| | | Kelly confronts her panic disorder, Alice Sebold, and more. | | | | | | | | | |  | | | | May 2, 2017 | Letter No. 84 | | | | | | | | | | | | Dear Lennys,
This week's issue focuses on facing uncomfortable emotional truths. For me, that means coming to terms with some barely suppressed rage! In particular, I have been really pissed about the ongoing political discussion that seems to imply that the only Americans with "economic issues" worthy of sustained focus and discussion and messaging are coal miners/steel workers/insert dying, almost exclusively male, physically onerous profession here. The decades-long sidelining of reproductive health as a frivolous, divisive "social issue" literally makes me want to punch someone in the face.
Never mind the fact that there are almost 3 million female cashiers, for example, compared to around 80,000 coal miners (and even that industry's peak, in NINETEEN TWENTY FUCKING THREE, there were still only around 800,000 coal miners). Or that approximately three-quarters of abortion patients are low-income, and that the vast majority of women who have abortions do so because a child would interfere with their "education, work, or ability to care for dependents" and because they can't afford a child right now. But yeah, I guess reproductive rights are just a silly lady thing pulling people away from discussing important man things!
OK, I feel better now that I got that out of my system. And the brave, wonderful women we are featuring today also benefitted from painful and powerful reckonings. We have Kelly Oxford, who writes both hilariously and movingly about admitting she had panic disorder in her early 20s. Then we have Alice Sebold, the author of the best-selling memoir Lucky, which chronicled her college rape and its aftermath. Alice writes about the fury that rises up within her when people try to "obfuscate the truth of rape" by refusing to say the word or otherwise papering over the reality of sexual assault.
We also have Melissa Broder's existential horoscopes for May. Taureans, she's issuing you a challenge: Do one nice thing for a total stranger every day, and don't tell anyone about it. And we have a first for Lenny: an interview with an animated character. Deputy editor Laia Garcia interviews Noodle, the guitarist for Gorillaz, and hilarity ensues. Finally, we have Jessica Wragg's essay on becoming a butcher, and how her disgust for the process turned into a deep and abiding respect.
Don't forget: St. Louis, Lexington, Chicago, St. Paul, Des Moines, and Milwaukee: Lenny IRL is coming for you! You can buy tickets right now to see Lena Dunham, along with Saturday Night Live's Sasheer Zamata, a lil' concert from Waxahatchee, super-secret surprise celebrity guests, and so much more in a variety show (Lena has already promised a series of very elaborate costume changes and a Cher wig, so strap in for that).
That's it for now. I hope that you can embrace that deep well of … whatever you're feeling, and channel it someplace wonderful.
Xo
Jess Grose, Lenny editor in chief | | | | | | | | | | | | You Don't Owe Anybody Anything | | | | By Kelly Oxford | | |
In 1998, I noticed I had sore armpits. They felt more achy than bruised, which seemed strange, because what is true now was true then: I don't move a lot. And the soreness was not related to odd lumps or my glands.
Confused, I went to visit my family doctor.
Because my mother was a hypochondriac, Dr. Cotton saw me a lot. I say a lot, but I could say "the most," or "every time I left the house it was either school or the doctor," and it wouldn't be hyperbole. In the second grade I listed "banana-flavored antibiotics" as my favorite drink.
"Lie down," Dr. Cotton said gently. The familiar sound of the crinkly white paper instantly relaxed me. "What have you been up to?" she asked. "Still working at your dad's office?"
"Yeah."
"OK, where is the problem."
I lifted my arm and pointed into the pit. "It's really sore, right here. It's been like this for a week, maybe a few weeks. I can't take it anymore. I don't feel a lump, but I'm fully prepared to biopsy."
"You worry a lot, right, Kelly?" she inquired, as she pushed on the sore spot. I winced.
"Ow — yes. But nothing out of the ordinary."
She gently lowered my arm back to the table and gave my leg a pat. "You can get up."
"So, did I just pull a muscle or something?" I asked, hopefully.
"Kelly," she started as she dried off her hands, "have you heard of panic disorder?"
The blood drained from my face, my arms got sweaty, my ears began ringing. I felt like I'd been insulted.
"Whoa, no, no …" I threw my hands in the air.
"They're very common. Let's do some bloodwork to be sure there isn't anything else going on, but I'm pretty sure you've had panic disorder since you were twelve."
