Talking animals, p.13
Talking Animals, page 13
Mitchell and Alfonzo had grown up in the bad old days, during New York’s last bout of mange. The number of times teenage Alfonzo had had scraggly dudes try to psych him out, rob him, or just bite him for fun was beyond counting. And that was everyone’s experience. His mom, his dad—all his family, really—had been mugged or had had their house broken into at one time or another. His dad’s car windows had been smashed multiple times. Mitchell had been jumped by a gang of dogs in school. He’d had to have stitches. “It’s just normal,” everyone agreed. But still, the ambient violence of the old city made everyone obsessed with not getting “played out.”
But then, as they’d matured, those grungy, sometimes thrilling neighborhoods were slowly transformed by the arrival of bank branches, chain pharmacies, lamb boutiques, and Buffalo Wild Wings.
“What can you do?” everyone sighed. “If you don’t like change, you don’t like New York.”
Was the only choice between real and stressful threat or getting slowly expelled because of price? It felt like a false choice, but it was a false choice playing out in concrete and chains, block by block.
Gowanus fluctuated between life and poison, attractor and repellant. Some city moguls had hired packs of builders to erase lifetimes’ worth of associations between the canal and industrial putrefaction. In some office in Manhattan, no doubt, a team of dogs and monkeys was trying out alternative names for this tract of waterfront land, something like Park Slope River or GoCa. Their job was tricky because Gowanus and Canal contained both anus and anal. It was a little on the nose for that body of water. But hey, Alfonzo mused, for many animals a good butt sniff could be a selling point.
When Alfonzo moved to Gowanus his neighbors had been a garage, a casket-making company, and a coyote social club. The dusty local park was populated by punk pigeons and gulls. There had been a squat on Third and Third. Neighbors resigned themselves to their monster canal who foamed with sewage when it rained. They accepted it was probably killing them. Still, the area had been cozy in a blighted way: the coyote social club members slunk in and out quietly, the raccoon grandmothers kept well-maintained outdoor religious displays in front of their buildings, and the seagulls hanging out wisecracked democratically.
But he should have known something was up when the squatted building was designated historic. It had been an MTA powerhouse during the Herbert era, but that was ages ago. As far as Alfonzo had ever known, it was the straight-edge squat known as the Bat Cave. The frontage was marked by a big piece of graffiti, a painting of a spiderweb with the threads spelling out the word: RADIANT. One day, police came and evicted the squatters. Then workers came and fenced it off. The building was put on the market and sold for an astronomical sum. It was slated to become an arts center redesigned by famous architects. “They” were going to preserve the graffiti.
Before home, Alfonzo stopped at the fancy grocery store that had opened as part of the local transformation. He often shopped there, and felt ashamed and annoyed every time he did. But he was craving Bermuda grass and clover and cilantro and parsley. He also wanted those special Mauri Alpaca chews they didn’t have anywhere else. He ogled the dewy produce and inhaled the store’s consistent odor of lavender and lemongrass. A cashmere goat browsed while her free-range kids bounced around like popping corn. A chow chow blocked the aisle with her little wheeled basket full of wild-caught sardines and natural peanut butter.
Leaving the store, Alfonzo noticed something off in the canal. There was an industrial sucking noise and the multicolored dome that was some kind of public art was disappearing beneath the surface of blue-black-gray, rust-colored foam. A few months back, the store had unveiled this floating sculpture. It was meant to spruce up the arsenic-infused water. The artist had made a geodesic globe out of recycled umbrellas. You got a good view of the piece while sitting on the store’s benches. Alfonzo and Mitchell had mocked it many times while eating salads from the buffet. What an absurd ornament to decorate the ass water.
But something had caught hold since his last visit. The Gowanus would not let art disturb its chemical death. The spindly orb was almost fully submerged, and as Alfonzo stood on the dark walkway, the last bit of the globe sucked beneath the water’s surface. He looked around for another witness. In the dark sat one of the gutter punk rats from the old squat. They nodded to each other. No matter what the grocery store or the developers wanted, the canal had been there first. It had a stronger will. Industrial toxins would not surrender that easily. The repressed was still there, tugging at the loose edges, testing for the hidden weaknesses.
