To Experience Hunger

My dialogue with Crystalbrain continued after he crashed an immaterial, phantom Chevrolet Chevette into my living room and then climbed out of its broken driver's-side window.

"Did you miss me?" he asked.

"No, I did not, I was busy trying to find something vegan I could eat on this Chinese menu," I said, holding up a menu with a drawing of a dragon on it.

Crystalbrain moved over to me and floated over my shoulder. He asked, "What about the vegetable lo mein?"

"That's probably vegan, for sure, yeah," I said.

"So, you're not going to eat a nice steak?" asked Crystalbrain.

"You know about my veganism," I replied.

"Yeah, and I bet you view yourself as some kind of Pythagoras or something, living by some holier-than-thou diet. How much do you care for your fellow human beings?" said Crystalbrain.

"Oh, I guess I care about them, yeah, for sure," I said.

"But you care about the animals, the poor, poor animals," Crystalbrain said in mock sarcasm.

"Sure I do. Don't you?" I asked.

"Care...about...things...other...than...crack?" he asked.

"Yes, things other than all of the crack cocaine you consume," I said.

"Yeah, I care about the animals. And the Earth and all that. I guess. Anyways I've been to like 20 different Earths and they're all boring, so maybe not as much as you," said Crystalbrain.

"Wouldn't you like to drive a Rolls Royce or something, and not a Chevette? Actually, are there any real Chevettes left in existence anymore?" I asked.

"There's a few, but if I crashed into your house in a Rolls Royce it wouldn't be as funny," said Crystalbrain.

"You may have a point there," I said, then called up the Chinese restaurant on my cell phone. As I was talking, the wrecked immaterial Chevette transformed into a Rolls Royce, and Crystalbrain backed his immaterial car out of my house and drove down the street, until he crashed into a telephone pole, did a flip through the windshield into the pole and then climbed up it and started walking in a tight-rope fashion across a wire.

He yelled from the outside, "Your life, your art flows through these wires, your immortality itself is in these wires."

I couldn't really deny what he had to say, but I couldn't process it because I was so hungry from not having eaten all day.

I said, "From what you say, having immortality isn't much fun after a while anyways. But you know what I want more than immortality right now? Food. I want some damn food. And when I get it, I'm going to eat it. And you're not, because you're an immaterial being."

"Oh, I can become completely material," Crystalbrain said, walking through my door.

"Watch this," he said. Suddenly his body both morphed into and united with a flower vase on my kitchen table. He levitated as the vase above my kitchen table and moved away from the table, then fell almost to the floor, stopping about an inch from it. Then, he levitated back to the table and set himself down on it. As a black smoke he spun out of the vase and then appeared as his normal self.

"You almost broke yourself all over my kitchen floor," I said.

"And then I spun out like a genie. I'm not going to grant you three wishes, however. I'm not that nice," he said.

"You've granted me far more than three wishes, since you are my daemon," I said.

"Most definitely more than three wishes. Yes, I admit it," said Crystalbrain.

"I'm going to go pick up food now," I said.

"Can I--pretty please--jump in your body so I can feel what its like to experience hunger again?" he asked.

"Sure thing," I said. He turned into a black smoke that spiraled into my mouth and down into my stomach.

He remained there, then spun out of my body and said, "I don't miss that sensation too much. Being hungry."

"Yes, every day I get hungry multiple times, and I have to eat, which I will be doing shortly, since I'm going to pick up the lo mein," I said.

"Vegetable lo mein...you eat it without meat because you care about what?" prodded Crystalbrain.

"Because I care about the Earth," I said.

Then I added, "And the animals, too. They get hungry and feel pain like I do."

Crystalbrain said, "Yes, because you are an animal."

"I guess," I said.