By Katherine Page

I grind the mud between my molars. It clings to my gums, thick and suffocating.

Against a backdrop of ochre-colored terrain, it sits there. Its hands are mired. Its lips are encrusted with muddied profanities. I wait quietly as it once again presses a handful of earth into its mouth and the loamy filth spreads across its tongue. We’ve been sitting here for hours. It swallows and looks in my direction, smiling: the divine dirt-eater.

A couple of years ago, I read the book When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone. This was my first encounter with the concept of dirt-eating. Stone discusses ancient deities and fertility gods that guided the cycles of life. Of birth and rebirth. Of purity. She paints a picture of these deities taking the sins of their devotees and washing them clean. By eating the dirt of disciples, the divine would purify them. Rebirth them. Stone helped me to understand dirt-eating for what it was: a process of purification. A freeing process that wiped the slate clean.

I quickly became obsessed with the divine dirt-eater. I became intoxicated by the idea of being purified so easily.

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled to make friends. I have spent most of my life flitting through different people, hoping that someone would stick. I wanted to find someone who understood me and my place in the world. So far, this has not happened, and I have realized the I am the common factor. Part of it is just unluckiness. I always seem to find people who view the world as more utopian than I do, but  it is also my own vitriolic nature. Not only do I view the world through a bitter lens, but I view other people this way, too.

If someone fails to text me back, tells the same annoying joke over and over, or raises their voice ever so slightly, I avoid them. The dirt builds at my feet, dark and inky.

I see myself doing these trenchant things, and I imagine dragging myself back to the dirt-eaters feet. My dirt is splayed out in front of them. The sludge trickles along the ground and pools at my feet. I don’t know what to do with it. The divine dirt-eater gives me an expectant look. I explain how impossible everything feels and how my dirt outweighs my purity everytime; it’s too much to stomach. I ask them to take it from me. I ask them to eat it and bury it deep within themselves so that I may finally view the world the way everyone else seems to. The dirt-eater stares back at me, unblinking. Their muddy lips refuse to part.

The dirt-eater doesn’t seem to want to make this easy for me. My fruitless attempts to beg them to purify me start to eat away at me. The image of the dirt-eater sitting there, refusing to do the one thing they were meant to do, became representative of my resentment towards my resentment. 

I decide that if they won’t help me, I will help myself. I will eat my own dirt. I will purify myself.

This act is harder than I imagined. The divine dirt-eater made it look so simple. I, unfortunately, have to put conscious effort into eating my own dirt. The only way I can think to do it is to try my best to be as agreeable as possible. My dirt is my disagreeableness after all.

I study with classmates that I don’t like, get coffee with the guy I find insufferable, and buy food for acquaintances even though I don’t want to. I make sure I text people back. I try to remember people’s favorite things. I even go out of my way to not shit-talk, although it is my favorite thing to do. And I desperately try to find a friend who will stick by altering my worldview to fit theirs.

No matter how hard I tried, nothing worked. I fell back into my old ways. I avoided people, I stopped texting, and I shit-talked. I found things to hate about everything around me. No matter what or who it was, if it existed, I found some kind of flaw, and I ran the other way. I started to become exhausted with how hard I was trying, and how quickly I was failing. My act of dirt-eating was futile. I was doing it wrong somehow.

I returned to the dirt-eater that lives in my mind. I asked them again why they would not help me. Their lips looked muddier. The crescents of their nails were streaked with ochre that ran all the way up to their knuckles. The image taunted me. My lips looked the same and my hands were just as sordid as I continued to shovel more earth down my throat. I asked them what they were doing so right that I was doing so wrong. There was no answer.

I started to see it as a matter of material. When the divine did it, the dirt went away. When I did it, I was just filling myself with more dirt. My composition was all wrong. I gave up.

One night in the middle of summer, my friend and I decided to have a late night dinner. This was the point I had decided to salvage what I already had, instead of chasing more. I was trying to accept that the divine dirt-eater would never digest my sins. My friend and I had become dizzy from wine and cigarettes. We sat in the dark, illuminated by the moon, and whispered against the flurry of cicadas. She was telling me about all she had done since we last saw each other.

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” she said to me. She giggled. “It’s bad, but I feel okay telling you. You’re the only friend I don’t virtue signal to.”

My friend splayed her dirt out on the table, and we began eating it along with our meals. With every morsel of warm earth, I saw her feel less and less guilty. I too was satisfied.

I see myself with the divine dirt-eater for the final time. They look the same as they always do. Pure. Taunting. Filthy.

But for the first time, I am not exalting this deity. The saffron stains that line their face and cake their forearms no longer eat away at me. The looming shadows no longer hint at something else. They are only dim, and the look on the god’s face is only disinterested. Nothing means anything more than what it is. I am simply in front of something filthy and grotesque.

The deity looks at me. It looks at my hands and my mouth. The same grime is encrusted under my nails. The same tawny blemishes are rubbed deep into my pores. The deity finally looks amused for once, gazing at something just as filthy and as grotesque as itself.

The fictitious air around us is thick, the earth beneath us unmoving. I want to speak and tell them my new philosophies. I have done what you would never do for me. I want them to understand that I find them obsolete. The dirt is no longer just my own. I want them to feel foolish for what they were doing. Purification is unsustainable. I want to throw all of my filth in their face. Instead, I leave.

There is a dirt-eater somewhere, and it looks very much like me. ■