17.
Rain pattering outside the apartment woke Alfonzo. It was Saturday. He hadn’t set an alarm. He couldn’t fall back asleep, so he lay in his straw, humming along with the weather and contemplating the state of things.
Since Vinograd, he’d been weepy and easily irritated. He could trick himself into feeling good for little bursts, but most of his waking hours were a blur of despair.
He spent most of his leisure hours lying on his apartment floor. Waves of anxiety rolled in and broke on the shores of his skull in a froth, only to reconstitute again far out in a fresh gray heave. After each crash, he struggled for breath. The next rush always came in too fast. His apartment reflected his interior.
Alfonzo’s apartment was a long, narrow rectangle on the first floor of a four-story walk-up. Its thin taupe walls were filled with off-the-books mouse apartments. The landlord was dipping into two markets at once without maintaining the building for either the large or the small tenants. Sometimes Alfonzo toyed with filing a complaint with Mitchell’s office, but he was no snitch.
The studio apartment acted as amplifier both for outside street noise and for the mouse music and chatter inside. Exhaust from the auto body shop next door mixed with grease from the upstairs dogs’ cooking. Alfonzo avoided cooking any of his own foods because the smell clung to his belongings. He made coffee and ate cold grass at home. The only reason he had stayed so long was that the rent had never risen. The cheapness held him captive. This was his stall, his solitary cell, his space pod. When Alfonzo lay flat on the floor, which he often did, his woolly brown body filled the room like a nut in its shell.
He used to keep things tidy. He had tried to keep hay fresh and dishes washed. He’d once acquired a lemon candle to banish the musty air. But as soon as he stopped fighting, slum nature took over. His apartment’s set point was squalid and dank; if he shirked his duties, even for a moment, the apartment returned to its natural state.
Dust bunnies leapt with the draft that entered through the crack under the front door. Green mold covered the bathroom. The drain was clogged with wool, so every time he ran the taps, murky old water bubbled up from a mysterious below. He had to shower with shoes on.
Roaches came and went like the hooligans they were. His mouse neighbors tapped on the walls. They threw regular parties, and he didn’t have the strength to protest.
Alfonzo might have lain on the floor all day, but the phone rang. Alfonzo picked up. What else was he going to do?
“It’s your father,” said his father. “Will you come out for breakfast? It’s been a while.”
Alfonzo had been avoiding Luis because he would have to tell him of the dissertation debacle. But how long could he last without seeing his only living parent?
He trotted through the rain, regretting his clothing. The train was just leaving when he arrived at the subway, and the next train took its sweet time. He stood with dripping wool while animals with umbrellas and coats gathered alongside him on the platform.
Once safely on the train, he pulled an art journal from his bag. He skimmed the table of contents sleepily until one title caught his eye, an excerpt from a book called Sign/Wave.
“NOTHING IS AS BEAUTIFUL AS INVOLUNTARY RESEMBLANCE”
Oxana Tennisracket
The fish’s unlimited limits make visible the cosmos’s abstract machinery. The fish is a positive example of the ontology of affirmation, the very model for becoming, bringing it from the bottom to the apex of the philosophical universe.
All schools are simultaneously collectives and individual beings. One fish makes itself a line in the water. All these lines fit together in an abstract, ever-changing puzzle. A single fish line is made by following other lines, and it is by fitting with others that fish’s worlds intersect transparently. Fishes belong to schools as we do to herds or packs.
Fish become imperceptible in water like cats in grass. The abstract marks on a fish’s skin resemble nothing but organized disorganization, and yet they are perfectly in sync with their universe of veined rocks, rippled sand, and plant fronds.
Each particle of matter contains a multitude, a garden, a sea full of life. Therefore, there is nowhere uncultivated, not on land nor in the sea. There is nothing dead; there is nowhere wild. No being is unworthy or lesser.
