When Chris Zito started high school, he had no thoughts for politics. He had been drumming for a number of ill-fated bands since the 7th grade, passing from band to band like a hungry man passes from table to table at a buffet. Nobody wanted him. He just couldn’t play the drums. It seemed to Zito that he had no future at all. But it was during the time wandering on his own that his thoughts matured and came to fruition: he had a plan. Zito would save America, and the whole world.

 So I approached Zito about the matter. Let me pause here to tell you that it’s much easier said than done. One does not simply approach Zito. At this point, he has become something of a legend; everyone has heard of him and his philosophies, but very few people actually have access to the man himself. To get an interview with Zito required inside knowledge, but with a few strategic favors I managed to secure a fifteen-minute window to ask him some questions.

“What is this plan that everyone has been talking about?” I asked Zito, to open up the interview. “Simple,” he said, “Algae.” He explained that algae are the plant of the future. Not only can they be used to make food and bio-diesel, but being grown in an ocean or lake, they wouldn’t take up nearly as much space as cornfields or oil pumps. With the whole ocean to work with, Zito says, we could be producing much more biodiesel than Midwestern cornfields. And the best thing about them? “Huge food source,” he says, “Can you eat oil? Didn’t think so, America.”

But Zito is no politician. He likes to keep out of the messy world of government and advance his ideas otherwise. Instead of running for Congress or state government, he says he plans on going to Suffolk to get a college education, and then going into criminal justice with Suffolk County Police. “Officer Zito? I don’t like the sound of it. But I’ll do it anyway,” he explained. Of course, given his past, I had to ask Zito if he’d ever start drumming again and how that would work out with his future. “Ha, no,” he laughed, “I believe that one day when I die, all I will see around me will be a huge fire, and I’ll just be on a drum set burning to death; my penance for making people hear my bad drumming.”

 And naturally, I couldn’t interview Zito without inquiring about what many consider the greatest mystery surrounding him: his lunches. Generations of high schoolers at Westhampton Beach have been asking themselves, in vain, why on earth he eats Pigs-In-A-Blanket for lunch (out of a thermos that looks like it got hit by a bus at some point in its life), instead of eating his mother’s Italian food. “You see,” Zito clarified, “Italian food gets old after 17 years and to be honest, I just like the things that most people refer to as ‘unhealthy.’ After all, I’m not gaining weight anytime soon.”

Then the interview was over; my fifteen minutes had passed. Walking away from Zito, a thought passed through my head:

There are only two types of people: those who love Zito, and those who love Zito but don’t know it yet.

 The next day, while I was talking to John Tocco, and I brought up the subject of my interview. He had only heard vague stories of Zito’s life and philosophies, but after I told him of what I had learned from Zito, he had only one thing to say: “Chris Zito has the keenest intellect Westhampton has seen in decades. He really is a marvel of humanity; he is the peak of evolution, the perfect man.”

“No,” I said to him, “Chris Zito is not just a man. Chris Zito is the future.”