The Garlic Freak

Warding off a personal demon

(9–17)

Charles James Worthington never tasted garlic until he was sixteen years old. It was on one of his first clumsy dates. It was on a double date, actually. It was the standard movie then pizza date. It was the first time Charles had ever eaten a pizza not made by his mother. He finally learned what real pizza was like and he also discovered garlic. (And girls.)

From that moment on Charles became wildly passionate about garlic. He did research on it. He went on a quest to try every ethnic cuisine that included garlic. He began going to grocery stores after school just to have a double handful of garlic in which to stick his nose.

How on earth could he have gone sixteen years of his life without any experience with garlic whatsoever?

It was because of his mother. The family never ate out in those sixteen years. Charles’ mother was an extreme penny pincher. She knew how to feed a family of seven on less than a buck-fifty. The only food Chucky (he was called Chucky back then) ever tasted was his mother’s cooking. Even the seemingly thousands of sack lunches that Chucky had eaten at school were made by her.

And she hated garlic. She hated it so much that she vehemently refused to even allow it in her home. Chucky learned this when his mother found a few stray cloves of garlic in Chucky’s sock drawer.

“Don’t you ever bring garlic into this house again! You understand me?”

“No. I don’t understand your weirdness about garlic. What’s the deal? I’ve tasted it and it’s delicious.”

She put her hand to her mouth, slowly dropping it to speak, “So you’ve tried it?”

“Duh.”

“I tried to shield you from it as long as I could but I guess deep down I knew that eventually you would succumb. I can’t protect you from garlic your whole life. You’ll be a man soon and you’ll need to make your own decisions. Just hear me now, Chucky; garlic is evil! It will inflame your loins and your stomach and it will turn your brain into mush. It’s what is used to control people. Promise me that you will stay away from garlic!”

“What? No. I love garlic.”

Once again, she covered her mouth.

“And one more thing….”

She didn’t move.

“From now on, my name is not Chucky. It’s Charles!”

Her hand still on her face, his mother let out a faint whimper then turned and left the room.

It was a hot and muggy late evening in the summer of Charles James Worthington’s forty-third year of life. Chad — the name he was going by at the time — had come home from work, changed clothes, washed up and was just starting his second cocktail when he walked into the kitchen to start preparations for dinner.

Chad loved to cook. Males were not allowed in the kitchen during Chad’s youth. He was never even taught how to boil water. Upon growing up and leaving home he dived headlong into learning everything he could about food and cooking. For twenty-five years the kitchen became Chad’s domain. Over the course of those years he had cooked untold thousands of meals.

At this point in his life Chad almost never went out to eat. Everything he ate was food that he had prepared himself. Over time, cooking became an essential part of eating. To him, not getting to cook what one eats leaves the experience of eating hollow and incomplete.

It took no time at all for Chad to come up with a game plan for dinner. (It had been sitting at the edge of his mind for the better part of the afternoon.) He set down his drink and commenced to pull out pots and pans from a cabinet and food from the refrigerator. The cutting board seemed to appear out of nowhere. With knife and cutting board in place and a stack of vegetables nearby, Chad then went over to the counter-top upon which rested a little wicker basket. That little basket was normally full of garlic. For countless years Chad had always kept garlic out in the open in the kitchen. It was very important to him.

But as Chad reached for the garlic he saw that there were only three small pieces of garlic in the wicker basket. He put his hand up to his face. How could he allow this to happen? He never let the garlic supply get this low before. Thinking about his dinner plans, he realized that those three pieces of garlic would be almost enough for the dinner he was planning, although he would have preferred five or six pieces.

But then if he used the last of the garlic for dinner then there would be no garlic left in the basket! Chad could not remember a time when he did not have fresh raw garlic sitting openly somewhere on a kitchen counter-top.

“Damn!” said Chad aloud as he turned back to the cutting board. After slapping his forehead then slamming his hand down upon the still-empty cutting board, he proceeded to the bedroom to put on some socks and shoes.

Reaching into his right pocket, he pulled out his car keys. Reaching into his left pocket he found a small wad of money that, upon cursory inspection, consisted of seventeen dollars. (More than enough.)

He then went back into the kitchen where he took a healthy swig of his cocktail. He had to take one more swig to finish it off. Dinner would have to wait until he had more garlic. It was crucial. He then left the condo to drive to the grocery store to buy more garlic.

He never would have made it through the night knowing that there was no fresh, raw garlic sitting out in the open somewhere in his condo. There had to be garlic in his home at all times!

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. This is a work of fiction. Complete White Feather Archive Index

Speaking of demons…