Bike-fall lesion: food tastes the way vomit smells

pivotal · UNDATED — early childhood

• When: UNDATED — "as a small child back in Short Beach CT"; narrated retrospectively at the 11 Nov YDAU supper
• What: As a small child in Short Beach CT, Axford fell off his bike onto his head and sustained a tiny lesion-type brain injury, after which all food everywhere tastes horrible to him — his clearest explanation is that it tastes the way vomit smells. He holds his nose while he eats, is discouraged from speaking at meals, and eats with a neutral, joyless expression, the one boy at the best table for whom eating is work rather than refueling frenzy. Avril Incandenza likes it when Axford comes to Headmaster's-House late suppers, and likes to exhort him to eat. In the novel's economy of appetite and pleasure, Axford is the boy with the pleasure switched off at the tongue.