Sexy Things, Animal Progress
Short Story by Christie Craig
Drawing by Brentoni Gainer-Salim
I go early to the Chinese markets to see about my materials. I make sure to be early, out of respect, and sit for a time to watch the women, snort-faced and their glasses flashing monstrous in the pale morning, work roughly with the fresh meat. They thread long plastic strings through birds, rabbits, and pigs with a kind of expertise and unconcern. They shout out to one another in voices that are pinched, accusing, a kind of meanness gathering, crested about the mouth, the tip of the nose, the grayed crooks of the eyes.
Although, I don’t think that they do argue. Rather, they are studying the meat; feeling for cancers, lumps, or imperfections. And if the meat of some particular animal is judged to be of superior quality, they are tender with it, carry it against their hard, sunk chests as if it were some uncovered child. They talk about one pig, how its anus is pursed, thinking-like, or worried. Now, they speak in a Chinese I don’t understand, mother-talk, but ironic, consoling the dead pig anus, laughing swarthily, witch-like.
It’s always freezing, so cold that I can see the steam of bad smells coming up from the manholes. And the rats flick out from gaps because they hear the unearthly, jerk-hook noises from the trucks that come to unload. I’ve got to wait here, sagging against the low wall that faces the place until I am called in. And I feel all the night wind seep through the substance of the wall, where it has collected as dew collects, into the fattest, warmest parts of my legs.
My special interest is in the feet, for which I pay a price so small that it’s not worth mentioning. Certain meat keepers cut the hooves, claws, and paws for me and organize them in thick bags. I much prefer to collect in winter, because then there is no mess; as I say, it’s very cold and so… no wet blood. I am always so grateful: I understand that this is not so much a business transaction as it is a special kindness to me, because the feet are also a part of a carcass’s attractiveness, its presentation.
I take the feet home, and I cure them with a kind of chemical glue, all besides the rabbit paws, which have got to be scraped out inside and filled with another kind of glue. And then I make and sell novelty gifts: pens, back scratchers, and key chains. Maybe this sounds like an undesirable occupation. Or maybe you’ll make some conclusion about me owing to it. But, you’d be wrong, and you’d be wrong precisely because this is the very last thing on earth I should like to do. It disgusts me, and my core rejects it.
Although, in this, I am cured. I do the worst thing, and then I’m not nervous or afraid anymore, and I think, above all, this kind of work has been very helpful to me as concerns my emotional development. Before, I had trouble with the natural: sexy things, animal progress. When I was a child, I dreamed often that I was being chased through underground corridors by a black rabbinical beard. It was bat-like and came chattering its teeth in silent, pendulous swoops. I don’t dream anymore, and I have a boyfriend, Kevin. He sells computers, and we have sex regularly. Again, I don’t think I could if not for the feet, which have helped me overcome so many difficulties.
And what do I mean by animal progress? I mean that I hated to watch those television shows where the deer with curly horns are all loping madly across some brown river, but the river is full of crocodiles, and they come up suddenly, beastly and tear the deer apart. I used to cry when I saw fishermen cut the heads off of fish, and the heads would go on moving, not fitful or in agony now, but reflexive, opening and shutting in dumb sobs until they are gathered carelessly, like rubbish, and flung overboard, back into the sea. I think I know what you’ll tell me next. That I should try to think about it scientifically? And in this way, I’ll understand the need of it? In any case, I never liked science or scientific things: the seeming logic of clean edges and separations, but with the dark spaces that tip over when, for instance, a child thinks there’s one more step on a stair than there is and feels for a moment some opening against his foot; all the animals and the darkness.
I gag less now when I work on the feet than I did at first. But, I still can’t go so long without getting sick. I think I’m improving though. It’s a fact. I have a hard time keeping food down, and Kevin thinks I’ve been exercising. He likes me to be this way and so far gone am I, beyond the thickets of undesired, that I feel it on the level: children, loosed balloons, the ripe, poultry stink from the pot. And now I think I’m coming to some kind of moment. I wonder, now, what should happen to me when the day comes that my mind no longer suits my needs? When forgetting my needfulness comes so easy that I don’t have to think so hard to forget. And what should I think then? One more thing: they cut the faces off of the rabbits, but they leave the ears, still fuzzy. Tell me, why should it trouble me so that they leave the ears?
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