Talking animals, p.7
Talking Animals, page 7
Little things accumulated. They fought about security and direction. She demanded answers Alfonzo didn’t have. Alfonzo felt he had to find a stable job and stick with it. She was disappointed and he was exasperated.
He had to stay in the city; that’s what adults did. After his mother died, he collapsed inward. He’d stay out till all hours with Mitchell. With Vivi, he couldn’t string a conversation together. She accused him of cowardice. She reminded him they were still young and could still go out into the world. He said he wasn’t rich like her, so he didn’t have the privilege of swanning around like a spoiled brat. The breakup was a slow drift. Vivi went to visit her parents, and Alfonzo said maybe it was best if she didn’t come back.
Even though it was his doing, Alfonzo still wasn’t over it. Death and separation, the two illuminated each other. Mothers and lovers in the eyes of young males. Oppositions and symmetries. He had been an idiot.
Mitchell cleared his throat; he didn’t want to listen to Alfonzo hum on and on about Vivi like he always did. She was a sweet vicuña, but it was a lost cause.
“Buddy, I want you to join me in the present. It’s all right to let go.”
Alfonzo apologized for being stupid. They skirted a heap of garbage by stepping into the road, only to hear shouts from a pair of weasels hanging off a carting truck. A cloud of music puffed from a poodle-themed bar.
“The least you could do is try to be friendly. Maybe you’ll meet someone sweet.” Mitchell believed in making friends.
“I don’t want sweet; I want revolutionaries.”
“Sure thing, Carlos the Jackal.”
They entered the dark hall at the base of The Pastoral and went through to an elevator that stood like a portal to some underworld, though in this case Hades was located above. The over-under world within the tip of a tooth. That’s how it was in cities. Little doors led to vast complexes. Bubbles swelled up inside larger bubbles.
Alfonzo shifted, antsy, while Mitchell conferred with a bouncer, a grim-lipped Doberman wearing a chain around his powerful neck. Mitchell assured the dog that Dawn Delamarche had put their names on a guest list, but the dog insisted on double-checking. Mitchell would have gotten in regardless, as he had a dash of fashion, but Alfonzo would definitely have been barred without Mitchell. He was too schlubby young-middle-age bureaucrat with post-punk leanings. He gave off that metaphysical dirtbag stink. Under the appraisal of the guard, he realized he also gave off an actual damp-straw smell. He should really get some fresh hay for his apartment.
The dog finally gave them a reluctant go-ahead. They squeezed into the elevator alongside a couple of Persian cats, a greyhound in a three-piece, and a delicate pony with an up-do. They all inhaled and stayed silent.
The elevator shot upward. The doors opened into a massive circular room, with windows all around and glimmering aquariums bisecting the space into smaller zones. Everything—the aromatic candles, the shelves of liquor, the groomed fashion animals—communicated discreet excess. Despite—or perhaps because of—the line of animals waiting on the street to get in, the bar was not crowded.
Mitchell disappeared in search of Dawn. Alfonzo wandered toward an aquarium. It was taller than he was and stretched half the length of the room. Multicolored gravel covered the bottom. A dark blue fish hovered in a yellow light. The fish was round like a miniature planet; orbiting him in the water were smaller moonfish and the dust of a thousand food flakes. He is depressed, Alfonzo decided, then chided himself for projecting. Could one read a fish’s face? What did he know about fish feelings? But then, did one need to read an expression to imagine that being trapped in a glass box for one’s entire life would be a horror? It didn’t take a mystical empath to imagine the fish was miserable. It was obvious.
Through the narrow tank he studied the blurry forms of other bar-goers busy in pantomimes of leisure. A circle of dogs sniffed one another’s ears and asses. On a carved fake branch two eagles groomed themselves, pausing after every few strokes of beak through feather to stare at each other. Beside a potted palm stood a motionless horse. The plant seemed to be its own kind of captive creature, one whose body was a single leg topped by a head of green frond hair. Just another transplant. Alfonzo caught himself in a mirror as the dark blue fish in the aquarium jerked down through the water and into a fake rock crevice.
