The following morning he asked, “How’d you sleep last night?”
“I dreamed I was sledding in the snow with hordes of baby penguins. They were so cute!”
“You’re cute,” he said.
Over coffee, I pulled a penguin book off the bookshelf. I read about the fossil remains of a five-foot penguin that weighed 250 pounds, and envisioned a penguin larger than myself. The chapter entitled “The Emperor’s Domestic Life” documented a battle between two female emperor penguins who were hot for the same male. I imagined slapping some girl with my black, rubbery flipper. I’d do it, I mumbled. I’d knock her over if I had to.
“You’d do what?” Matt asked, as he sat down next to me on the couch.
“I’d slap any girl who tried to steal you, just like this penguin is doing here.” I showed him the picture.
He smiled and pointed to the bottom of the page, past the caption that noted how the male ducks out of the way while the females glare at each other over his head. There were two penguins—one tall, one short— touching bellies. The caption read: The victorious female stands chest to chest with the hard-won prize and warbles the penguin love song.
“There’s us, after you knocked her out,” he said. “They’re kissing,” I said fondly, taking another gulp of coffee from my mug. “That is so insanely cute.” It was then I realized I’d called penguins cute twice already that morning.
After the cuteness of the penguins waned, hummingbirds were still on my mind, several of them in fact. My head was like a plastic raspberry-shaped nectar container; birds were poking their beaks at me from all directions, chipping away my skull to get the sweet gooey brain matter. I contemplated their mini machinery. I recalled that the Calliphox amethystina, one of the fastest, can beat its wings about eighty times per second! Hummingbirds are also the only birds that have a “reverse gear,” which is why they can fly backwards. They’re like small power tools, I thought.
After dinner that evening, we peeled the clothes off each other. But as we were getting into bed Matt said, “Take that weird seed necklace off.”
I laid it next to the half-burned penis candle. As we were having sex, I pulled a muscle in my back.
“These injuries have to stop,” I said, as he rubbed Tiger Balm on my shoulder blade. “There’s one more cure I haven’t tried yet.”
“What’s that?” he asked.
“First, you have to hold an egg over me. Then we hide the egg under the bed for a few days. If the egg has a spot when we crack it open, that proves the Evil Eye’s been absorbed into the egg.”
The egg failed. I spent the next couple of days mentally running down the list of every female I’d interacted with in the past several years, but I couldn’t remember pissing any of them off. My back was jacked. It was the climax of my pain, summer’s low point. No female would have wished this—it was like delivering a baby nonstop, but from my spine like some alien birth. I thought of the meat counter in the grocery store and wondered if the times I looked at the fish too long might have enraged some ladies. I spent most of the season either inside the house with my boyfriend or outside on the porch where my rocking chair sat beneath the line of feeders I’d hung for hummingbirds.
Then I thought of Adele. She wouldn’t have cursed me, though—she introduced me to my favorite beers, Humboldt Brewery’s Nectar Ales series. Each ale depicts a green hummingbird on the label that sucks differently colored penstemon blooms. Red Nectar has red flowers, Gold Nectar has yellow flowers, Hemp Ale has pink flowers, and the Pale Ale has blue flowers. On each label there’s a sunset behind the bird. One afternoon when we both lived up in the Redwoods she brought me a six-pack of Red Nectar, and told me how she skinny-dipped in the Eel River before she drank it because there was a river winding through the forest in the background on the label. She said the label was magic in an instructional, maplike sort of way—that you were supposed to interact with the environment according to what was on the label. So we went down to the river, found some flowers, and drank the beer at sunset. Hummingbirds buzzed around until it grew darker so bats could take over. At twilight, it was hard to distinguish bats from birds, but we noticed their flight patterns—the bats were clumsy and the hummingbirds darted around like geniuses.
So that’s why I have hummingbird feeders on my porch. If I’m drinking a bottle of Nectar, I can watch them sip sweet juice along with me. I feel like a hummingbird when I drink that beer. It’s not that I feel smarter, but rather sharp, pleasant, and relaxed. When I sit on the porch watching birds feast, I don’t care about anything else.
