“Can I talk to you for just one minute?”

I’d clocked him on my way into the store. He was loitering in front of the automatic sliding glass doors, hands clasped together. Hair to his shoulders. Sunglasses. A short-sleeved button-up decorated with little crashing waves. In his twenties, probably. I didn’t look very closely, knowing a show of interest would invite a conversation, which would lead to my time wasted or my money taken.

Now, exiting the store ten minutes later with a single paper bag of groceries—I’d forgotten the reusable bags again, again, again—he asked me the question. 

“Can I talk to you for just one minute?”

I didn’t respond. Didn’t even turn my head. I’d grown up in the city, was trained to avoid the attention of panhandlers, do-gooders, self-servers, religious types and failing rappers. Any stranger on the street who wanted my time was screened out. Ignored. Plus, this was meant to be a quick trip. I was at work, technically, running to the store between calls, calls I took from the desk in my bedroom. 

“Just one minute,” he said. A statement this time, drawing attention to how slight his request was, how rude I was for refusing something so simple. At least, that’s how I interpreted it. His tone was friendly and calm, like he was offering me a beer and not a chance to End World Hunger. 

I still didn’t respond. My car was at the far end of the parking lot, but in a few more steps he’d give up and turn his attention to the next person leaving the grocery store.

“Thirty seconds?” He said it like an inside joke.

“Not today.” I raised a hand over my shoulder, the lazy apology of a bad driver. 

“Tomorrow then?” 

“If I’m here.”

“Ten seconds? Just ten seconds.” I was halfway across the parking lot now, but his voice was no farther away. Was I being followed? I imagined the stranger weaving between cars and shopping carts to keep up. I couldn’t confirm this, of course. I didn’t turn around.

“What could I do in ten seconds?” I asked, still moving. 

“Make a difference. Hopefully.” He delivered this line like he knew it was cheesy, a sales pitch that could convince a gullible dreamer but not someone like me. 

“Not today,” I repeated. I was almost at my car, my free hand fumbling for the keys in my pocket.

“Have it your way.” The words were petulant, but his tone was breezy.

I stopped. I was being chased across a parking lot by a young man who spent his days collecting signatures or emails or coins in a labeled plastic jar, someone who, either for money or a real desire to do good, was standing in the sun, breathing car fumes so he can make some sort of difference, somewhere. 

Philanthropy takes you outside yourself. Someone said this to me once. Or, not me, but a crowd. A school assembly. They meant, I think, that philanthropy allows you to see the bigger picture, to understand the world in a new way. I interpreted it as this: philanthropy is a chance to escape your own mind for a few minutes, an hour, a day. To feel good for the right reason. A selfish pitch for selflessness. 

Was I really so opposed to performing a basic kindness? Was that ‘my way?’ 

These self-reflective thoughts were unfamiliar. Alien. It was like the man was implanting new ideas in my mind, a secret code hidden in the fluctuations of his voice, like a prisoner of war blinking S-O-S while his voice said Everything’s fine.

I turned around, my butt nearly pressed against the window of my car. The man was right behind me, only a step away. “Okay,” I said.

“Okay?” he said.

“Okay. Sixty seconds,” I said, more to play my role than out of impatience. What, really, was the rush? An empty house, a repetitive job. Angry clients, dirty dishes. 

“Not ten? The whole sixty?” 

“The whole sixty.” 

Now that I wasn’t trying to avoid him, I could observe the stranger. Good-looking, with an unaffected air. Clean clothing, white shoes. His fingernails were manicured and edgeless. 

He removed his sunglasses, revealing dark eyes, which stared right into my own. His pupils seemed to vibrate. Maybe this was his cause?

“You’re the first person who has agreed to speak with me.” The man smiled. For a moment he looked like a creature smug with the knowledge that it’d cornered its prey. Then he looked like himself again.

“The first?”

“The very first.”

“Well.” I was briefly proud. All I was giving was my time, a minute or two at most, and I was likely making this young stranger’s day. Because, of course, I was not planning to donate or volunteer. At most I’d sign something, although not if I needed to share my email. 

“Let’s hear it,” I said, paternal now, the father who buys his daughter’s first box of Girl Scout cookies.

“Here it comes,” he said. 

Most of the man’s proposed sixty seconds had elapsed in small talk and filler words. It seemed like he was talking for the sake of it, stretching out our conversation to keep me trapped in his words for a few moments more. But I was no longer feeling hurried or frustrated. I was already feeling the swelling sensation of a good deed, a deed I hadn’t done yet. I would give him all the time he needed. 

