents conglomerated in their cliques and all, except one, doped up on narcotics.  The one who abstained from the drugs was the designated leader, a rat-pack hungry artist in his own right.  In the clubs, these young clones of the artist binged until their hearts' contents burst while their followers rolled around in the pillows of artsy flesh.  The aura of neural bliss in combination with the soft warmth of blocks, patches and sacks of hungry art body cells created a dangerous reality.  Engaged in this utopian sensation, the senses of these followers were overloaded to the effect that their rational selves were completely dissolved.  Many of them did not notice how the body of the rat-pack artist in which they worshipped the ideal manifestation of complete freedom signaled its inevitable failure and neglected to make way for the moment when his demise would crush them.

The club binges were not the final embers of the livelihood of the hungry artist, for derivations of these formerly underground bacchanals are celebrated everywhere.  It was the purity of the hungry artist that brought about the denigration of his own craft.  His binges were restricted by the limited capacities of the small towns where he performed and the guidelines set out by his various impresarios.  He was so popular at the local festivals, so sought after by every sort of small-time capitalist, that he was prompted to depart for the capital.  And then there was the artist’s insanity.  His madness, they say, ensured the end of hungry art.  At the last country fair, the artist lost his mind for reasons that can only be understood through an interpretation of the various deranged deliberations that the hungry artist delivered during this period. It was a frail, brittle man that he referred to as the hunger artist, who brought about his insanity.

The hungry artist arrived early in the morning for the first day of his binge.  He assumed his place in the middle of a football-field-sized crevasse wherein a space had been cleared for his body to expand during the course of his exhibition.  He inhaled deeply, gaining a few pounds, and declared, “My field, for a great binge.  My best yet.” And then there was the abrupt striking of a clock, a ringing of the utmost importance.  The hungry artist scanned the carnival grounds until he spotted the source of this disturbance, a small cage on the edge of the crevasse.  He went close to the cage but could not see inside for the bars were so thick that even from a close distance it appeared as though nothing resided within.  He stepped nearer, then nearer still until he was almost sure he could make out nothing.  “But, there is something inside, I can feel it.”  With his face pressed against the bars, he inspected the shadows.  And then they grabbed him, the bulging, soulful, vigorous, passionate eyes loosely hung from a string of head-neck-body-arms-legs.  The hungry artist questioned him, “Is that your clock?  Isn’t it loud?”  “Who are you?”  “What are you doing here?”  “Where did you come from” “What’s with the clock?”  “Aren’t you hungry!”  The man remained so still that it appeared as if he did not even breathe.  The hungry artist observed the frail man for an hour and all that stirred was the clock.  The hungry artist had to return to his station, but he did not take his eyes off what he perceived to be some sort of competition.  He kept his eye on this stranger who remained immobile, always. 

The green tiles increased daily as the hungry artist’s body oozed over the field while the other artist, the hunger artist remained firmly fixed in his cage.  The frail man did not have any signs to indicate his progress; there was only the clock, its hands moving in a circle and its all-important ringing on the hour, every hour.  No one else noticed.  The hungry artist’s envy grew by the week, then by the day and finally by the mouthful.  He talked to no end about the absurdity of this interloper, who never ate, drank or moved.  Was not this imposter fabricating but the same art form the hungry artist himself had mastered?  Was it not just the same exhibition as a binge without food?  This individual who shunned himself from the world, enclosed his art in the pit of his stomach, a stomach that did not exist, an art form that could not possibly exist.  What really ate the hungry artist was the fact that the man did not give any indication of how long he had been fasting.  And since no one ever paid attention to the hunger artist, perhaps because they could not see his cage, which was buried within the depths of the shadow of the hungry artist, the hungry artist was inclined to believe that there existed a grand conspiracy directed against his personal self.

The situation affected the hungry artist’s concentration.  He talked incessantly about the insidious nature of an artist whose sole means of telling the world “Here I am” was a loud obnoxious clock and an unoriginal antiquated clock at that.  “Tick, tock, tick, tock…gong-g-g-g” the hungry artist mumbled, repeatedly repeating the sounds as he slurped and munched on popcorn, Goobers, Swedish fish, popcorn topping, hot dogs, pizza, Kit-Kat, Nestles, M&M’s, Pepsi, coke, seven-up, sprite, iced-tea, lemonade, diet-those same drinks and mints.  “And no one hears these sounds except me.”