A few mornings later, while Matt was taking a shower, I walked out onto the porch to inspect the plants and saw that all of the hummingbird feeders were empty. Six drained feeders were swinging from the porch beam. Usually, I noticed when they were low and refilled them with my specially sweet hummingbird nectar—three parts sugar, one part water—so the birds wouldn’t go elsewhere to get juiced up. I’d had whole families raised on my feeders.
Two aggressive birds had been feuding over my feeders since spring—a male Rufous and a female Anna’s—but this morning they were battling between two trees that framed the yard. As I stood there, their beaks grazed my head, and the sound of them whizzing by was scarier than bumblebees buzzing. Ducking to avoid being hit, I watched the birds fight, not making the J-flight patterns of a mating pair but flying directly at each other at top speed. I snatched the feeders off their nails and went inside to make the mixture.
Full feeders replaced, beer in hand, I sat in my rocker to wait for stoked chuparrosas to arrive. The bird on my beer label was the ideal happy bird. I wanted my birds to have that same passion for suckling juice. Adele came to mind and I remembered when she told me about skinny-dipping. She sat in this relaxed way, and I could see her lacy blue bra because her blouse was hanging open. Maybe she was putting the moves on me but I didn’t react because I had a boyfriend. She was cute too—I always thought so. I don’t think I can be friends with a woman if I’m not attracted to her in some way.
The female Anna’s came first, her red-green feathers reflecting in the feeder’s glass. She sipped on the red bubble, then moved to the red strawberry, drinking for minutes straight. Then I swear she looked down and gave me a dirty look. She also twitched her beak like a person would flip her hair or curl her upper lip in disgust, Billy Idol–style. I’d heard that male Rufouses were the meanest, but this Anna’s was fierce. She looked drunk, as if my feeders had finally provided her with the several shots of bird alcohol she’d wanted during withdrawals. I felt bad that I’d neglected to give the birds fresh juice for a few days; it never occurred to me that they’d develop a physical dependency on my high-octane hummingbird moonshine.
“I think I know who gave me the Mal Ojo!” I yelled inside the house.
I went into the bedroom, removed the penis candle from the nightstand, put it on a dish, and took it out to the porch, where it melted into a blue, waxy puddle. Then I placed it below the feeders in hopes of imprinting hummingbird tracks upon it. Back inside, I started slicing lemons to drop into a pitcher of sun tea. The knife slipped and cut through my fingernail. I sucked the blood off my finger, feeling happy to know where the pain came from. I thought of the bird, sucking her pain away.
START ME UP
When my mom and aunt were single, we lived in this bachelorette condo. I loved choreographing dances to the records they’d bring home—Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Juice Newton. My aunt had a Doobie Brother-ish boyfriend, Bob, who had the face of a clown without makeup: it was roseate and overly happy in an unreadable way. He brought over some lobsters to cook one night after we’d already been pigging out on chocolate fondue with bread and cheese. I was thrilled to be eating chocolate for dinner and I wasn’t initially opposed to the lobsters. Still, when I saw their rubber-banded claws, I felt a twinge of pity, and once my mom started to boil them, things got much worse.
There were four lobsters, two in each pot, and they exuded that gnarly o
cean smell as soon as they hit hot water. For several minutes they cried in shrill tones—in a special lobster emergency pitch, I suppose, used to call fellow bottom feeders. It was this EE-EE-EE sound, as if they were trying to enunciate, “Don’t cook me.” It sounded like they were either emerging from the depths of hell or entering it.
“Please, mom, stop!” I yelled.
“They’ll stop soon,” my aunt answered. “We made the water real hot.”
I didn’t care. There was no justification for this abomination of a meal, especially compared to a sweet crock-pot full of melted Hershey’s bars.
I had to block the cries from my ears like I was watching a horror movie. I pulled out the newly purchased Rolling Stones album, Tattoo You, and put on their hit song “Start Me Up.” It all makes perfect sense to me now because it was the first time the power of rock really hit me. That song was the perfect backdrop for the Satanic party going on in the kitchen. I sat on the brown shag carpet in front of the speaker, following the catchy guitar riff that I adore to this day, and stared at the olive-green velvet patterns on the wallpaper. I have no recollection of the lobsters being consumed, but my mother says they were delectable and buttery. She claims that the cries I heard were imagined. How would an eight-year-old imagine the sound of death?