They inhabit another world that swirls alongside ours but is separated by a thin sheath, which is everything. We die when we plunge into their world. They die when they are pulled into ours. We look in this mirror and are terrified, so we choose to twist our fear into hatred.
The earth and seas warm because of an accumulation of gases that raise the temperature of the lower atmosphere. Heat is the transfer of internal kinetic energy; the total energy within a system remains constant. So, what we call heating is actually movement. Particles moving more and more rapidly. The accumulation of gases corresponds to our extraction of earth matter: oil, phosphorous, and precious metals. Our work extracts materials that heat up our world. This is not the work whales and fish do.
If everything on Earth were in harmony, we would not need self-consciousness. We could inhabit the land, and they the water. It is only because the system is untenable that our received wisdom must be torn apart. I would argue that our culture has condemned the sea because sea creatures resist the logic of accumulation. If we were happy and healthy in our living conditions, in our essence, we would not turn on those in the sea. Life would be as transparent as seawater.
However, we workers are not content. We feel our essence only because it is being destroyed. We are like fish who have realized we live in water only because that substance has been filled with poisons.
The uneasiness of a single creature in the world is a problem not only for that creature but also for the world itself, insofar as it has become unbearable. We with paws and claws scoff at the notion of a fish-led revolution. Yet we do not know if we can lead one either. We must trace a line we do not know the shape of; we must become this unknown line within our bodies.
* * *
“Mr. Faca, how have things been with you?”
Alfonzo slid into his dad’s booth at the Libertad Diner. Dolly, the round sheep waitress who looked the same as all the other waitresses who’d ever worked here, was chatting with Luis.
“I’d complain,” he sighed, “but who’d listen?”
Dolly bleated indulgently. Her wool was clean white, like a cotton swab. She nodded, and a department-store rose smell wafted over the table. Luis ordered half a grapefruit for Alfonzo without consultation.
“I want something else, Dad.”
“What? You want scurvy?”
“That’s a pirate’s disease.” Alfonzo asked Dolly for a bowl of alfalfa meal and a coffee.
“I apologize for my son—he doesn’t care about vitamin C.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Faca,” said Dolly.
Luis never hesitated to sacrifice his son’s autonomy in an effort to get some attention. Or maybe this was just another example of his dad’s compulsion to be in control. Alfonzo inhaled slowly. Be nice, he’s old.
“So, have you heard what’s happening with the Hole?” Luis asked while skimming the paper.
“No, Dad, where would I hear?”
“No need to be difficult. I thought you might talk to your cousins even when you’re avoiding me.”
“What’s happening with the Hole, Dad?”
The Hole was one of Luis’s obsessions.
In strict geographic terms, the Hole was a little triangle of streets stuck between Lindenwood, Howard Beach, and Ozone Park. The ground there was sunk below the surrounding areas because the city had never installed proper sewage and drainage—hence the name. It was a bowl that filled with water whenever it rained. Forgotten animals, outcasts, elderly immigrants, and those on the run lived there. Its most infamous residents were the Federation of Wild Urban Cows and some off-the-grid horses. Asphalt sagged and concrete buckled there—more, that is, than in other neighborhoods. Birds with broken wings hobbled along the streets. A few film-school nerds had made a documentary about the wild atmosphere of the neighborhood. It was one of those areas where received real estate wisdom did not apply. Luis wanted it to fit a narrative. Chaos maddened him.
There had been repeated pushes to modernize the Hole. They faltered, came to nothing. Projects went there to die. A few seasons back, someone had started building a condo in the area. Luis said, “Finally,” to his friends. But then, amid whispers of shell companies, tax write-offs, and maybe mafia involvement, the builders stopped showing up, and all that was left was a half-built steel husk at the end of Ruby Street. One day Luis made Alfonzo walk over there. His father glowered at the geometry of the steel beams wrapped in decaying blue tarps that flapped like torn sails in the wind. Metaphysically, the Hole was more proof for Luis’s belief that goodness and order were contingent and fragile. Luis would only ever tell stories that supported such a view. Bad luck prowled the Hole.