In the last few years, animal society had exploded with furious debates about the ethics of aquariums, and of the question of sea-life sentience in general. What are sea creatures? Are they animals like us, or are they different? What do we owe them, if anything? This unsettled conflict between land and sea had a history that stretched back to ancient times, but it had been newly stirred up by Hurricane Sparky. The arguments were furious and had far-reaching implications. There were many factions. Alfonzo tried to follow the subject by reading The Atlantic and Barker’s, but sometimes he found it too depressing.
Some animals became entrenched in the position that aquariums were harmless, even kind institutions. These animals contended—in letters to the editor and in quasi-academic treatises—that they were motivated by the pure and altruistic desire to keep fish and other “lower beings” safe. They on the land should act as caretakers for those aquatic animals who were capable only of drifting through existence. This position had powerful backers, including the city’s own Mayor Shergar. He was known to be a great aquarium lover. So much so that he had installed luxury aquariums in his many residences and in his office in City Hall. When he was first campaigning, Shergar chose to stand beside a tank with a few small sharks for his first magazine photo spread.
Then there were others who made no claims to altruism. Scientists who devoted themselves to testing whether sea creatures could even feel pain. Philosophers who argued that even aquatic mammals weren’t deserving of respect, being turncoats who’d abandoned the true struggle on land. The sea was a maternal embrace, and so they were eternal infants: only those on land had grown up.
Foremost among these thinkers was the gibbon Martin Kürbis, who wrote in his famous Soil and Paw, Water and Fin that we must judge animals by what lasting things they create. Sea creatures didn’t have farming, mining, or industry of any kind. The seas didn’t have writing, tools, or cities. “We cannot blame fish for this lack,” he wrote, “because they are by nature simple.” Any ire he had was reserved for aquatic mammals: traitors to progress possessed of the brainpower to contribute to bettering life on Earth but content to waste their potential flippering around in the water. Seals, dolphins, and whales, he claimed, were traitors to the mammal cause. Their ancestors had walked on land, developed lungs and higher brain functions, and then crawled back into the womb-y wetness when the going got tough. They’d chosen to spend their time mingling with the boneless and the spiny, the water-breathing and utterly alien creatures of the deep, and with that they’d consigned themselves to the role of the dominated. It was therefore morally acceptable for land creatures to keep them, and indeed all lower creatures, in tanks. After all, the sea was just a meaningless churn of life and death, so what difference did it make?
There were those who resisted anti-sea arguments, but the opposition was fractured. There were the reptiles, already marginalized on land, who pointed out that they had many biological similarities to sea creatures and yet participated in land society. There were a few sea mammals who came up to speak about the unseen riches of the depths. There was a movement of small vegetarian creatures, rabbits and mice and the like, who argued that size should never be an ethical determination of consciousness, but they often found themselves shouted down by coevals who were only too happy to let the carnivores eat from the sea so long as it minimized such violence on land. Others went further and argued that making distinctions between any creatures was the beginning of a slippery slope that would always lead to cruelty, intentional or otherwise.
According to the government, the sea could not be recognized as a state actor because its denizens never responded to the various invitations to debates, treaty proposals, and conferences the land creatures had extended to them. They wouldn’t engage meaningfully in a political process.
Alfonzo and Mitchell had both heard the sea-life conspiracy theories. According to some, like Lenny Old Spots, the sea was a breeding ground for death cults, for violent and poisonous and gelatinous anti-land-animal conspiracies. Believers argued that aquariums allowed sea creatures windows onto the land. The puppet masters in the sea were using these tiny sea creatures as their eyes and ears. According to lore, they were watching and waiting for their moment to strike against the landed species.
Regardless of one’s opinion, the aquarium arguments were politically heated, so for this place to be filled with fish tanks was a bold fuck-you. They could just as well have had a banner reading FISH CAN GO TO HELL.
Alfonzo steered clear of aquarium arguments, but anyway, they didn’t usually come up. Aquariums were for others. Animals who ate fish had to sort out their ethics, whereas he could remain neutral without much effort. It was an argument for the rich and the fish-eating to have.
