Fiction: Extreme Lactose Intolerance

 By Adam Rimland  

“Extreme Lactose Intolerance” 

My name is Walter, and I am the most lactose-intolerant person in the world. 

People like to question me when I tell them this. Like to laugh, with their milky-white teeth-filled mouths. Well, you won’t be laughing once you’ve heard my tale of woe. 

When I was little more than a baby, my mother tried to poison me with her breast milk. Being the cautious baby that I was; I managed to avoid my nippled demise, but not without developing an intense fear of the female body. 

My childhood was filled with close calls and brushes with death. At times I feared people wanted me dead. In fact, multiple doctors and psychologists told me that my lactose intolerance was “a figment of my imagination.” Lies, of course, but it showed me just how deep the treachery ran.  

It wasn’t only doctors that I learned to distrust. Countless friends fell by the wayside as I learned of their dastardly dairy dealings. Lunchtime for many was a time for laughter. For replenishment and nourishment. 

Not for me. I spent every lunch taking detailed notes on my so-called friends and their lunch habits. If ever I caught them with a stringed cheese, or, heaven forbid, a carton of milk, I would promptly cease fraternization with said individual. 

Therefore, it should come as little surprise that many of my friendships were short-lived. In fact, I have never retained a friend for longer than a business week; but that is the cost of “Pizza Fridays.”

Cast out from my peers, I used my vast amounts of free time to research communities pure of lactose. I heard tell of vegan communes, but verifiable information was few and far between. Especially when my pernicious parents started controlling my screen time like some sort of iPad Gestapo. 

I knew I had to break free from these constraints. 

When I was just eleven years old, I ran away from home. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when I caught my parents drinking my almond milk with their cow-tainted lips. The severance had to be immediate and total. Thus, I only allowed myself my father’s platinum credit card and my mother’s mink coat to sustain myself. 

Like the young Leonardo Dicaprio, in his film “Catch Me if You Can,” I journeyed into the world with equal parts courage and fear. There had to be a dairy-free commune out there somewhere. I just had to find it. 

My venture to Vegan Valhalla began in Upstate New York. I resolved to trek across America until I found my safe space. For weeks upon weeks, I walked. At times, I doubted my own resolve, but then I’d glance at the moon, one of the largest symbols of Big Dairy’s hold on America, and I would know I could find no peace in regular society. 

My first few weeks were perilous. The streets were not made for eleven-year-olds with extreme lactose intolerance. Everywhere I looked, I saw Milkmen out to get me. I realize now that Milkmen aren’t really present in society anymore, but at the time, even the sight of a white van (which I assumed was the designated mode of travel for Milkmen) would send me into a tailspin. 

 I made it to LaGuardia and figured that was enough walking. So I bought a first-class ticket to San Francisco (where I figured my safest bet to meet some vegans was), and flew away from my childhood. 

I landed in San Francisco and began my search immediately. I looked in the streets. I looked in the buildings. On and under the Golden Gate Bridge. What did I find in regard to an enclosed community comprised of people with an aversion to Dairy? 

Absolutely nothing. 

However, I did not travel across the country just to give up. I was eleven and a half years old God damn it if I couldn’t find my commune, I’d have to make it. 

I began to give speeches to the street. 

People were drawn to this mysterious aspect of my persona since I never spoke in the same space twice, but the reality was that I was afraid of being tracked by Child Protective Services. Or Milkmen. 

Slowly, I began to build a following. Fellow San Franciscans living in constant fear of dairy flocked to me. From there, the message rippled outward into the country. More and more folk made their way to us. To me. 

I became the spiritual leader of the group. My word became law. Then it became truth. People say “Power corrupts,” and often cult leaders are used as examples. I’m not saying I became a cult leader, but I will say that even if I was, I was incorruptible. 

Perhaps it was due to my eleven-year-old body’s lack of sex drive, but I believe it is because I was laser-focused on our goal: no dairy. 

We set up a commune in Muir Woods National Park. Mostly because I was obsessed with the reboot of the Planet of the Apes movie, so I figured that would be a good place to start a society. 

Remember, I was only eleven. 

That commune only lasted about a week. For one, it was pretty hard to find any food. Also, we were all trespassing, so the park rangers got pretty mad at us. The final kicker was the discarded wax of a baby blue cheese ball I found buried under some twigs. The woods were too open. Too vulnerable. 

After the incident in the woods, state law enforcement began to crack down on our society. They said it was because we were trespassing, and that cults were illegal, but all I could hear was Big Dairy trying to squash any resistance to their regime. 

Either way, we needed to find another location to gather. A place of harmony, free from the outside world. 

It came to me through a tourism billboard. 

Alcatraz. 

We boarded ferries under the guise of enthusiastic tourists. The authorities were none the wiser. What fools. Who in their right mind would visit a prison for fun? 