"And you're just telling me now?" I exclaimed, keeping my emotion sounding like a three when I was really feeling a nine.
"Well, I wasn't going to suggest you were eventually going to get panic disorder if you weren't."
"OK. So will the armpit thing go away?"
"This is completely manageable."
Yeah, she didn't answer me. This means it is an incurable situation. I'd always hoped for some disease in my life to add some morose glamour. I took a lab sheet and a referral for a therapist from her hands and fled the office.
At my boyfriend's gig that night, I was standing against the bar, holding my arm in the air and massaging my left armpit, when a frat jock stranger asked what I was doing. "Oh, this?" I pointed to my armpit. He nodded. "Not much, my armpits are sore. I'm also trying to figure out what I'm stressed about, because apparently it could be really fucking with me." His eyebrows flew up as he made that falling-sound whistle and walked away.
"Hey! Kelly!" One of the bartenders, Joan, leaned toward me, shaking her head.
"You didn't have to talk to that guy," she said. "You don't owe anyone an explanation."
I thought about that for, like, half a second. "What?"
"When someone asks you a question, it doesn't mean you have to answer. You don't owe anyone anything."
What? "You mean that jock guy?"
Joan sighed and eyeballed the band. "Are you still dating Reed?" I nodded. Her grimace marked her disapproval. "He's really young." He was 26, she was 26, I was 20. She laughed. "Look at him. He's a boy." I looked at Reed onstage; he seemed cute, but she said boy in such an evocative way. "Kelly, you need to date a man. Someone educated and wise. Stop dating these loser boys who aren't doing anything with their lives."
Joan's wisdom was coming at a time when I needed guidance the most, and maybe she was right. I decided to dump Reed, right after the show. There was no way I'd be so stressed if I had a real man in my life. Suddenly, my armpits felt lighter.
Joan touched my shoulder. "Hey, Ben's here. Can you tell him I'm in the back cashing out?" Ben was Joan's closest male friend. He looked like Ross from Friends, and just like Ross, he had a Ph.D. and was a part-time professor. Unlike Ross, he worked at not one but three of the fanciest restaurants in the city. Ben said hello, and I grabbed his face and stuck my tongue down his throat. That's how you let a man know he's dealing with a real woman.
The first few weeks of dating Ben were just what my armpits and worries about my impending future needed. My armpits loved that he had a newly leased car that never had to be jump-started; they loved that he lived in a rented house and not an apartment; but most of all my armpits loved that Ben did his own laundry in his own washing machine and his clothing never smelled like damp mildew.
I totally forgot about Dr. Cotton and the panic disorder. Joan was right — I mean, look, she totally hated me for listening so closely to her advice and taking her best friend away from her — but she was right. Ben was the man I needed.
After we had been dating for a month, Ben brought me to meet his mother. As we pulled up the driveway of her beautiful house, he gave me a "heads-up" type of prologue: "OK, so my dad left my mom about a month ago because he's gay and my mom — you'll like her, she's very sweet — but because of that, she's now crazy. She gets panic attacks. It's pathetic."
"Panic attacks are totally pathetic." I force-laughed, my right hand shooting into my left armpit on pure reflex. Ben's mom and I hit it off over iced teas in her backyard. We petted her corgis and discussed squirrels, Cosmo, General Hospital, and life while Ben stayed quiet in the hammock. The next afternoon, I called Ben. He sounded strange. "Can you meet me at the Sugarbowl?"
I walked into the coffeehouse and spotted Ben's fro immediately. But beneath his studious shearling and plaid scarf, he looked grim.
"Kelly." He leaned into the table. I took his hand, but he didn't close his fingers around mine. I took it again, like, a do-over, but his fingers were dead. I stared at his open hand, guessing what was coming.
"I don't think this is going to work." My armpits rang.
"Well." He sat back, pulling his hand slowly out of mine. Oh God. He took his hand away.
"Yesterday, while you were talking about your life to my mom, I couldn't help thinking. You just graduated high school, and you really haven't done … anything. What do you want to do? I mean, do you have any goals? I can tell you really like corgis, but you just work at your dad's office and stay up on your computer at night." The soreness turned into pain. Should I tell him I wanted to be a screenwriter and on those late nights I was trying to perfect the art of dialogue?