Alfonzo tried to avoid looking because it made him feel guilty, but the glimmering water drew his attention again. The tank was mesmerizing. Besides the fish it was home to translucent, slippery sea plants, artificial yellow coral, and a few gray creatures with antennae he supposed to be shrimp. There were also a few unidentifiable hot-pink and blue undulating somethings, pulsating star-shaped globs. Whether they were flora or fauna, Alfonzo couldn’t tell. They looked poisonous and vulnerable, gelatinous and melancholic. Tendrils of semitransparent plants hailed him from behind rock formations.
Alfonzo chewed a bit of Sichuan grass he’d saved from dinner. His anxiety had dissipated. Standing within this fang overlooking the city, Alfonzo sent his thoughts uptown to his dissertation sitting in his adviser’s office. He had completed a great labor and now he was at a fancy party. It was sometimes nice to look down at things from within the head of the beast. He felt proud of his feat of willpower.
Mitchell sidled up.
“I’m glad you dragged me here. At least it’s an experience.”
“Fantastic.” Mitchell beamed. He was always ready to be happy. “And let me finagle drinks. I’ll find a way to get us economically faded.”
* * *
Over the next few hours Alfonzo consumed many of Dawn’s special birthday Moscow mules. He allowed himself to be buffeted by the gusts of other guests. A raccoon from the Office of the Actuary regaled him with details of interoffice political games on the second floor of City Hall. He concluded his monologue by asking Alfonzo if he liked peach schnapps, then ordering two cocktail shots called water moccasins. Alfonzo didn’t know if he liked peach schnapps, but he accepted and drank what he was given. Alfonzo wondered if this animal, whose name he hadn’t retained, had real friends, and if so did he treat them in this domineering fashion. The raccoon let out a hoot after they drank, then announced his departure by grumbling something about pizza. As his new friend trundled off, Alfonzo realized he’d misplaced Mitchell. He commenced a wander-around.
Dawn the birthday deer leaned against the bar whispering with a cat. Alfonzo had seen the orange tabby around City Hall and knew he worked in some communications capacity. He had that luster that lent itself to smarming around with journalists. Dawn beckoned Alfonzo. She was all giddy.
“I am honored that the elusive alpaca has deigned to appear.”
“It’s not my fault they don’t let me out of the basement.”
“You having a good time?”
“Delightful. Though I think I’m on my way out.”
“Stay!” Dawn commanded.
“I’m wobbly on my pins,” Alfonzo demurred.
“Hair of the dog,” Dawn’s cat friend chimed.
“I think that only applies the day after. Not in the midst.”
“Miles and I were just talking philosophy. You’re interested in that, aren’t you?”
The cat insisted on buying a round. Dawn used the opportunity to introduce Alfonzo to Miles Tigger from the Office of Media Relations, and Alfonzo realized he should have snaked away without goodbyes. Now he was on the hook for at least one more mule or moccasin. One couldn’t refuse, or at least Alfonzo couldn’t.
“Miles and I were just discussing the Good Boy method. I’m but an aspirant. He’s been at it a long time.”
“Guilty as charged.”
From what Alfonzo could glean through the deer and cat’s animated joint recap was that the Good Boy method was a self-improvement organization centered on the teachings of a single dog. He had been a champion Westminster athlete who’d nearly destroyed his life bingeing on peanut butter and chocolate. In a moment of clarity, he’d quit everything and decided to get to the bottom of what it meant to be “a good boy.” He’d gone on a quest across the country to “smell the shit,” as Miles put it, of various religions and practices. He talked with snakes who sold oil, bald eagles purporting to possess perfect vision, and wolves who advocated going back to the woods. After the dog’s journey he returned to the city and founded the FOGBOW Center—for the Foundation for Good Boy–Oriented Work—housing it in a building off Union Square decorated with tapestries, potted plants, and an indoor fountain.
