eat sand

Heavyweight (8.5 oz/yd² | 288.2 g/m²) sweatshirt with direct-to-garment print on the front. Made in WRAP-certified facilities.

I like how it feels in my mouth, when I take a big handful into my gob at the beach.  I can't say I do it often, as the nearest beach is an hour's drive away, but on my weekends something compels me there.  Something inside urges me to go there to consume.

They say pregnant ladies get weird urges to eat soil, toilet paper or Arby's.  Things people would never eat.  I guess my urges are like that but I can't get pregnant as I have no womb.  But the urges, they eat away at me and I'm finding them hard to deal with.

When I first had the urge, I was ravenous.  I shoveled fistfuls of the stuff into my gaping maw not caring who noticed.  But I quickly learned (after chipping several teeth) there's a technique to the act, a gentle chewing to break down the shells, to protect yourself but also prolong the experience. 

I'd come home from my expeditions with my pockets full of the stuff, smelling like the ocean.  But it never tasted the same at home, I always craved it fresh.

I knew my addiction to the surf was bad when I went to my friend's birthday party and in her bathroom she had some of that art in her bathroom.  The one where they layer different coloured sands to create a picture in a bottle.  I ended up drinking it whilst telling everyone knocking on the door asking why I'd been in there so long that I had diarrhea.

My girlfriend left me also.  She told me "I know you've been doing it again" after she told me to stop giving her head, saying that I had a sandy mouth and it was scratching her up.  It was the final straw, but i didn't care, I couldn't get enough.

Did you know that there's more stars in the sky than tiny pieces of individual sand on earth?  Every time I indulge myself I think of this and then think of myself as consuming entire galaxies.  That I am taking them all inside of myself and growing in ways people could never even comprehend.

Have you ever done a line of sand from Punaluu beach in Hawaii?  I have.  I paid a man $30 to mail me a tiny baggie full of it and treated it like it was the finest cocaine.  That was a mistake by the way, don't do that. The black volcanic sand cut my nose to shreds and I had nosebleeds for a week.  Plus it lacked the mouth feel I so badly craved. 

My proctologist  told me that I had to quit, as all the sand I was eating had shredded my anus to the point where it looked like the underside of a sea urchin.  But what does he know?  Nobody who lives a life of education that strongly knows the power of vice.  That uncontrollable urge to satisfy oneself against all reason.  Unless they're just really into asses and combined their work and home life I guess.

I continued on despite my doctor's warnings.  With every bite I could feel something growing inside of me, being created by my addiction.  Do you ever think about what was before the big bang?  Just a vast emptiness of space with this amazingly beautiful concentration of matter held within.  Everything that ever existed and will exist in one place.  I dream of it.

By the time I was 45, the lines on my face were etched into my reflection and my gray hair grew like an infestation across my cheeks and hairline.  My belly slouched with the weight I carried of my creation and my family no longer answered my calls.  I was alone, just me and the sand.

But I didn't care, I didn't care about the ruins of my teeth or the haunted memories of my friendships.  All I cared about was getting my hands on new and exotic sands.  I couldn't even explain what possessed me or what drove me forward in my desires but it was all encompassing.

And when I passed, far from the shores of what I desired.  Alone in my room, unfound until my bodies stink alerted my landlord upstairs, did I find peace.  I found peace in more than one way.  As they cut me open to see what caused my demise, a beautiful pearl the size of a grapefruit was located inside my belly.  Billions of grains of sand had come together, billions of stars collected within me.  Unknown to everyone who knew me, I was harboring true beauty where they couldn't see, having lived a life they couldn't understand.

photos - 
model: @jessbuckl
photographer: @earlgreyhot.images