After the luminous outside, the welcoming semi-darkness of Mangia Tutti strikes me blind. I blink, tarry at the door. The muted light from the bar provides only scant illumination; most of the room is submerged in dusk. Faces, limbs, furniture emerge out of its depths like flotsam. The door creaks shut behind me; a couple of heads turn. I anticipate a nod, or a greeting, but none comes. No one from the usual crowd is here yet, I guess.

I hobble across the floor to the bar and slowly lower myself onto a stool. My missing left buttock acts up immediately: the pain is excruciating despite the muffling effect of drugs. I wince and mutter curses under my breath.

“Hey, Scott,” the bartender greets me.

“Hey, Allie,” I answer and smile.

“The usual?”

“Something stronger this time.”

She nods. “Looks like this one was rough.”

“You should have been there! It was perfect: the aroma, the flavor. They loved it!”

“The other guys have been talking about you,” she says. “They think you're crazy. They admire what you did, but they think it's too much.”

I laugh.

“If I can't sacrifice my own ass for the art,” I tell her, “then what the hell am I even doing here?”

She nods again and whips up a drink for me.

“This is a special. Just for you. It's got guarana juice, calendula, jurubeba, eucalyptus oil, and lots of other stuff you'll like.”

“Gee, thanks, Allie,” I say and take a sip. It's herbal all right. My mouth immediately goes numb. The thin trickle descends into my stomach and I imagine I can feel my entire esophagus grow numb, too.

“What'd you put in this thing?” I ask, tongue wrapped in wool now.

Allie winks. “A little something to ease the pain.”

“Shit, Allie,” I say, angry. “Nothing that'll fuck up my taste!”

“Don't worry about it. It's all good and natural. It'll pass right through you without a trace, I promise. This is just to make you feel better.”

“I got a thing in two days,” I say almost apologetically. “Gotta be in top form for it.”

Allie winces. She doesn't say anything but I know what she is thinking: two days is way too soon for another slicing. The recovery time even on the best drugs is at least a week. It's longer with deeper cuts.

“You are crazy,” she says. “All of you guys. Crazy but interesting.”

Someone asks her for a drink and draws her attention away from me. I sit and sip the special remedy alone, staring at the rows of bottles in the wall across from the counter and trying to ignore the pain.

After a while, I don't need to try. It has receded to the very fringes of my consciousness and it stays there, dull. Allie's cocktail has accomplished something that a quantity of expensive drugs could not. I look at her admiringly. She is serving other customers, completely oblivious to this little miracle. Most of the customers are tourists and regular people off the street, but some are limping, or crouching, or missing a forearm or part of a thigh. Mangia Tutti is the Mecca of the autophage crowd and with good reason: the place knows how to treat us right.

I sit and contemplate my fellow autophages. (The term is a misnomer, by the way. We rarely eat ourselves; others do that for us. Sometimes they call us meaters.) They possess a certain shine, a certain lustre that the rest in this place lack. Most meaters here are dressed the same as the regular crowd (or rather, the regular crowd is dressed like them; it is now hip to ape autophage fashion). Their wounds often are not immediately obvious. Many cannot even be considered true autophages: some legendary masters used to frequent this place and it now attracts an inordinate number of starry-eyed wannabes. Yet all of them somehow stand out from the crowd. It is if they are graced by a special spirit, an aura of election.

“Scott?”

A familiar voice shakes me out of my reverie. I start to rise from the stool but then think better of it.

“Alfredo!”

“How are you, man?”

“Pretty good, all things considered.”

Alfredo looks terrific. He has been on a beef-up diet, fattening himself up and restricting his movement to the bare minimum. His corpulent frame blocks out my view of the room; his face is round and ruddy.

“I saw you come in and figured I should come over and thank you.”

“What for?”

“I was at the last eat, man. I'd had some of your fillet. You did good! I really liked that smoky thing you had going on.”

“Ah, yes. My most recent innovation. There's a whole conceptual side to it that—”

“I wanted to let you know,” Alfredo says hurriedly, “that I figured I'd try you even though it might influence how my liver tastes when it's presented at Squelchy's next Thursday. But that's okay, right? It'll be like a creative re-thinking, you know. Or re-metabolizing. You can serve as a source of inspiration, so to speak. You don't mind, do you?”

I ponder this for a second. “No,” I tell him, “I don't mind. We all borrow something from one another. You can't create in a vacuum.”

“Exactly! I knew you'd say that! Thanks, man.”

Suddenly, my pain is back with a vengeance, so strong that I almost double over. It floods my body inexorably, rising up to my head, and on its wave arrives the realization I have been fighting off all day—all week—ever since a knife separated me from a half of my bottom.

“Alfredo?” I say.

“Something wrong, man? You don't look too good.”

“Do you ever wonder if it's worth it?”

“If what's worth what?”

“This whole thing we do. I mean, we practice what some could call the most giving form of art ever invented. We give people little pieces of ourselves, literally. Torture our bodies with unnatural regimens just so that people can taste something wonderful. We fast; they feast. But in the end—they don't really give a shit, do they?”