What this seeking dog taught at his center was that animal nature was cruel, selfish, and wild. That modern society kept everyone in a constant cycle of panic and indulgence. Murder and decadence lurked beneath every exchange. Only through intense self-discipline could an animal gain mature awareness and overcome this cycle. Only by making oneself one’s own Good Boy could one rise above the suffering herds.
“So what does ‘one’ do at FOGBOW?” Alfonzo inquired.
With wide eyes and in enthusiastic tones Dawn and Miles described a regimen of primal barking, coordination and focus exercises, and long-distance group runs. To strengthen one’s inner Good Boy, Alfonzo learned, one should set goals, remember names, and sniff others deeply. One should develop emotional will (EW) by asking many questions. One shouldn’t waste time with frivolities. And if one followed the advice and became strong of body and mind, then one was a Good Boy destined for wealth, both spiritual and financial. Many of the powerful animals of New York were known to visit the FOGBOW Center. Movie stars, business creatures, and politicians scampered in and out of the place.
Dawn promised adopting the philosophy would change Alfonzo’s life. Good Boys invariably sniffed out success. The method had shown her how to be her own parent. “When your inner puppy whimpers, you will be empowered to say, ‘Yes. You are a Good Boy!’”
Though Alfonzo scoffed, this mention of parents troubled him. His mother would have said he was a good boy regardless, and it would have puffed him up. But he could admit this, he thought.
“Does all the canine talk bother you?” Alfonzo warbled.
“It’s not meant literally,” Dawn said. “Dog doesn’t mean ‘dog.’ Dog means ‘all.’”
The cat chimed in: “The principles are grounded in dog reality, yes, but other animals can still use the framework. We’re the same underneath, aren’t we?”
“We all want love,” Dawn yelped.
“And happiness,” Miles added. “We gather together as Good Boys to foster positivity and encourage self-mastery.”
“Yes!” Dawn enthused.
“But it’s not a free gathering.” Alfonzo felt himself getting hot with annoyance. “Isn’t it expensive to practice being a Good Boy with you all?”
Miles licked a paw and swiped it behind his ear. “I would turn that around and ask, how much is goodness worth to you?”
“So not all, then?” Alfonzo poked.
“The money is just symbolic,” Dawn insisted. “All who want to be good can be, if they make it a priority. Really, the world is divided into the good and the soon-to-be good. Once you start investing in yourself, it starts paying dividends quickly enough.”
Alfonzo gazed around the mostly empty bar. In the shadows he spied Mitchell beside an aquarium. The tall black llama was studying a floating red gelatinous creature. Behind the bar, neon pink and green squiggled. Soft air blew from a hidden vent. Alfonzo imagined himself walking away from this mounting conflict, taking the elevator to the ground floor and hailing a cab to ferry him home. He wanted to be cradled. He wanted to be transported by the magic of a professional driver to the safety of his straw bed.
From beyond the aquarium, through the glass and over the river, New Jersey flickered. These faraway and nearer blobs of light shimmered as indicators of residence, infrastructure, and commerce. They came together and were pressed flat by the wall-sized pane. He and Mitchell caught each other’s eye. Mitchell winked.
Alfonzo didn’t want a fight, or at least that’s what he told himself, but because of school, or grief that always turned into vexation, an argument was an easy garment to slip into. What did it mean to be good in this rotten society?
“What about fish?” Alfonzo asked.
The cat, smirking, settled down on his paws so that they disappeared beneath his warm orange chest. “Anyone can join if they open themselves to the process. The Good Boys have nothing against the water beings, provided they come in with an open heart. You’ve got to ask, is it really us who have shut them out? Or have they closed themselves off from us?”
Despite his projection of confidence, Miles’s hair was bristled up. He was clearly restraining some violent impulse with regard to the alpaca. “See, Al, under the method, you would come to see that your sarcasm is just your inner bad dog barking. It’s maladaptive.”
“Fish could already be Good Boys, Alfonzo! You don’t know!” Dawn pressed her chin against her long brown-and-white neck. Tears had sprung into her big Bambi eyes.
“Look how you treat your friends.” Miles meowed.