At night there were watchers, selected by the public, usually butchers, to ensure that he did not stop his binge.  The hungry artist was informed that this was a mere formality, but he suspected otherwise.  The initiated knew well that he would not stop consuming at any moment and that to do so would compromise the integrity of his profession.  Not every watcher, of course, was capable of understanding this.  There were often shifts of watchers that were very lax in carrying out their duties.  They knew well what it was like to overeat, to need a minute to unfasten one’s belt and recuperate from dining on pounds of chicken legs, wings, breasts, sausages, turkey burgers, hamburgers, and casserole—everyone needs time to make room for dessert.  These watchers huddled together, far away, played cards and gave the hungry artist time to give his stomach a rest.  Nothing bothered him more than to have to deal with the combination of the behaviors of these watchers and the frail artist who sat, caged in his shadow.  Contending with both parties to prove his authenticity made his binge seem unendurable.  To demonstrate that he was continuously bingeing he threw the food wrappers from everything he ate in the direction of the watchers.  Piles of paper bags, cardboard boxes, plastic wrappers, spoons and forks from Krispy Kreme, KFC, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Nathan’s, Burger King, Roy Rogers, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, 7-11, Wa-Wa, Boston Market, Au Bon Pain, Dunkin’ Donuts, Blimpie’s, Subway, Denny’s, Taco Bell, and other lesser known establishments, filled the ground in front of the watchers who only wondered at his lack of cleverness in thinking that his actions were any indication that he was in fact eating the food.  This insufferable situation was exacerbated by the silence of the frail man.

At this time the furious pace at which the hungry artist binged increased so rapidly that he empowered other parts of his body to aid in his struggle of perfecting his craft.  He sought to assure his dominance over the other artist.  The function of his anus was inverted.  He shoved food down his nostrils and through his ears giving second priority to breathing and hearing.  He pulled his eyeballs out and to the side, unconcerned with the effects it might have on his vision.  He did anything to create new passageways within his body and new ways of consuming.  Ultimately, he was so focused on his art that he could only afford the use of one sensory organ at a time.

The masticating and absorbing orgy of food—what the hungry artist coined food, that is anything he could consume—created an environment of industrial noise that the clock, over which the hungry artist obsessed, could not possibly have been heard by anyone in his audience.  If indeed it existed.  If only he could have blocked out its tick-tocking, perhaps he would not have noticed the hunger artist.  But it was there, he was sure; it had to be; there was doubt, yet there was no other explanation.

The hungry artist was further alienated by the actions taken by the groups of owner-impresarios that surrounded him.  He was consumed by his work and therefore unable to monitor everything that was said.  His sensory organs became severely impaired and he could only spare brief interludes to see, hear or smell what was taking place.  In one eye, the hungry artist saw an owner hanging in the sky by means of a helicopter.  He could not decipher what the owner was doing for his ears did not work synchronously with each other nor did they function in conjunction with his eyes or nose.  No organ worked as it was designed.  The hungry artist had adapted it all to function almost solely for eating.  He could not be sure of whom his audience was composed at any particular moment, nor was he aware of how many owner-impresarios were present. It was a long time since he had been promised that they would only sell their wares on his behalf, that they would watch his performances as loyal, faithful servant-fans and would only act as advisors in making decisions about his career.  Now, they appeared everywhere in his recent memories.  Still, he never retained control of his faculties long enough to maintain a conversation with any one of them for he did not consider it worth the risk to sacrifice more time from his binge.  There were blurs of images one moment, then nothing, not even blackness; then there were blurbs, cuts of sounds and then, nothing, not even silence; for the hungry artist the paucity of comprehensible information was overwhelmingly frustrating.  The hungry artist was driven to further concentrate on his work for it was the only thing that provided any sense of order.

