There is a word for people like me, people with rough hair
and sharp white teeth and moons in our eyes, silvery crescent moons, and
the growl in the talk and the stalk in the walk and I’ll ask you not to use it,
please. It hurts me and will probably hurt you, if you have the time to hurt.
(Mustn’t think this way.)
I
am mostly just very, very hungry.
We’re
both hungry, of course. I can smell it on you. There is an ache in your belly
that is so like my very own wanting but also critically different. Yours is
sweet, it spreads warmly down between your hipbones. It makes you squirm in
your chair. Your gaze speaks of nice things, nice damp deep dreams. You have been so deliciously provoked by this sad moon-marionette, you say?
Actually you don’t say, you haven’t said. You don’t need to.
You
have a hunch. You’re so close to the truth but really you may be the dumbest
intelligent person I know. You keep putting food in front of me. Everyone knows
you shouldn’t feed the dog people food! A little joke there, ha ha.
Really,
you shouldn’t have. You checked out a book by Laurie Colwin and read her
wonderful essay about the “marvelously killing dinner”, the one about
mashed potatoes made with pounds of butter and gallons of hot whole milk, and
black and white sausages, the white ones with veal and cream, the black ones
with blood and grain, and the big bowl of braised and roasted garlic (garlic,
that’s also kind of hilarious given some cousins of mine), and this arrangement
is sitting between us in a heap like the goddamn Matterhorn and you are looking
at me so anxiously and you hope I don’t notice that your pupils are dilated,
and your hands are twitching like they want something to caress or strangle.
I
know how it is, believe me.
The
blood sausages are almost right. I might pick one up on my fork and worry at it
a little. If I ate “food”, I would like this. That ferrous tang is quite
delightful. The rest of the menu is just a corruption of animals. Veal in a
sausage, are you kidding? Slap that calf on the ass and give it a running
start, and then we might be able to talk.
You don't know when to quit. I like that about you. There was one time you were going to try
me on lamb chops, your own little joke because you call me “lamb” – I couldn’t
make this stuff up if I tried, folks – and you went to cook them and wondered
where they’d gone. You were sure you’d brought them home, wrapped up in their
sticky pink paper from the fancy market, but their fresh young reek spread
through the apartment in the dead of night and I couldn’t sleep, I was running
away from the moonlight like I do and I ran straight to the different, colder,
functional light summoned by the opening of the refrigerator door, and there
they were. I couldn’t help myself, not like it mattered in the long run. Then I went outside and saw the moon, the bright silvery moon, and
I ran with my paddy-paws in my true self. I was back before the sun came up.
Didn’t blow my cover once. The hunting was adequate, I guess.
The
next night I created a diversion, to distract from the missing lamb and the
bones in the garbage; we went out for drinks, and you got really lit
because you hadn’t eaten, and we danced until we were dizzy, and I neglected to
mention that I had eaten and eaten well and there was some whiskey, hmmm, okay
a lot of whiskey, and I threw up behind a Dumpster (the police will have a
field day with that, if they find it), and then we crawled back to the lair and
tumbled into bed. You passed out right away. I lay watching the moon-shadows
creeping across the wall, and listened to your heartbeat.
My
restraint is something quite extraordinary.
I’m
sorry about the lamby-lambkin chops. They barely made a dent.
So
now you’re watching as I toy with your mashed potatoes, which are full of wasted
fuel for tender young animals, and the sausages that are made of dead things.
Your blood is high, heated, vibrant; your whole self says welcome and it’s so good and look what I made for you, love me. I know I can get out of this mess if I go to you
and pick you up maybe, and take you someplace comfortable and horizontal, because you actually want my body on you, you crazy person, you want my mouth all
over your thighs and lips and belly and you think you want my sharp-sharp ear
against your throat so I can hear the blood pumping straight to your heart. You
think you want me to feel your pulse reverberating against my teeth.
I
have been so good.
You
don’t know me at all.
But
who knows anybody really?
I
think instead I will push myself away from the table and stand up, and continue
to weave this sticky web of I’m not hungry and
no thank you, I already ate and I’m
sorry, I don’t feel well, but it looks delicious that we’ve been clambering around in for an age, and I will walk away
from your sad, hurt eyes, knowing that the next amazing recipe, some divine
concoction out of your brain and your desire, your hot quick blood and my own
curiosity, will reel me back. I will be sorry for you, and maybe a little bit
sorry for myself. I wish…
No, enough
of wishing. The moon is a mere harmless sliver, and I can smell the prey in the woods, and I hope they will see me like you see me,
just for a moment. They will come to me like lambs. It will be so easy…. and I
am so very hungry…
(My friend F once told me that it’s no wonder I am fond of
werewolves, because I’m a girl and girls are always into that shit. I protested
feebly, but then there came a short but interesting conversation with JT in
which we discussed the Freudian aspect of the feminine affinity for
lycanthropy, the phases of the moon, the blood, the transformation, the
repressed violence.
So
maybe I like werewolves because I’m a girl. I think mostly I like them because
they are ravenous.)
