Shopping tips and suicide attempts

2005 REWIND - THE YEAR IN DRINKING

SEPTEMBER

On a crisp pre-fall evening, returning from a multiple-bar night of drinking, I go grocery shopping at 2:45 a.m. I remember Richard Simmons once saying a person should never shop on an empty stomach because all they'll buy is junk food. I wonder what he'd say about shopping when you're half-drunk - under no other circumstances would I purchase a four-dollar snack bag of Honey Roasted Soy Nuts.

I'm thumbing through a Weekly World News, awaiting my turn in line, when I begin to overhear the guy in front of me. He's probably in his early seventies, with the manic energy and haphazard personal grooming effects of Matthew Lesko, the wacky "Free Money From The Government" infomercial guy with the yellow question marks all over his blue suit jacket.



Our grocer's Lesko is yanking bottle after bottle of T. Marzetti's salad dressing from his cart. He has nine in all, and he's bragging about their sale price to the uninterested overnight checker. "Ninety-nine cents? From three twenty-nine? Unbelievable! No one even pays attention to this stuff!"

When the checker scans Lesko's two-pound bag of green onions, he corrects her on the price. "Oh no, honey, those should ring in at one forty a pound. It's the white onions that are one forty-five." His dispute over a dime holds up the checkout process by three minutes or so, as the checker abandons her post to investigate prices in the produce department. I shake my head and continue reading about the latest adventures of Bat Boy.

Twelve hat-box canisters of Quaker Oats come out of Lesko's cart next, and again he feels the need to brag about the sale price. I finally put down the WWN tabloid and ask him, half-jokingly, if the fact that the oatmeal's on sale necessitates that he buy a dozen of them. Wrong thing to say. Instead of taking offense, Lesko treats my remark as a friendly one, and I'm locked into conversation.

This man is a professional grocery shopper - he never pays more than half-price for anything. He hits every local supermarket after studying the circulars for sales ("IGA has the best prices on meat, but Shop 'n Save is tops on dairy"), and he buys in bulk accordingly. Not just canned goods, either. Lesko knows how to keep produce fresh for a month. The key is to put your perishables on the shelf above the crisper. These secrets, he tells me, were learned in his previous career as fresh foods distributor/supplier/buyer/manager/some shit.

He finishes his transaction with the checker, paying cash with exact change, and the conversation continues. I swipe a credit card and push my cart toward the front door, and the conversation continues out front. Lesko proves himself the ultimate saliva-spewing close-talker, moving on to tales of his other previous career as a professional gambler. He made a living counting cards in all the major casinos and being banned from Vegas, Atlantic City and our local Harrah's. He has four Ferraris, this crackpot guy in the ripped T-shirt, and the sixty bucks he just saved on groceries will allow him to fill all of their tanks with gas.

"Imagine losing everything in a day," Lesko tells me when I say I've gotta go, my wife and kids are waiting for me at home, and they're starving, and only my cartful of groceries can save them. He tells me he knows a thing or two about starving - he had a stroke a few years back, and he was broke at the time. He spent several weeks lying flat on his kitchen linoleum - couldn't move, think, feel or eat. Then somehow he got the strength to pull himself up to his kitchen table and pop open his Rolodex.

LESKO: I called every name on there, and no one would help me. Because I wasn't rich anymore. These people kissed my ass nonstop when I had money, but the second I lost it, they stopped being my friend.
ME: Why didn't you just call 911?
LESKO (ignoring me, plowing on): I finally called Meals on Wheels and ordered a week's worth of food.
ME: I thought you didn't have any money.
LESKO (ignoring me, plowing on): And you know what they sent me? Each meal came on a three-compartment tray, with a serving of meat, a vegetable and a starch. No meal had over 150 calories. They were literally starving me.
ME: But you didn't die.
LESKO: No, I called the local food pantry. They sent somebody out to deliver enough food for a month. I told 'em not to leave the food on the porch, because people would steal the bags. So I left the door unlocked for them, and they brought me bags of food. You know what they gave me?
ME: What'd they give you?
LESKO: A one-pound bag of marshmallows, a jar of pickles, some canned beets and three boxes of crackers. No meats or cheeses. So I ordered pizza.
ME: I thought you didn't have any money.
LESKO (ignoring me, plowing on): I ordered pizza, and when it arrived, I told the driver he could eat it himself. What I wanted was real groceries, and I told this Ay-Rab I'd give him fifty bucks to drive to the store and get the items on my list. He came back with the wrong shit, so I bitched him out and never saw him again.
ME: You were that hungry and yet that discriminate?
LESKO: I wanted the items on my list. So I called back to the pizza place, asked to have a different driver sent over, and I paid another guy fifty bucks to shop for me. That guy just took the money and never came back.

Lesko spent two years living like that, he tells me, while the monthly, rubber-banded apartment newsletters piled up on his doorknob. No one checked on his health, and he wasn't able to start any of his four Ferraris. He didn't sleep one minute of those entire two years - and when he finally did manage to sleep through a night, he awoke to the worst horror of his life, being back in that reality.

So finally he decided he wanted out. He attempted a dramatic suicide with the help of a pair of fifteen-pound dumbbells from the apartment complex weight room. Carrying the dumbbells, he waded - fully clothed and smelling like ass - into the shallow end of the pool, with the intention of marching into the deep end and the great beyond. But he couldn't do it. Life was too precious.

He climbed out of the pool, dripping and stinking, returned the dumbbells to their weight room rack, and he got a local cab company on the phone. Paid the cabbie twenty-five bucks to jump one of his Ferraris. Got the car started, was on his way to the grocery store to finally buy himself some food, and the battery died again. He was stuck in a Maryland Heights intersection in rush hour traffic, and a cop car pulled in behind him. Wouldn't help him. Luckily, there was an auto parts store nearby, and Lesko was able to persuade the owner to leave his store unattended and install a new battery in the Ferrari himself.

LESKO: I had my car back, running like it was brand new. And you know where I went first?
ME: To the IGA to buy fifteen jars of half-price mustard?
LESKO: I went to Arby's. I ordered five beef and cheddar sandwiches, and I sat there for three hours, savoring every bite.
ME: I can imagine.
LESKO: Then I went across the street to Schnucks, and I spent seventeen hours shopping.
ME: Seventeen? That's like eighty minutes per aisle!
LESKO: I pored over every item one by one, picturing in my head how it would fit in my cabinet. I filled three carts.
ME: So you mean to tell me, you hadn't eaten in two years, you were in desperate need of medical attention, and you were toting three carts around the Schnucks for an entire waking day?
LESKO: I tipped a couple of the bagboys to help me. They stood watch over the extra carts while I made three separate trips home to fill my pantry.

So it was a happy ending for this guy, and he swears every word of it is true. Now he lives a life electrically charged with vigor, subscribes to 27 periodicals and "has an insatiable desire for knowledge in every area." Yet he's afraid to get in his car and drive home because there's a security truck sitting at the edge of the lot. It's raining now, and I tell him I absolutely have to go home. He talks to me another five minutes while I toss my keys from one hand to the next and pop the SUV hatchback open. Finally, my close-talking Matthew Lesko doppelganger catches the hint, and I decide no more grocery shopping in the middle of the night.