As soon as we landed, we took to arms. Storming the prison in a righteous fervor. Many good men were lost in the battle, but by the end of the day, we stood victorious. 

Unlike the endeavor in the woods, I had planned for a continued stay. The garden would serve as a means of future production, but we had also brought thousands of cans of vegetables, fruits, and various other protected foods.  

The nutrients already stored on the Island were carefully analyzed for any amount of dairy. If any was found, the food, and anything it touched was cast into the sea. This became an issue as people picked up the dairy products in order to cast them into the sea. 

Many other good men were lost in this pursuit. 

Eventually, our society had been founded, with me at its head. Every single citizen was a proud, everyday American, who happened to share an intense, unprovable, intolerance of dairy. In fact, I am proud to say we were the most intolerant group of people in the entire world. 

Of dairy that is. Just dairy. 

Unfortunately, that is not what the police thought. Or the National Guard. Supposedly, we had committed a whole heap of felonies in our “seizure of government property,” and were thus branded as “enemies of the state.” 

At the time, I wasn’t really too aware of how precarious the situation was. 

By then, I had turned twelve, but I had also gotten super into the movie “The Rock,” starring Nicolas Cage. In fact, that was one of the main reasons I had wanted to live in Alcatraz in the first place. 

So I pretty much spent all of my time watching that movie. 

My followers took my lack of action as my own way of protesting the military’s efforts to remove us and hunkered down for an extended siege. 

We figured we could outlast the government, what with all of our canned foods. 

Then, a few months in, we got a message saying that a reporter from Rolling Stone Magazine wanted to interview me. I said sure since I had recently gotten pretty into Bob Dylan (pretty much the only music we had on Alcatraz was his Highway 61 Record and the soundtrack to “The Rock,” starring Nicholas Cage). 

I don’t remember much from the interview. I remember I kept asking him about “Like a Rolling Stone,” by Bob Dylan, and he would just say that the song didn’t actually have anything to do with the magazine. I decided I didn’t like this guy. 

Eventually, he took out his camera and said that I was going to be the cover of the latest edition. I had pretty much tuned him out at this point, but then I saw him aim the camera at me. A flash of cold, unadulterated panic washed over me. 

“Cheese,” the man said. 

I collapsed on the spot. Even the mere mention of dairy had become too much for me to handle after the months at Alcatraz had freed me from its grasp. 

At that moment, as I have since been informed because I had feinted, the National Guard began launching tear gas into the prison. Although I loved my brethren, I would be lying if I said they were a hardy bunch, and the gas soon forced them from their hideaways and into the waiting shackles of the military. 

The Rolling Stones guy, who in actuality had been an agent for the military, collected my unconscious body and delivered me to child protective services. 

When I awoke, I was on an economy flight back to LaGuardia. The sense of defeat was overwhelming. They delivered me and my father’s (now maxed out) credit card, back home. That is where I reside to this day, over one month later. 

I have found myself almost as allergic to defeat as I am to lactose, and yearn to jumpstart my derelict dairy rebellion. 

A sound knocks on my door. It is my mother. 

“Would you like some cookies?” she asks. I’ve never had cookies before, what with milk and all. I tell her as much and turn back toward my plans. 

“They’re really good,” she says, “just try one cookie, there’s no milk in them.” 

Just to get her to shut up, I take a cookie. It’s gooey in my hands. The smell is actually quite nice. I taste it. 

A tear curls down my cheek as I lament my heretofore cookie less life. 

“Pretty good huh,” my mother says. All I can do is nod. There is nothing even I, a master of public speaking, can say to rival the sensations the cookie brings me. 

“You know,” my mother begins. I’m only half listening at this point, enraptured by my cookie. “They’re even better with milk.” 

That knocks me out of my reverie. I glance up at her with suspicion and am greeted with a glass of milk gazing back at me. Inches from my face. 

My mind reels. I should be dead by now, no way I could take being this close to raw, unadulterated milk. 

I contemplate a hasty getaway. I’m pretty sure my dad’s wallet is in the kitchen; I can be halfway to Saigon by the time my mother realizes what’s happened. Then I look down at the cookie in my hand. 

It is the greatest thing I have ever tasted. And my mother said milk makes it even better. Even if it is a lie, do I even want to risk living without knowing what that taste is? 

No.  

I grab the glass of milk with shaky hands and dip the cookie –barely– into the opaque substance. 

The cookie comes towards my mouth. Fearing my resolve, I close my eyes and let momentum do the rest. I nibble on the milk cookie. 

My mom was right. 

By the time I open my eyes again, the milk is gone. But inexplicably, I’m still here. Have I died and gone to heaven? 

I decide I don’t really care either way. 

I look back at my mom, “got any more?”

Adam Rimland is an emerging author based in Los Angeles who specializes in comedic writing. When he isn’t writing biographies about himself, Adam is probably doing something cool, like hanging out at a jazz bar or drinking manly drinks like old-fashioneds.