Shortly after that feast, my mom started dating this man who always brought me or my calico cat a present which I didn’t want because it wasn’t from my dad. He’d bring nail polish, catnip, key chains. He French-kissed my mom after each date—I always spied on them from behind the upstairs banister. My brother stayed in his bedroom, sleeping peacefully, and I wondered how he could rest knowing our mother was out there macking on a stranger. I questioned whether or not my mom was being forced to kiss this guy against her will, lured by the expensive dinners he bought her. Still, she didn’t seem to fight when he reached his hairy hands behind her neck. I could see his face, eyes closed, swaying through the air like he was wasted on love. Their kisses were so lengthy that I had time to grab my cat and bring her back to pet her for the duration.
So how appalled was I when she and this same man got married and served lobster at their wedding dinner a few years later? I looked at that lobster on the white china plate and the Rolling Stones started playing in my head. My mom looked over at me and said, “You look pale, honey, try to eat,” but there was no possibility of that. I started to feel nauseous and excused myself to go vomit in the banquet hall bathroom. My grandma held my hair back and said, “He’s not so bad.” She knew how messed up it was to be getting a stepfather. But since he wasn’t mean, I had no real excuse to hate him.
In fact, a few years later when the Beatles vs. Rolling Stones debate had begun between my real father and I, my stepdad was the one who sided with me on the Rolling Stones’ side. The two dads were making me decide which band reigned supreme, because apparently for true fans there was no middle ground. At first, when my real dad passed down his Beatles record collection to me, I’d freaked out on The White Album super hard. I sang the songs “Julia” and “I Will” in every shower because the length of time it took to sing those two songs in a row was a perfect amount of time to get clean. But then my stepdad gave me his first pressing of Their Satanic Majesties Request, persuading me to listen to it by hinting that all the Beatles’ faces were hidden in the holographic cover. (I still haven’t found Ringo.) When my real dad opted out and said he’d always liked The Who best anyway, I knew that my stepdad had won the battle, sort of. I mean, I still love the Beatles.
But the Rolling Stones rule. I love Tattoo You’s inner sleeve, showing a goat’s hoof wearing a stiletto heel. This either means that women and animals are equal or that sexy women are demonic. Earlier Rolling Stones—from Meet the Rolling Stones to Between the Buttons with that jaunty song “Something Happened to Me Yesterday”—are great because Mick tries to sound cute but naughty. The more loaded-sounding Goat’s Head Soup with “Angie” is okay, but Mick sounds constipated. When I play this album, I attune my ears to Charlie’s epic drumming or to Ron’s subtle bass lines. Exile on Main Street and Some Girls are both perfect. Every three years I have a Mick Jagger movie marathon, which begins and ends with Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, featuring Brian Jones and Marianne Faithful, sick from just having aborted the baby that would have been Jagger’s. Maybe she was nauseous like I was nauseous when I had to get a new parent—gaining and losing relatives must be similar. I watch her on film and think about how hard it would’ve been for her to do that scene, singing in a circus ring under the spotlight after such trauma. Mick must have a sadistic side—in Cocksucker Blues, a groupie sadly wonders aloud about what sperm she currently has inside her, Keith’s or Mick’s.
Speaking of sperm, here’s the connection between Mick’s sperm and the dread of acquiring a stepdad— having a new man in the house throws the balance off. I liked it when it was just my mom, my aunt (who was always visiting), and myself. My little brother counted, but he was too small to assert his male power. I sang Beatles songs in the shower because I wanted to channel my dad, my protector, while I was naked. Not to sound inbred, but I didn’t want my stepdad coming in and dangling his penis around like a big guy. Nudity in the presence of your father is one thing, but nudity with a fullgrown, musk-scented mystery man who’s balling your mother is entirely different. It’s not cool. He’s the sperm spreader, the seed planter. And he’s sowing his seeds in the wrong garden.
Lying in bed one night when I was seventeen—just before I moved out on my own—I had a conversation with Mick Jagger. I was thinking about how much I hated having this random man around the house, and I was getting really repulsed by the whole sperm thing. I’d been studying oocytes—reproduction and cellular biology—in science. Mick’s voice came into my head, saying, in his British accent, “Sperm’s not so bad, mate.”