The audience sat always, encamped about a fence that was erected in order to distance the vomit, gas, drool and miscellaneous objects that spewed about from the rampage binge.  This barrier was also installed to ensure that no one would be crushed were the hungry artist to keel over and die at some moment.  Adjacent to the fence, a boardwalk was assembled.  Delegates of the various business enterprises across the entire region and, in many cases, the very owners themselves rented out space to sell their wares.  Over megaphones and loudspeakers the owner-impresarios announced the performance of the hungry artist as the greatest spectacle in the world.  They advertised their vendors, ringing out the prices of their different souvenirs of hungry art:  magazines for weight gain, hand puppets, marionettes, tee shirts, sweaters, other embroidered garments and food that came “from the mouth of the artist himself!"

The hungry artist no longer conversed with his audience and, instead, pontificated on his advantages over the frail main in the shadows.  The impresario collective were unaware of any man in any cage and said the hungry artist had been bingeing for too long and too rapidly and it was only natural for him to be a little crazy.  Some owners were more sensible, explaining that the cage was nothing to show for, that perhaps there had been a hunger artist but he had moved on or died a long time ago.

Due to the alterations the hungry artist had made in the organs of his body and the functioning of his brain, it took his mind weeks to assimilate the conversations, sounds, images and events that he witnessed. By the time it was processed it was all in his own order, interpreted in his own way.  It was the end of his binge and he was enraged by those from whom he could discern no practical purpose or meaning in connection to his work.  As the owners prepared him for the Traditional Liposuction Celebration, he boasted across the fair grounds that he could binge for much longer.  The owners praised the high ambition, the good will and the great self-denial implicit in such a statement and then carried on with their commercial affairs.

Forgotten by the public in this whole affair was the cage with the bony man or womyn or creature or hunger artist or whatever it was that fasted without the grace of fame or fortune.  The hungry artist could not even recall a face by which to remember his nemesis.  The only memory of this hunger artist would be within the artist himself, and that being had disappeared.

For all the hungry artist knew his body had crushed the cage and had eaten it and the hunger artist in a state of consumptive passion.  And yet the frail man had accepted this fate.  The situation drove the hungry artist mad.  His whole life’s work appeared to be reduced to a joke.  This caged ghost had said to him, through no verbalized words, that to eat was a humorless joke against one’s self and it was therefore a waste of time to swallow so much as a morsel.  The hungry artist did not necessarily receive this message in its proper vane.  He increased his food regimen by tenfold, then by tenfold more.  Soon the Traditional Liposuction Celebrations were held more frequently for the small towns did not have enough space to contain such an expansive body.

After the last Liposuction Celebration, the hungry artist put his tongue to rest.  He did not utter a word to anyone before departing for the capital. He entered the grandest metropolis of the empire where he was unknown and unacknowledged.  Freshly lipoed, nonverbal and passive, the hungry artist was immediately discovered by a modeling agency.  They thought they had found a new marker of beauty at a bargain rate.  They signed him to a lifetime contract, providing him shelter and food.  He never asked for money, so they never gave him any.  When his body recuperated from the liposuction, the agency’s doctors informed their employer that the hungry model’s adipose tissue was uncharacteristically absorbent and enlarging at a stellar pace.  To remedy the situation, the agency first put him on sanction, disallowing him from eating any food.  Still, his body grew, consuming as it willed.  The hungry artist might have explained that his body was a consumer and that he had no part in its functioning, but he was completely disinterested with the matter.  The agency put him on a strict regimen of no-fat-no-calorie-no-nothing-food, food that he could eat, but that would not be digested.  The employees of the agency tried everything in their power to stop the growth of the hungry artist’s body.  They made him exercise, regularly and strenuously.  They connected his body to a lipo-dialysis machine.  Every attempt was futile.  The agency feared that it would become the laughing stock of the fashion world.  Or so, it would have feared this embarrassment if not for the owner of the agency.  A wise man of business, the owner ingested his fashion and modeling venture into one of his more profitable corporations.  Fashion was fine, he reasoned, for purposes of casual ambiance in discussing various business affairs, but it never paid him well.

The owner thought he could make a television program out of the fat man.  According to the latest surveys and polls, data indicated that hungry art performers were the latest craze across the empire. The televised show was packaged as a wholesome sitcom, slotted at the time when families ate together.  After holding a meeting with the hungry artist, it was instantly clear that such a show could not be produced.  At this time, the hungry artist’s skin was coming apart at the seams.  His tissue was held together by lynchpins and steel thread.  He could no longer digest food and still, he consumed.   The owner was quick-witted and turned what surely could have been a disaster into a commercial success.  The body of the hungry artist contained a rather large surface area, big enough to plaster advertisements all about.  The owner conceived a brave new concept in television programming called Consumption: a full day of commercials uninterrupted.  It was the only solution given that it had become too dangerous to move the hungry artist from where his puddled form was set.

