My Fleshy Stems, Part 1

He said, “Think of this as me showing concern for you – a modicum of care and concern and interest for who you are and how that brain of yours operates.”

“Or think of this as a job interview – trying to decide if you are up to the task.”

“Or think of this as a therapy session, one where it’s not immediately clear who is the patient and who is the therapist. Maybe neither. Maybe both. I don’t know.”

He said, “But I notice that you never talk about where you come from. Ever. Your childhood, I mean. Being a kid. Learning to ride a bike and do your multiplication tables. Or seeing a naked man’s junk for the first time or getting bitten by a dog or having your period or tying your shoes.”

He said, “Think of this as me asking.”

And I thought, “Who the hell asks a question like that?” I thought, “How can anyone be more indirect and more pretentious and more full of bullshit than I am?”

So I looked around the restaurant and I tried to guess at what all the other people were talking about. Football and politics and property taxes and putting a new trim board in the kids’ playroom, from the looks of it.

Lucky them, I guess.

And I said to him, “Think of this as me answering.”

I said, “Think of my answer as being that I never talk about being a kid because I never was a kid. I was not born but rather plucked, right out of the earth and by my red leaves and my fleshy stem by some kid who just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“It happened in East Ataraxia, just west of Temixoch, down in the South Synaesthesian Islands. It was there I was plucked by my red hairy leaves and my pink fleshy stem by a kid who just wouldn’t leave well enough alone.”

By now he was looking a little insulted. He was playing with his pork chop, absentmindedly. I’m not sure whether there is any way to play with one’s pork chop mindedly. No “Zen and the Art of Pork Chop Playing.”

But there he was, anyway, and this is where he said, “If you didn’t wanna talk about your childhood, you coulda just said so.”

He said, “Think of this as me withdrawing the question.”

But it was too late. By then, that ship had already sailed. The images of my plucking were coming and coming fast and there was no plugging the hole.

I said, “Think of it! This kid who shoulda left well enough alone pulled and he pulled and Plop! He plucked me right out of the earth and there I was: Lying there, dewy and fully grown, only I wasn’t ready for plucking yet.

“He pulled me out and shook the dirt off me, but I wasn’t ripe. I wasn’t done. So my skin hadn’t hardened and my corneas hadn’t grown over my eyeballs so living creeping things were climbing right into my eyes and kinda looking around in there.

“And I didn’t know what loud was. And I didn’t know what red was. And I didn’t know what bitter was. Hell, I didn’t know what I was, or that I was a something that was a different something from that something vibrating sensations over there.

“I didn’t even know what ‘over there’ was, for that matter, or that ‘over there’ might be distinguishable from ‘right here’.”

Now he was taking a deep and sudden interest in the tablecloth. He was remembering how he’d flown fifteen hundred miles for a chance to have dinner with me. Think of this as me confirming that I was even crazier than I portrayed in my online persona.

I said, “Think of this like in a movie! Like Michael J. Fox or Philip J. Fry suddenly being thrown into the future, but to the Nth degree!

“Because Fox and Fry, they might never have seen a flying car before, but if a flying car is hurtling at them at a hundred miles an hour, they still think to themselves, ‘Oh no! Big metal object three hundred feet away and coming towards me fast! Danger, danger!’”

I said, “But not me. I had no labels. I had no concepts. I was a pure raw consciousness, completely overwhelmed and defenseless against the flux of the world that flowed right through me and slapped me down.”

He was poking at his iPhone now. Probably searching Wikipedia for “South Synaesthesian Islands.”

I said, “And then this kid, he dragged me home down a gravel road, and I didn’t know what pain was to know pain is what happens when someone drags you home skinless down a gravel road.

“And he dragged me to his uncle, and his uncle was a mandrake farmer (it was East Ataraxia, after all, so who wasn’t a mandrake farmer?), and they hung me by my ankle on a hook out in the mandrake barn and they left me there for a week to dry.”

I said, “Hello-o-o! Are you getting all of this?”

I said, “Think of this as me being open and honest and thorough with you.” Those all being qualities I read about in a magazine. Openness and honesty and thoroughness. Qualities that people want in a potential partner, I mean. Think of this as me trying.

I took a big bite from my boiled giant squidburger. It was inkier than I generally take my giant squidburgers and then a tentacle got suction cupped to my tongue and I had to reach in to pull it off. According to “Cosmo,” I should have excused myself to go pull it off my tongue in the restroom.

But no one is perfect, and I was trying.

“So what happened then?” he asked.

“What happened then what?” I replied, still chewing.

He said, “After they took you down from the hook in the barn. You said they kept you there a week. What happened after that?”

I said, “Oh. Then they wrapped me with a sheet of skin to separate ‘me’ from ‘the world’. They cut me down and I started law school the next week.”

He said, “So then... happy ending, huh?”

Happy ending? What kind of twisted son of a bitch was I dealing with here? I said I’d been hung on a hook by my ankle for a week, and that’s his response?

I started poking at my giant squidburger, absentmindedly. I could see now that I was really going to have to stay on my guard with this weirdo.

(To be continued?)