Plastic by Hec Lampert-Bates

Hec is a non-binary writer from Toronto, Ontario. Their stories can be found with fairlightbooks, lit.202, Alternate Route Journal, Fleas on the Dog, and others. They won the 2022 Bill Avner Creative Writing Award. They are working on their debut novel.

Author Foreword:
Plastic is written by an onlooker, the average person, not sympathetic or disdainful, just normal. The onlooker can only watch. There is nothing else to do, and any attempt to change in symbolic ways has no effect. There is nothing to do except watch in a circle as the rain gets worse, as the climate changes, but there is always more plastic for the man to eat. 

Plastic

There’s a man eating plastic on 6th and Green. I walked past him four times this week, often on route to my job at Tri-Trifle, but I’ll admit the later passes were fueled by curiosity. There’s a man sitting on the curb, eating plastic straws outside the restaurant at the corner of 6th and Green.

I noticed him on Monday. I hadn’t lived a day as warm. My neck was spitting mist and my new white socks were baked in dry sweat. I paused beside the man as a cloud of workers straggled past. He sat hunched, yellow-gloved fingers around a container of straws, and a bag for empty wrappers. His loafers sank through melted divots in the concrete. I leaned in to inspect what was either a mustache, or a bush of twigs taped to his upper lip — I’m still not sure which. I cleared my throat. He was busy and ignored me. He stuffed the last three straws between his teeth, stood and retrieved another box from behind a tree. I coughed again, but he was busy. 

On Tuesday, I told my wife about him, but you know Daurene. She’s always been a skeptic. She didn’t believe my stories about the leeches last summer, or the one about my friend who made cooking oil from lead paint, so naturally, she had no interest in the plastic man. I even suggested she come with me and make a day of it. We could watch him for a while and maybe go to a movie after. But Daurene didn’t have time. She was absorbed in whatever start-up she had concocted that week — selling reusable socks or something.

So I called Fred, my old pal. I didn’t know Fred was in the hospital. Why did no one tell me Fred was in the hospital? Some cyst on his foot? Apparently he’s been there for months. He hung up when I asked if I could wheel him to see the man. Why didn’t anyone tell me Fred was hospitalized?

On Wednesday, alone and disappointed, I walked past the man again and feigned interest in that over-soaked ice cream next door with its olives and curdle, so he wouldn’t think I was odd.

I never would have expected a straw to crunch. I suppose it makes sense for plastic between teeth to sound like leaves and apples and celery, but I was astounded by my mouth as it dribbled lust for the man’s plastic. The way it crunched, its slight chew, the supple rip of molded oil. I thought, before I remembered sense, I might taste one. Just to help him. But I didn’t. I walked on like I hadn’t seen him and salty rain sank through my hair.

Thursday was wet.

When I rose from the subway and found my way to him, I’d almost finished convincing myself I was there on business.

“Excuse me,” I said, and waved my foot near his nose. He peeled the sides of a particularly long straw, a manufactured banana without all the things you would want from fruit. I nudged a woman with purple boots and eyebrows separated by a large pimple, as she hobbled by. She spun, shocked like a mouse with a freshly pulled tail. 

“Do you know who this is?” I asked the woman.

She puzzled and scrunched her eyebrows together, leaking white muck down her nose. She whispered “Don’t stare at the homeless,” and scuttled away, dripping a rich path behind her.

When I arrived on Friday, I was delighted to find others. Four workers stood in a bubble around the man, using fingers and torn documents to shield their eyes from the storm. I dropped my case with its brevity and importance and ran to the crowd. 

“What’s happening?” I asked and shoved through. No one knew. We just stood and watched a man in a vest and high stockings eat plastic straws. Every few minutes, the crack of a dropped satchel and a new watcher would split the group. By the time he’d eaten four boxes, the corner of 6th and Green was surrounded like ants spiral a stale crumb. I wish Daurene and Fred could have seen.

We huddled until I couldn’t stand any longer. Across the circle was the woman from Thursday. Her face was clean and her eyes were stuck to the back of his neck. I couldn’t stay or leave. Confusion had turned my brain fuzzy and soft. What if he did something? Or nothing? Or, what if I died that night and would never know? 

Horrible rain.

I took a breath and approached the man with velvet steps, eager not to spook him. “Why?” I asked. Everyone stopped breathing and blinking and moving and all the things that could prevent an answer.

He put down his box and stared at me through the flimsy eyes of a tired man. He shrugged. “Fifteen dollars an hour.” 

The clouds broke.