Ben forged on. "You're a really great girl. I mean, you're really, really great. And I can't believe I'm dumping you. But I have to. I need to date someone who has a real life. A woman, you know? I mean, I have a Ph.D."
By the time I pulled away from the parking meter, my vision was blurry. My body felt strange, electrified yet numb. I felt like everyone on the street was looking at me strangely. I didn't feel like I was in my body anymore at all when a giant Safeway truck began to pull into my lane and I hit the curb, slamming on the brakes, coming to a stop with one wheel up on the sidewalk. Cars were honking. My heart was pounding. I began to cry.
I felt officially crazy.
When I got home, I opened the side door and called out a hello, but no one was there. I reached the top of the stairs, and from the very pit of my soul, I felt I was worthless and everyone knew it and I would never ever climb out. I felt like I was jailed inside my own sick body and my body was definitely going to kill me. I looked into my bedroom. It was a mess, clothing everywhere. I was a disaster. Pathetic. I felt like I'd lost my mind completely, and that's when I realized: This was a panic attack.
I felt vomit rising and just barely made it to the toilet in time. Now I had lost my mind and I was throwing up. Every time I tried to go into my bedroom to lie down, I would throw up. I wasn't sure how much time went by until I looked at the clock; I suddenly realized that no one would be home until eight o'clock that night. There was no way this could go on for three more hours. I would rather be dead.
For a week, my mom brought me onion-based foods and told me I would be fine, even when I finally admitted to her that Dr. Cotton had told me I had anxiety disorder. This was the woman who had once brought me to the doctor when she found a gray hair in my eyebrow. Days and nights blurred into each other, because I couldn't sleep unless I was passing out from exhaustion. I specifically told my mom that she should commit me.
For a week, my mother told me I'd be fine and fed me, then she'd ask me for advice on outfits and tell me gossip about her friends as I lay in her bed, in my own personal hell.
On day eight, I realized no one had called for me. My life meant nothing.
On day nine, I stopped talking.
On day ten, my mom took me to see Dr. Cotton. She waited in the car.
"Kelly, what's going on?" Dr. Cotton liked to start conversations before she even entered the room. Her voice was so calm and so loud at the same time.
"Panic attack," I said as she closed the door.
"When?"
"The last ten days. Now."
Her mouth dropped. I nodded, feeling numb to the embarrassment. Dr. Cotton opened the door, walked down the hall, then quickly returned holding a small white pill. "Your mom was a nurse on a psych ward. There's no way she sees you as ill. You're her capable daughter and she's seen the worst. Take this Ativan. Under your tongue."
I would have taken anything. I put the pill under my tongue and felt the bitter graininess dissolve.
"Now breathe with me." I took several deep breaths along with Dr. Cotton. The vise grip that had been on my body, that slowly grew from my armpits to my stomach, body, and brain, had been released.
That night, I entered my room without vomiting and firmly shut the door on my mom. After all of that time without control, I suddenly felt like I had a do-over. A new lease on life. I decided on some long-term goals.
1. Don't date until you respect yourself and know your worth.
2. Find a new job.
3. Get a haircut.
4. Work on being chill.
5. Spend more time with my mom.
6. Move out.
7. You don't owe anybody anything.
Kelly Oxford is from Edmonton, Canada, and currently lives in Los Angeles, California, with her three children. She is the author of the New York Times best-seller Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar. You can find her avoiding her book and screenwriting on Twitter and Instagram (@kellyoxford).
From the book WHEN YOU FIND OUT THE WORLD IS AGAINST YOU: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments, by Kelly Oxford. Copyright © 2017 by Kelly Oxford. Reprinted by permission of Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. | | | | | | | | | | | | Gorillaz' Noodle Never Stays Still | | | | By Laia Garcia | | |
It's been more than fifteen years since Gorillaz released their iconic self-titled debut album and we were introduced to the coolest animated band post–Mystik Spiral: singer and keyboardist 2-D, bassist Murdoc, drummer Russel, and guitarist Noodle, who started out in the band when she was just ten years old. Now, after a six-year hiatus —and myriad adventures, which include members of the band being haunted by the Grim Reaper, discovering islands, and accidentally releasing ancient demons from hell —they're back with the release of the excellent Humanz, a record tailor-made for ~the times we live in now~. It's a perfect mix of party jams and political anthems.