“Mrs. Gustavito,” Luis explained, speaking of his very old hippo neighbor with a skin disorder who’d terrified Alfonzo as a child, “was strolling in the Hole last week, minding her own business. Then, bam, she was hit by a flying board from that junk heap.”
Hippo struck with airborne junk. Alfonzo kept his face straight for his father’s sake. “Oh my gosh.”
“And then—she didn’t want to go to the hospital because she doesn’t have insurance. Our other neighbor, that possum nurse, gave her stitches off the books.”
“Will she survive?” Alfonzo was sure she would, but he didn’t want to deny his father the pleasure of his histrionics.
“This is what happens when you leave politics to non-ruminants,” Luis grumbled. He could always find a way to steer any conversation toward digestion. “I know you’re tired of me bringing this up, but it bears repeating,” he said, chewing with emphasis.
“It’s not horses I’m against, mind you, just speed. Always want to do everything quick. They give out building permits willy-nilly and then, bam, Mrs. Gustavito is brought down by insulation.”
“I don’t think the mayor gives out building permits.”
“It’s just … I think the city could do a whole lot worse than having a cow, a llama, or maybe even an alpaca as mayor.”
“Maybe one day Mitchell will run. I’ll be his campaign manager.”
His father snorted. “Mitch wouldn’t be half bad. You, though, may not be cut out for that level of intensity.”
Alfonzo sipped his coffee. The waitress Dolly brought him his bowl of alfalfa meal. It was warm and pleasantly mushy. He made sure to chew slowly. There is no right time, Alfonzo thought.
“I’ve got some bad news to share. My dissertation was rejected.”
Luis put down his paper. His fur looked thin and gray. The bell on the diner door clinked as some ox firefighters came in. It was difficult, but verbalizing his disappointment to his father was also a relief.
“Dr. Vinograd thought it was too long. He was right. Maybe there is such thing as too much thinking.”
His father looked aghast. Alfonzo interrupted himself with a new rush of self-recrimination. He unspooled all the things he imagined Luis wanted to say. The academy was never meant for him. He should have listened. He should have gone to dental school.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to devote myself to work now. I’m going to try to piece together a respectable life. I’m sorry I’m such a disappointment. I’m sorry I failed.”
“They’re crazy,” his father growled. “They wouldn’t know smarts if it spit in their eye.”
“They don’t seem to recognize their lack of recognition, Dad.”
“I know your mother loved that you were a scholar. She was so proud, no matter what.” Luis coughed and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m no good at this.”
Alfonzo stared at his father’s half-eaten grapefruit until it vibrated.
* * *
Mitchell and Alfonzo had tickets for the Akida Kombu show that night. The llama promised it would be good for Alfonzo’s depression to shoot the breeze, listen to a genius, maybe smoke some ciggies afterward.
“Cigarettes obviously aren’t good for you, but spiritually isn’t it better to smoke with friends than to eat carrots by yourself?”
“Who says I want to live long anyway?”
“Attaboy.”
They debated bars. Wolf Whistle used to be good until it was discovered by actual wolves; all those claws and teeth made Alfonzo nervous. He suggested Sun Bear, but according to Mitchell it had closed, supposedly because the landlord jacked the rent. The place was now dark, with a torn FOR LEASE sign on the door. A shame. The Dark Ship was workable for a couple of beers. The White Rabbit might be good for after.
“Lots of snuggling in the dark corners,” Alfonzo objected.
The Rusty Knot was around the corner from Vivi and Alfonzo’s old apartment.
“Too many memories.”
“You’re picky. We simply need somewhere near the venue.”
They settled on the Hawk and Eagle Tavern, which looked much the same as all the other places but was quieter. Its only downside was his suspicion they were getting charged inflated mammal prices, but that had to be stomached.