Eventually the station was deserted, save the automated cameras focused on the hungry artist.  His was the only program aired twenty-four hours a day.  The show consisted of ads plastered on the hungry artist’s rotting belly. (And if one were bold enough to try to look underneath these billboard advertisements, one would discover that the hungry artist no longer had an epidermis, that the paper, on which the advertisements were placed, had replaced his skin.  Without any source of nourishment left in the building, his body had begun to consume itself).  There was not even the need for a cameraman since the stomach moved by itself, providing a full range of angles, and movement that was necessary to keep the audience entertained.  The stomach pulsated recurrently, providing a mesmerizing oceanic noise that crashed with the flashing of different products on the screen.  The wave-like pulsations of miniature billboards hypnotized the audience, captivating them with endless images of food, clothes, gasoline, airlines, automobiles, hardware, electronics, and toy store chains.  These images were reinforced by the ranting voiceover that incoherently smashed sounds into sentences from which only product names could be distinguished. 

The audience awaited the sight of the products mentioned by the rambling voiceover, thus bolstering the attraction of the products.  It soon became a family game to guess at what time the product mentioned would be aired on the screen.  Children gathered around the TV dressed in their prime-time-best-logo-lavished tee shirts in show of support of either their favorite commodities, advertisements or both.  This billboard fashion permeated through every class.  For most it was on socks and undergarments, footwear, pants, shirts and hats.  For the more reserved professionals and administrators it was neckties, eyewear, cigars and personal automobiles.  The elite did not model this fashion but made sure their servants were fully adorned in the most haute of logo culture.

In the television station, the hungry artist was unaware of his surroundings and situation and felt at liberty to talk to himself, especially about his contempt for the caged thing that had been lost in his shadow long ago.  He sat in a lazy-boy recliner for decades, spending the course of his life minimizing the costs to the owner while maximizing the profits.  Oblivious to the degradation of his body, he religiously continued his binge in solitude.  The doctors had warned him not to consume and all efforts were made to keep food away.  Letters mailed to inform him were not received since he could-not-would-not move and there was no one in the building to deliver them.  Such correspondence and caution did not appear to be necessary since there was no food within consumptive reach of the artist; more accurately, there was no food per se.  There were rats and roaches.  While these did not seem to be adequate sources of nourishment, the hungry artist’s body continued to expand.  One might think that he consumed these vile creatures, but it was more plausible that they were eating him, nesting in the remnants of his flesh and expanding their populations within the folds of his skin and the cavities of his organs. 

The owner became concerned when he heard reports that rats had been appearing on the hungry artist’s program.  The gravity of this situation was underscored by the fact that the hungry artist had taken up a diatribe about the horrible taste of fast food.  It was relayed that the hungry artist had again stopped speaking, that his last words were, “It’s not about your way or my making it great, obeying your hunger or any of that.”  After a pause he concluded, “ I couldn’t find the food I liked.  If I had found it, believe me, I would have found peace and stopped eating when I was finished.  But there was so much, and it amazed me that none of it was good.  So, I was eating ever since that curious first bite.”

The owner was slightly upset, for this stream of free revenue would be gone.  In the place of Consumption, he aired a zoology program that displayed creatures designed for future food products.  The most recent food good was a pigantheron, something that would taste like pork when cooked, produce cow’s milk without the expense of grazing, would have the grace and beauty of a panther and was rooted in the ground like a plant; and though some of itself may have tried to move, it was ultimately a plant creature, or so they referred to it as such.  This plant-like feature, was of course, designed to cater to the special needs of the vegetarian consumer.

…Morsels, morsels melting, mm…mm….my-my, mouth-watering melon, mars-bars, M&M’s, mystic, mangoes, marshmallows, marzipan, mocha, Muenster, mozzarella, matzo, meat, meatballs, malomars, mulberries, mackerel, mint, martinis, malt milk shakes, mouse-meat…