Party Trick

1

Alexander stood before the open refrigerator, eye-level with the chicken breasts, sausage and bacon, hoping that 
the rush of cold might calm his raging headache.

He was, of course, wasting electricity, something that his father would’ve been quick to point out, if his father were 
still alive.

The night before, at a party, Alexander swallowed a goldfish, drinking right from the bowl, intending to induce 
vomiting shortly thereafter so as to return the animal, unharmed, back to its rightful place in the water. 

While he'd hoped to impress, the partygoers seemed embarrassed, recognizing this as nothing more than a manifestation of a perennial need for attention.

 
Once Alexander got the thing down, his peers turned away, resuming conversations and picking at the charcuterie board, leaving him to spiral out, succumbing to dread and doom as he stood over the bowl, shoving two fingers down his throat, heaving and heaving but producing little more that drool, stomach acid and bile.

He remembered the sensation of the fish swirling around in his stomach, its flippers flailing, subsumed, slowly being digested into to an orange goop.

Given that his stomach continued to ache, Alexander wondered if the skeleton, too, had dissolved or if it would remain in his gut indefinitely, bones scraping his insides?

Either way, feeling increasingly nauseas, Alexander decided that perhaps, some breakfast might settle his stomach.

And so, he turned on the gas range and listened to the bacon and sausage sizzle, thinking, for some reason, of the Bible story in Matthew where Jesus cast a demon into a herd of 2,000 pigs, causing the animals to run down an embankment and drown.
 

2

That Monday, the sales firm where Alexander had worked since his graduation from IU in 2010, held its annual Team Building and Success Seminar in a newly constructed event space at the Indianapolis Zoo.

They heard from the CEO, the CFO and a few of the floor managers, their speeches punctuated by the trumpeting of elephants, the roar of the tigers and the chattering of chimpanzees. 

After a brief intermission, Alexander decided to duck out, to go explore the zoo rather than sit through the Awards and Recognition Ceremony, knowing full well that his name wouldn’t be called.

 

3

Alexander took off his name-tag and tie, rolled up his sleeves and went in search of the African Elephants, Amur Tigers and the new Primate Pavilion. 

Though lunch was to be provided at the end of the work event, Alexander found the idea of having to mingle and converse with his coworkers to be so distasteful that he decided, instead, to forage for his own meal.

As he wondered around, sweat on his upper lip in the midday sunshine, the tigers were listless and disengaged, laid out on faux rocks, panting in the heat while the elephants seemed depressed and resigned to captivity, swiping their tails at gnats, trunks limp and hanging.

And so, Alexander headed to the cafeteria, where, standing in line, he thought about a National Geographic article that he'd read a few weeks ago that detailed the 44,000 year old cave painting, discovered in Indonesia that depicted a hunting scene, where several human figures, brandishing weapons, chased after pigs and water buffalo. 

This was one of the earliest examples of representative art, the article had said.
 

4

Alexander exited the cafeteria and began exploring the aviary. He felt like a Viking or an aristocrat as he gnawed on a gigantic, smoked turkey leg, the greasy meat so tender that it was practically falling off the bone.

This collection of exhibits was overrun by rowdy children that smelled of sunscreen, likely a field trip of some kind. A few of the boys were banging on the glass parrot enclosure, upsetting the pair of bright yellow birds, while the girls made faces at a fierce looking spotted owl.

Alexander walked quickly so as to distance himself from the field trip students. After rounding a corner, he stopped to take in the peacock exhibit, standing there, all greasy-mouthed, turkey leg still in hand. And while he couldn't be sure of it, it seemed to him, that upon his approach, the feathered creatures had all stopped their preening, fixing their beady little eyes on him.

He wondered if, perhaps, it was in poor taste to eat a bird in front of other birds. Did the peacocks feel like death row inmates, anxious and uncertain about the future, fearing that before long, they too would be eaten by zoo patrons? he wondered. 

Factory farming had made life so cheap and devalued that, having grown tired of carrying the turkey leg, Alexander tossed it into the trash, without a second thought, even though there were still a few good bites of meat left on the bone.
 

5

He left the zoo around 5pm. As he drove towards his girlfriend's, Stephanie's house, Alexander listened to an NPR segment in which an anthropologist surmised that, for early humans, cooking meat proved advantageous as it aided in digestion, thus allowing more energy to be devoted to the large and expanding Homo Sapien brain. 

Alexander thought of the dead animals stored in his refrigerator, his machine-processed menagerie, the poor beasts cut and filleted, their flesh laid to rest unceremoniously in beds of Styrofoam and cellophane. 

It was rush hour, the sun still blazing, cars slowing to a halt as a highway construction project funneled all traffic into a single lane.

He checked my watch, hoping that he wouldn’t be late for the dinner Stephanie had prepared for the two of them.

He was pretty she was making chicken parmesan, if I remembered correctly. Which sounded delightful. 

His thoughts, unformed and abstract, swirled around until Alexander found myself wondering how many entire animals one might eat in a lifetime? 

6

After emerging from the bottle neck and hitting the gas, Alexander realized, that he could only hope for a sky burial.

 

He thought of the insects and scavengers that knew the smell of death.

Some laid larva or burrowed into the flesh. But he fancied vultures most of all because, according to an informational placard at the zoo, he’d learned that their stomachs are so acidic, that they were able to digest plague, rot and disease. 

As he neared my exit, Alexander wondered:

What am I, all things considered?

What is my place in the food chain, in the hierarchy of sentience?

Perhaps, he was just another condemned creature or a beam of light projected onto a classroom wall.

Perhaps, one day, science might answer such questions;

But until then, he would continue his vocalizations, arranging words into splays of flowers or a shimmering peacock display, inflating himself, demonstrating his reproductive fitness if only to palpitate desire and the need to possess.