We emailed with Noodle a few weeks before the release of the new record and talked about fashion, social media, and growing up in public.
Laia Garcia: You've been in the band since you were very young. How has your relationship with the guys changed over the years? Were there ever times you wished you lived a more normal life?
Noodle: What is normal? There's nothing normal about Gorillaz, and that's what makes us real. Life with the boys has been chaotic, but out of chaos comes art. And really dirty carpets. But I've weathered the storm. I started out as the baby of the band, and now I play the role of big sister, counselor, nurse, and occasionally probation officer.
LG: I heard you recently read Moby-Dick while you were traveling. Did it inspire or influence any parts of your new record?
N: Not directly. But we are all a bit like Moby (the whale, not the musician), in that only a small part of ourselves is revealed above the surface. Because underneath, we are all in transition. We are becoming something new. A 2.0 version of ourselves. That's kind of what the new record is about.
LG: These days, it's common to hear people talk about social media in a negative way, but it seems like it's become an essential part of Gorillaz's creative projects. How do you approach it? How did the idea of the app, which allows fans to take a tour of your studio, come about?
N: Gorillaz have always been at one with the virtual, and the app fits into that. Social media might get a bad press, but's it's not immoral, just amoral. It needs to be steered and nurtured, or it might go bad, like Walter White. That said, people really need to stop taking photos of everything they eat. Seriously.
LG: You recently put together a mixtape featuring all-women performers. Where did that idea come from?
N: You mean the kick-ass women playlist? Putting it together involved crate-digging, Googling, stargazing, and hanging out with collaborators. I wanted to bring a diverse mix of ladies together, united in the way they have steered music and culture on a different trajectory, if only by a degree. Of course it's subjective, and if you strongly disagree, send me an email at notinterested@gorillaz.com.
LG: Do you have any rituals while you're on tour?
N: We each have our mascots on tour. I've got my lucky Tamagotchi. 2-D is usually growing some mould or raising a worm. Russel psyches himself up with his Kim Sings Sinatra CD he got in North Korea, while Murdoc worships the severed phallus of Rasputin. You asked.
LG: What are some things you like to do when you aren't working with the band?
N: Kicking the shit out of a punch bag, imagining it's Murdoc. Only joking. (Sort of). Just stuff to unwind, really. Hot yoga, reading, studying quantum physics. I also do a lot of online gaming. Got fragged last night by someone called DeathKillerPsychoLord, who turns out to be a seven-year-old from Korea. Embarrassing. However, vengeance will be mine.
LG: You were recently on the cover of the French fashion magazine Número. Do you enjoy being in that world? Do you have any favorite designers?
N: The fashion world? It's more of an illusion than a world. Then again, Russel thinks all of reality is simulated, so who knows. Favorite designer? There's no way I can name just one, but right now I'm into Jivomir Domoustchiev, KTZ, Irene SJ Yu. Also Freak City LA. They actually designed some creepers for me that I wear literally all the time. Which has made showering difficult.
LG: Did you ever think you'd want to pursue a career other than musician?
N: As an infant in Japan, I was trained in multiple hand-to-hand fighting disciplines by a shadowy super soldier agency. So I suppose I would be qualified to work for United Airlines.
LG: Gorillaz has been around for almost twenty years. Do you ever revisit the old songs? Can you find joy in them?
N: Of course! Just this morning Russel and I did a spin class to "Feel Good Inc. (Stanton Warriors Remix)". Always a banger, now a thigh-burner too.
LG: Do you have a life motto?
N: No way. That's not my motto, by the way. I'm saying no. Life is way too messy to have a single phrase to get you through. You have to constantly adapt. Never stay still. Which, um, sounds suspiciously like a motto. Dammit.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Laia Garcia is Lenny's deputy editor. | | | | | | | | | | | | Learning to Say the Word | | | | By Alice Sebold | | |
When Alice Sebold was eighteen, she was raped by a stranger at the end of her freshman year of college. She vowed to write about her experience, and it became the best-selling memoir Lucky. Eighteen years after its initial publication, Lucky is being reissued by Scribner. Below is an excerpt from Sebold's new afterward. Alice is a member of the National Leadership Council for RAINN.org (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the nation's largest anti-sexual-violence organization. If you want to support the work they do, please visit www.rainn.org.
