Food
- Izaak David Diggs
- Oct 6, 2024
- 5 min read
When I was thirteen to fourteen years old, I broke into houses to steal food. My mother always made sure we had food, but we were poor so the food was very basic. Riding my bike around I would smell barbecues, I’d see people eating at burger joints, and it made me hungry. Not just literally hungry, hungry for something I didn’t have and didn’t know how to get…at first. We lived in Petaluma, California then. This was a decade before Polly Klass was kidnapped and Petaluma still felt like a small town; people were trusting...doors and fences weren’t always locked. I rode my bike everywhere in Petaluma and learned where the wealthy neighborhoods were, the people with nice cars and boats and things like that. In the warmer months, they’d have people over for barbeques. Instinctively, I understood that if I was to slip in and take food, there had to be a plan, there had to be rules. A big one is there had to be other kids. Another big one was not to linger and be prepared with some sort of food container in my backpack. At first I was scared but something kicked in, something I was only beginning to understand about myself, my survivor instinct. I stole food from people’s houses seven times; some numbers you just remember. The last time I was caught. The woman who owned the house grabbed me—she wasn’t rough, no, she was very kind as was her husband. Where were my parents? They took me into the living room and sat me on the couch. They gave me a Coke which was a thrill as I never had soft drinks; I drank a couple of sips but it was terribly sweet and I couldn’t drink it. The man and wife went off to “call the police.” When they were out of the room, I ran out of their house. They probably knew I would do that, they were probably trying to “scare me straight” or something. It worked.
I’ve had a weird relationship with food since I was a child. When I was in high school we lived with my step-father. I had an antagonistic relationship with him and didn’t want him to see me eating his food so I’d wait until he wasn’t around or I’d sneak into the kitchen, grab something, and run back to my room. This is one of the reasons I’ve always been slender. Until I was around thirty, I got very uncomfortable eating around strangers. Sometimes the anxiety was enough that I would throw up. Then, I was over it; I have no idea why the anxiety ended even if I understand how it started. And I was always jealous, jealous of kids who could afford to get burgers or pizza or whatever. In my 20s I worked at an alarm company. Someone had heated something up in the microwave and forgotten it. It smelled amazing, absolutely delicious, but it had been sitting there who knows how long and I understood I would have gotten sick if I ate it. I was so frustrated I started crying; it was good no one was around because I just sat there and wept for twenty minutes.
This was a long time ago: Petaluma is no longer a small town. I no longer live with my step-father in a remote house. If I want any sort of food I can buy it; doing so may dent my budget, but I can do it. I also understand that “stealing food you can’t normally get” is a metaphor for something else. I think most of us want “food,” we want something we feel has been denied us. I see young men in trendy clothes, I see women posing for selfies in the hotel—they’re all hungry for something, only they know what and maybe it’s something they can’t articulate. Everyone wants to be seen, to be loved, to be an object of desire, to be worthy of envy. We’d break into houses for it. We sit and cry for twenty minutes when it remains just out of reach. I got an email this morning saying that I didn’t get the (permanent) job at the hotel where I work. I’ve been there over three months and am attached to the hotel and like the people I work with so it was a huge disappointment. I am not, however, 13 or 25 or 30 anymore and I’ve trained myself to be more philosophical about things. The hotel is not where I’m supposed to be long term just as I wasn’t meant to live in the North Valley in 2024 or 2022 or maybe ever. It was a blow having to leave my little place in the campground but I found this apartment that I love so….who knows? We all have disappointments. We all have plans that go awry, desires that are not fulfilled, loneliness. Some of it is externally created, some we create ourselves. I see people walking around with their faces in their phones, missing the birds in the trees, missing the world around them—other people. I am, personally, extremely guarded due to how I have allowed my experiences in life to shape me, so metaphorically my face is in my phone. I work against it but then something happens like losing the campground or this hotel and I feel vindicated for keeping people at a distance. Right now, I just want to buy a pickup, build a camper on the back, and disappear into the wilderness again. I’d be starving, but starving on my own terms.
We need food: Water. Food. Shelter—all the very basic neccesities. I had food when I was that kid in Petaluma, but I wanted different food. We never had processed frozen stuff or white bread; honestly, it’s probably when I’m still healthy after decades of debauchery. I remember that Coke those people gave me. That may have been the first soft drink I had, it was this mythical thing like sugary cereal or TV dinners…and the reality of it was overpoweringly sweet, nasty. Those young women who pose for selfies in the hotel, maybe they’re insecure and want people to tell them they’re beautiful so they put the pictures up on social media and they get all these creepy, awkward responses. Scary responses, gross pictures of male genitals. One of Truman Capote’s favorite quotes was “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.” Truman Capote died hungry.
When I was thirteen or fourteen, I broke into houses to steal food. I understand that was wrong but I don’t feel guilty about it. Whenever a company I worked for bought pizza I would take a couple of slices, make sure everyone got some, and then sneak back into the break room to keep taking slices until it was gone. I rarely spent money going out for burgers or pizza, still don’t to this day; I cook for myself, which is probably another metaphor. Or maybe I’m some variety of food kleptomaniac. It’s probably a sense of insecurity from growing up poor or something. Why do those young men where those awful, florescent sandals in the luxuty hotel where I work? Why do those young women pout and preen into their phones? Why did I stroll into those backyards nervous but determined with my food storage containers? The real reasons we may never understand….
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