“Whoa, man!” says Alfredo. “You're way, way off on this one. Think of Butterbrot. Think of Lerognon. They are recognized as giants, as true artists. Everybody knows their names. They're up there with Michelangelo and that other dude, the faggot.”

“But we'll never be as good as them, Alfredo! Sometimes I wonder why I'm wasting my time, and others'. My shanks will never possess that subtle tangy flavor that Butterbrot had, and my kidneys will never smell even remotely as appetizing as Lerognon's when they put them in the frying pan. And what if they roast me on a spit? Do you think my meat will marble like Shanley's? Marble, for god's sake! How the hell did he even think of that?”

“Do I have to remind you that Shanley was a genius?” says Alfredo. “The man changed the way we look at presentation. That takes vision, and will, and balls. Hallmarks of a genius, all three.”

“Don't talk to me about vision,” I answer bitterly. “I have a vision of a hopeless future, looking back on years misspent in search of greatness.”

Alfredo rolls his eyes. “Cut the drama, man. You're one of the very lucky few to know his pizza from his pie, and that's nothing to laugh at. Would you rather go munch on veggies somewhere in the country?”

“God forbid,” I say with a shudder. “The hearty soups and the home-style stews! I think I'd go nuts. I grew up in the country, did I mention?”

“Many times.”

“The land of big, dumb, slobbering maws. Sweet sulfur dioxide, preserve us!”

“Bon appetit,” Alfredo agrees piously.

“But there's this pain, Alfredo. There's so much pain! I don't think I can stand it anymore.”

“Bullshit,” Alfredo says firmly. I look up at him and notice that he has become very agitated. “If you're meant to do it, then you'll do it no matter how much it hurts. You won't care about the pain. You'll be screaming but unable to hold back. Do you think it's easy to get my foie to be as gras as this? Bullshit, man! But I do it anyway because if I didn't, I'd go crazy.”

He is gesticularing wildly, clearly upset. I make a placating gesture with my hand, afraid that I have led him to break his regimen. You shouldn't upset someone who has an eat coming up. It ruins the quality of the meat. Bitterness really does taste bitter.

“I'm probably just tired, is all,” I say. “You know how it is, when you have to recuperate. Frankly, the last eat didn't go as well as I thought it would.”

“I thought it went great!”

“Maybe it did. Maybe I'm just paranoid.”

“Get some rest, man,” Alfredo says and waves to someone across the room. “I gotta go talk to Archie, but hang in there for me, okay? Remember, you'll be part of what I do next Thursday.”

“I can't wait,” I say with as much cheer as I can muster and watch Alfredo go.

He leaves; the pain stays. I try to catch Allie's attention but she's busy serving a gaggle of teenyboppers, all wearing fashionable meater accessories. One has glued to her backpack a sticker depicting a bowl of tronquito with the protruding uncut main ingredient.

Someone pulls on my sleeve. I turn around and discover Sergei, another Mangia regular. We have hung out at some parties or others in the past. He is an interesting guy, a pleasure to talk to, so I feel relieved. I need the distraction to forget about the black thoughts in my head.

“Hi, Sergei,” I say. “How are things?”

In response, he mumbles.

“What?”

“Mmmmh,” he repeats urgently and presents me with a small platter of sliced tongue. “Mmmm. Mmmm!”

“You want me to try it?”

“Mm hmm.”

I pick up a piece and put it in my mouth. It is soft and subtle in flavor, and the texture is silky smooth. I immediately want more.

“This is excellent!” I tell him. He nods and smiles. “This is you?”

He opens his mouth wide and proudly demonstrates the lack of flesh behind his teeth.

“This is one hell of a job,” I say.

“Mm hmm,” he replies happily. “Mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm.”

“Whatever it is you're saying, I agree. How did you do this?”

He frowns, indicating that he wouldn't talk about his secret even if he could.

“You have to get this into an eat somewhere.”

He nods vigorously, showing me that it's already been arranged.

“How quickly will you regenerate it?”

He raises three fingers for three weeks.

“Keeps getting faster and faster,” I say. “Thank god for modern medicine. Well, good luck, although I don't think you need it.”

I watch him making the rounds for a while, sharing his tongue with others, and suddenly I am surprised by a dark swell of jealousy inside me. I suppress it as best I can. I had thought myself incapable of something so base. Yet the sight of someone who has figured things out ahead of me turns out to be absolutely insufferable.

“Hey, Allie,” I call.

“What's up?”

“I'm out of here.”

She smiles understandingly. “Have to go rest?”

“Something like that. Give Sergei a drink on me, okay?”

“Will do,” she says. “Hey, have you tried his—?”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” I say and place some bills on the counter in front of her. “Keep the change.”

“Take care of that juicy ass,” she admonishes, deadpan, and I laugh despite myself and exit the bar.

Outside, the bright city day stares me right in the face. Cars honk. Pedestrians rush by, oblivious to others' private misgivings. The city surrounds me—light, heat and cacophony—and I blink and tarry at the door, trying to adjust to the feeling of being dissolved in its greater noise once again. I almost succeed.

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