This is how I was introduced at the first public reading I gave for Lucky in 1999:
Alice Sebold is here today to read to us from her memoir concerning the horrible thing she experienced from which she has now thankfully recovered.
Though it would be easy to make fun of the ladies luncheon at which I was a guest speaker that day, I can't help but defend them. Compared to countless other venues, they took me on despite the apparently sordid, unmentionable topic I'd had the temerity to write about. Still, as I made my way to the podium, I began to feel an old familiar fury grow inside me.
I now find anything that tries to obfuscate the truth of rape and its aftermath infuriating because it represents a further deceit of the world at large and the victim herself. It's like slapping a smiley face on a corpse. In our desire to protect people from the truth, we do them a disservice by attempting to hide it. This only creates a new level of distraction from what is most important, which is coming to terms with the cards you were dealt.
Eighteen years after I'd been raped, and despite the stamp of an esteemed publisher on my story, the woman introducing me didn't feel able to use a simple four-letter word. In avoiding it, she perpetuated the idea that rape was still taboo. Her omission made me do something that goes against my basic character, as I've never been a fan of audience participation. But what inspired me that day was a sort of rage against shame. I would not permit what I saw as censorship, even if enacted by a blameless woman who more than anything probably wanted to be polite. I took a moment at the mic to make eye contact with members of the audience, making sure to include those in the front and back and to my left and right. When I did speak, I was so calm in my delivery that it would seem as if I did this every day.
"Rape, that's the horrible thing that happened to me. We at least have to learn to say the word. Let's all do it together, OK?" I felt as if I had turned the clock back and was reliving the day nearly two decades earlier, where I had insisted on saying the word aloud in my parents' living room in front of my favorite church lady, Myra Narbonne. (I want to pause here to note that Myra, a spitfire to the end, lived well into her 90s, and when Lucky came out, there was no bigger fan.)
Encouraging an audience to say "rape" was never going to be easy, but after a few rounds of me going it alone and adding encouragement, more and more people went from mortified silence to whispering the word to finally joining me in saying it aloud over and over. Doing this together, in such an unexpected way, resulted in a quality of exchange with my audience that I went on to feel was my responsibility to bring to any public event I did. I didn't always succeed, but I was smart enough to know that just as inside any courtroom, the success of my presentation may have been based not only on the power of my words but also on my appearance and behavior.
Sometimes readers would say they were surprised at how funny I was during the Q&A, which of course meant that I didn't seem to be who they expected a rape victim might be. Many men felt compelled to apologize for what had happened to me. I thanked them for their kindness but would also smile and say, "You didn't rape me, so we're cool." At this point in history, the male gender cannot bear all the blame. Just ask men who were raped by their mothers.
But I also see now that I had a tendency to joke in the face of readers' sincerity, because for years I'd remained uncomfortable with the feeling of being "other than."
In the end, we tell each other our deepest secrets because we want these stories to be acknowledged; we also dream that when acknowledged by a few, we might then be understood. If the full narrative of one's life is embraced by others, this opens up the possibility of intimacy or community; if instead it is met with awkward silence or a change of subject on the part of the listener, then the doors of the heart begin to shut down. The message has been received: No one wants to hear your story; no one actually cares. Locked alone in a room with a secret deemed so unspeakable it can't be shared, the imprisoned person will go to any lengths to escape. One need search no further for the origins of addiction and other self-harming behaviors. Anything is preferable to being sentenced to suffer such pain all by yourself. It makes sense then that I've never felt more engaged than when I spoke to readers, or even nonreaders, about their lives.
Because of Lucky, I have met many more rape victims than I ever thought possible. The youngest one was eight. She was an incest victim and haunted by night terrors. She had not read Lucky, but her mother had, and she brought her daughter to a reading so the little girl could shake my hand.
The oldest was a woman in Australia, who, when she reached the table at which I was signing books, told me the story of being gang-raped in the 1940s. When this elderly woman, through tears, told me that she had never told anyone this, I felt nearly as lost at sea as I had when I shook the hand of the eight-year-old. Often, after a reading, a few men and women will thank me for coming, and though they may say nothing more than this, a flash of eye contact will let me know that a version of what happened to me happened to them. Some will actually use those words as I sign a book or shake a hand. For a moment, any sense of what I'd felt was my essential otherness evaporates. Given the opportunity an afterword affords, I want to thank them.