So I said, “Antoni van Leeuwenhoek discovered spermatozoa in 1679 during one of his research sessions wherein he placed semen under his self-made microscopes.” I was totally nerdified. “Leeuwenhoek claimed that he got his sperm samples ‘not by sinfully defiling himself, but as a natural consequence of conjugal coitus.’”1
Jagger laughed. “Yeah, right.” Then he asked, “What else did this sick bloke do?”
“He dissected animals’ genital organs,” I said. “For example, he cut the testicles off a rabbit so he could see how many sperm were inside it.”
“And what is this I hear about your not liking lobster meat, young lady?” Jagger asked. “I eat it constantly because it makes me horny.”
THE TIDE OF MY MOUNTING SYMPATHY
But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d
With Blood of thine already.
—Macbeth, Act V sc. 7
My friend Karen walks in, out of breath and wearing one shoe.
“Your fucking friend just attacked me,” she says.
She was in my basement music room so no one heard her yelling through the egg-crate covered walls. I’m hosting a Hawaiian-themed party. Ukuleles were blaring until I turned them down to hear her out. Apparently, Karen was playing guitar when John flipped the light switch off, grabbed her leg, and yanked off her sandal, which was strapped around her ankle. Her ankle’s turning purple!
“What’s wrong with him?” she asks.
“Why did he want your shoe?” I ask.
“He tried to rub my calf. Then I started yelling and he wouldn’t let me leave,” she says.
We can hear someone hurling in the bathroom.
I feel so ashamed it’s like I stole the shoe. Then Charlie, a man I barely know, tells us he’s going downstairs to “throw the creep out.” That creep used to be my friend. I didn’t invite him tonight, but he heard about it somehow and came anyway. Charlie brings John through the kitchen, where I’m watching Karen rub her ankle.
“You have to leave,” I say to him.
“What did I do?” he asks.
“You attacked Karen,” I say. “Get out. Don’t come back.”
Karen stands behind me. “Give me my shoe,” she says. John pulls it from the back of his pants. What a freak.
John walks down the street, cussing the whole way. My house is on Macbeth Street. That’s the main reason I moved in. Macbeth is my favorite Shakespeare play. I attribute violent outbreaks to the street name. I’m careful to eliminate weapon-like items from my list of belongings because one day I might go crazy and start chopping people up like in the Polanski film. I would’ve made Macbeth a gorefest too if my wife had just been stabbed to death by Mansons.
One time, John grabbed me and tried to kiss me. Another time, he stole my camera that had pictures of my girlfriends and me in bathing suits. At my old house, he used to sit on my porch waiting for me to come out. Every couple hours I’d crack the door open and ask him to leave. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I’d say. He’d sweat, telling me he had to see me. When I asked him why, he’d mumble something about my socks, or say, “Hey, I like those jeans you’re wearing,” and I’d shut the door in his face. He kept escaping from the mental hospital. He had taken too much acid and started stalking girls during his first semester of college. He’d hang around the dorms even after being expelled, following girls to class then waiting outside their classrooms. I felt sorry for him; he had restraining orders against him, and doctors said he was schizophrenic. I never called the police when he bothered me. He was tripping out on female beauty. I wasn’t flattered, but I suppose I was glad he didn’t think I was repulsive. He didn’t seem dangerous, just fetishistic. He’d show up now and then, and I’d wonder how he got my phone number or address.
I read werewolf books to comprehend how a person can be so attracted to someone that he wants to devour them. Lycorexia is a canine desire that manifests in humans as a need to stuff oneself with human flesh. But werewolves crave putrid meat. John wants live women. Sometimes I imagine what he would do to me if I let him trip out all the way. Would he eat me? He’s hairy. I think he would bite. The time he tried to kiss me, he pulled my head toward his mouth and clumsily pressed my lips hard against his teeth, as if I were a ripe peach he was biting into. His hand clutched the back of my head. To gain control, I had to peel his hand off with both of mine. Are his teeth sharp? Does he get vicious at night? Does he howl? Does he have two personalities?
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