“There is a great need,” the stranger began, “a need which you, without leaving this parking lot, can assuage. Solve, even. You can be someone you did not expect to be when you woke up, someone you may not have even expected to be when you parked your very nice car here: a hero. Not a hero to all, maybe, but to those who understand your contribution, it would be the only word that fits. Hero.” 

“But what’s your cause?” I asked.

“I am.”

“You are what?”

“I am my cause. My cause is me. I’m here for myself, looking for a kind soul to help me and me alone.”

At first, I thought, What a hoax! To pretend to be in the service of some great cause—be it endangered leopards or ALS or coral—when your only goal was your own betterment. Although, I supposed, he wasn’t pretending. He hadn’t lied. And was helping the individual any less noble than helping some opaque, grand cause? Was this not a more direct route to a better world? I thought of bums I’d stepped over on the street, rattling cups I’d turned my head from, feeble old women crossing the street I’d blown past, too preoccupied with whatever work event or chore it seemed obligatory to arrive at as fast as possible. 

“And what about yourself needs help?” I asked. My phrasing was odd, but I couldn’t imagine another way to order my words. I was, perhaps, trapped in his script, a script that started the moment I gave him my attention.

“My entire being. My personal universe, if you will.”

“Okay,” I said.

“I cannot exist alone. I need another.” His pupils were shaking furiously now. Had he blinked since we started talking? Had I? 

I was no longer aware of the weight of the grocery bag in my hand, which had felt too heavy when I’d left the store, heavy enough that I’d cursed the bagger in my mind for not spreading it across two bags. 

“How can I help? A signature? A donation, maybe?” 

“You must live within me.” 

“I can’t live with you,” I said, certain that I should feel certain. 

“Within. Within.”

“Oh.” I did not ask if he meant spiritually. 

“In here,” he said, pointing to his closed mouth. “I will not eat you. You will not die. You will become part of me, is all. An invaluable part. You may even, eventually, maybe, enjoy it.”

“I’m not so sure.” I didn’t know which part of his sentence I was responding to. 

“Well, I’m not so sure I can take no for an answer.” Then he waited. His pitch was made. He stared, his pupils vibrating with such violence that I imagined the inside of a shaken soda can. 

His request was impossible. It was much more than I’d expected when I’d agreed to speak with him. But I’d turned around. I’d engaged. And the thought of getting back in my car, driving home, shelving my dry storage groceries in the pantry and my cold storage groceries in the fridge, logging into my work laptop, taking everyone through a presentation I could present in my sleep, logging off, watching television, cooking and wanting take-out or getting take-out and feeling guilty, going to bed, sleeping fitfully, dreaming of this strange man who I’d denied (maybe harmed, maybe killed), waking up, logging into my work laptop—it was hellish. 

He smiled, still holding eye contact. He knew what I was going to say before I said it. He knew, probably, from the moment I turned around. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Okay.” I repeated it for him, for me, for posterity. “Okay. Will it hurt?”

“Not at all.” His smile widened. “I won’t be able to thank you once we start. So, I’ll thank you now.” He paused. “Thank you.”

Then the man opened his mouth wide, the edges of his lips straining, the tops of his teeth visible. There were no enamel caps or discoloration. His teeth were perfect.

I cautiously moved my hand toward his mouth. My fingertips passed the plane of his lips. Then my top knuckles. The man did not bite, gag or gurgle. Nor did he open his mouth wider. He stayed frozen as my scrunched hand, which resembled a bird’s beak, slowly moved deeper into his mouth.

My hand, which I’d managed to keep from touching any part of him, reached the back of his throat. My fingers brushed wetness. I went deeper, my hand sliding down his esophagus. I placed my groceries on the cement so my second arm could join the first. My other hand glided down his throat. It only made sense for my head to go next. I took three deep, gulping breaths, like I was about to sit cross-legged on the deep end of the pool, and twisted my neck so the dome of my head was positioned in front of his waiting mouth. I pushed my head forward, eyes closed—not from fear, but sanitation. I felt the scrape of his teeth, the roughness of his tongue, then the smooth moistness of the tube of his throat. A last push got my shoulders inside, the dampness wetting my t-shirt. 

The rest was easy. A birth in reverse. The head and shoulders dealt with, the rest of my body simply slid inside. I tunneled down into darkness, my arms extended and clasped in front of me like a swimmer off the block. 

I descended, thinking nothing, only experiencing this new sensation. The tube ended. I dropped a foot and landed in darkness. 

I sat within the warmth of the man, shoulders hunched, knees near my ears, hands pressed against the muculent floor. The floor stung where it met my flesh, like poking at a healing burn. 

In the silence and perfect darkness, I realized two things, one realization triggering the other: that I’d forgotten to buy milk at the grocery store, and that this no longer mattered.