Alice Sebold is the author of three No. 1 best-selling books, including Lucky, and the novels The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon. Her work has been translated into more than 50 languages and has appeared in the New York Times and the Guardian, among other publications. | | | | | | | | | | | | May Horoscopes | | | | By Melissa Broder | | | |
TAURUS
(April 20 to May 20)
Happy birthday, Taurus! I love Taureans: the magnificent kissing capabilities, the insane amount of time it takes you to leave the house (if at all). This month, I have a little advice, and my advice is this: please do one really nice thing for a total stranger every day. Don't tell anyone about it, just do it for the person and for you. I periodically do these monthly challenges myself, and it's good for the self-esteem to do an estimable act every day. So while I can't kiss you through the internet, this is my birthday gift to you — but it's a good one.
GEMINI
(May 21 to June 20)
There are some people with whom we always end up in the same place emotionally no matter how much we swear it will be different this time. If you have to stay in touch with a person like this for work purposes, set boundaries where the contact is strictly as professional as it can be. But if you're making the choice to willingly be with this person, you should know that nothing changes if nothing changes.
CANCER
(June 21 to July 22)
The gift of desperation is one of my favorites and the place from which the most magical things in my life have happened. If you feel like you're bottoming out on something, maybe stop digging. Then look to something else you've never tried before.
LEO
(July 23 to August 22)
We are told that even celebrities and the very rich aren't necessarily happy. We're told that the acquisition of belongings and achievement can feel empty on the other side. Yet it's hard to believe this, because the actions of acquiring and achieving serve at least to distract us from having to be with ourselves. We want them to work, even if they don't. But this month, if ever the idea that happiness is an inside job arises, allow yourself to believe it … and follow it.
VIRGO
(August 23 to September 22)
What if all is already well? I know that's a scary thought, because to do and fix and constantly improve means there is a definitive purpose to being alive — even if that purpose is fleeting. But there might be more to being alive than purpose, and it's called being. As a Virgo, I don't particularly like "just being" any more than you do. But we can get more accustomed to the state by repeating to ourselves "All is already well."
LIBRA
(September 23 to October 22)
All I have to say to you this month is the grass really is always greener. That's the human condition, and it's just the way things are, for whatever reason. We are going to want what others have because it looks so much more polished on the outside than the way we feel on the inside. But if you can remember that what you are thinking is a condition of reality, and not reality itself, then maybe you might torture yourself a little less.
SCORPIO
(October 23 to November 21)
What's the oldest tape you play in your head? You will know it's a tape if it's something you hear constantly about what you are doing wrong, the ways in which you will not succeed, and how you are unfit for one thing or another. Other cute tapes include the way things should or shouldn't be done in the world and "right" ways to live. I'm not telling you to eject the tape. But listen closely so you at least know what it is.
SAGITTARIUS
(November 22 to December 21)
If astrology is bullshit, which it just might be, then what is the point of this column? I don't know! You're the one who is reading it, I just write the shit. Remember that we are all looking for answers, even the people who profess that they already have the answers. Remember that no one knows anymore than you do, and you'll have access to the freedom you crave.
CAPRICORN
(December 22 to January 19)
Sometimes we just don't feel like ourselves, and that's OK. Also, sometimes when we don't feel like ourselves, we actually are being the most ourselves we could possibly be — it's just that this version of selves seems incongruent with the image we have projected to others or the way we have trained ourselves to perceive our existence. This month, no how matter how divergent your selves seem, trust that your new feelings are not wrong.
AQUARIUS
(January 20 to February 18)
Sometimes it's a gift to not understand how things work. We can be too smart to allow our lives to get better when we are constantly looking for the man behind the curtain. Maybe the man is none of your business. Maybe your only business is the show.
PISCES
(February 19 to March 20)
Nobody knows why we are on Earth or what happens after we die or whether there is a God. This month, be particularly suspect of anyone who tries to convince you that they know for sure what's up with existence and that their way is the only way.
ARIES
(March 21 to April 19)
Sometimes, when it finally dawns on us that no one person or possession or goal accomplished is going to rescue us from being ourselves, it's sad. We don't usually learn that the first go-round and can actually spend our lives striving for more, only to never be sated. I'm not saying you have to get off the endless carousel. But if you're on it, at least know you're on it.
Melissa Broder is the author of four collections of poems, including Last Sext (Tin House 2016), as well as So Sad Today, a book of essays from Grand Central. | | | | | | | | | | | | Disgust and Respect | | | | By Jessica Wragg | | |
Somebody, one of the men, heaved it onto the block, and it made a thud that shook the wood. Smaller than I expected it to be, still with the stiffness of death, a rose-hue meat peeped softly through white fat covering the entire carcass. They watched me for a little while, five men, all over 40, waiting for a reaction. When they didn't get one, they went back to their work. I had imagined, after spending days heaving soft parts and thick bones around the cold room, that a whole carcass would make a difference. It was just over a meter long. My brain did nothing to dissociate this with a living thing. I thought of Easter and of daffodils and tiny wool-covered lambs bleating softly and then of the rigid body in front of me.
One of the butchers took a hand saw and removed the breast bones, pushed his knife into the soft cartilage of the vertebrae, and separated it in front of me. He handed his wet, greasy knife to me, and brought out another.
I looked inside of its body; thin white ribs encased an empty space where organs would have been. He told me to count four ribs and make a cut, told me that sawing bone was like sawing wood, but I was sixteen and I'd never sawed anything. Start slowly, he said. I staggered through the cartilage and made a mess, snapping the breast beneath my heavy hand. Inside, the meat was a deep pink, silver seams and clumps of creamy fat. He showed me how to take the bone from a leg, pushed the blade through a knuckle joint and separated it with a crack, peeled away thick layers of meat from the femur. He was quick, and heavy-handed, tossed the parts around and rolled them across the wood to the man on the next block.
They operated like machines: knife in, twisting, pulling, scraping. They pushed their hand saws through the carcass with a violence that I didn't know, but my mind did nothing to register the noise of actual bones breaking. The soft spinal cord of the lamb was sticky, and I found it stuck to the back pocket of my black jeans later.
When the body had been taken apart, he told me to cut off the smaller parts that customers wouldn't want to see, like the knuckle, for example, where the lamb's hooves would have rested on the animal when it was alive. We used our sharp knives to scrape meat clean from the rib bones for ease and aesthetics, tied string around the legs to make them more manageable. They tucked snugly in the refrigerated counter, back inside the warm lights of the shop front, and within the hour all had been purchased.
When I got home, I showered immediately, stood in the hot water and let it burn my skin a little. I stared at the ceiling, used heavily scented bath oils to scrub my body of the smell of raw lamb fat. I bit my nails in front of the television and tasted the metallic scraps.
Ten years later, and my relationship with butchery has changed very little. It is complex and tumultuous. The men I work with are skilled; quick to work and confident in their ability, and yet every time I'm confronted with a carcass, I approach it with the same mix of disgust and respect that I did that first day. I do my best to instill the knowledge to our customers that these parts came from an animal, and we should treat meat frugally and with consideration. I celebrate the animal through my careful cutting and trimming.
It was all an accident, in truth; a stumble into this career when I was sixteen and too polite to say no to a potential manager who assured me that it would be like any other job, but slowly I began to appreciate the work and the effort. I learned about the chain of supply, how what an animal eats will influence its meat, how the way it was killed is the deciding factor on tenderness; the gruesome truth that we're trading in dead bodies that so many of us wish to overlook is knowledge I hold dear. It's power, after all.
There are still appreciative "oohs" and "aahs" from the public when a woman, barely 25, carries a side of pork weighing almost 35 kilograms across her shoulder. Even more so when she takes a knife to it with precision and breaks down this half carcass into manageable pieces that don't resemble arms or legs or bellies. For customers, too, there is a real difference between the smaller parts on sale and a whole animal. I still get looks of horror and disgust when I refer to the piece of meat as a part of our own bodies: "The rib eye? It's right about here at the top of your back."
I often think back to then, in the cold room with my breath in front of my face, staring down into the empty cavern of the body, trying to make sense of its head and tail. I think of the moment often when faced with puzzled customers who see the same thing that my friends would see, making fake vomiting noises at these parts of an animal. I, too, have felt that familiar disgust, but it's overthrown by the respect for this living thing that died for us to eat its flesh.
Jessica Wragg is a fiction writer and artist based in London, and has worked in the meat industry for nine years. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The email newsletter where there's no such thing as too much information.
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