Looking at the Meat
by Angela Townsend
Hana posts blurry close-ups of diner meat, and I cannot bring myself to 鈥渓ike鈥 them. I tell myself I am teaching the algorithm, asking it nicely to cut back on the saturated fat in my feed. But if I am honest, I am making a point. I am stabbing those stroganoffs and tetrazzinis with a holier-than-protein pitchfork.
Hana has no idea. She is unskilled at reading the room, because she prefers other literature. If she stumbles upon a blurb for a kebab establishment, she will engineer an emergency adventure. Hana skewers doldrums on things to look forward to. There are houses of goulash around the corner from funeral homes and hospitals. There is bratwurst with thicker skin than any bad Wednesday.
Hana does not return to her pictures, because she has moved on to the next course. The spindly animal in me wants to tell her that no one is interested in all these club sandwiches and disembodied wings. At the very least, she could capture them artfully, taking a step back so the flesh is in focus. If I said such a thing, Hana would kiss me on the forehead, at the risk of getting ash on her lips. She would leave me glistening.
There was a time when Hana tried to take me with her. We could find restaurants ready for a vegetarian with Type 1 diabetes. We would gut New Jersey for sacred salads that 2 would not spike my sugars. It took time to talk her out of this. You cannot tell your new friend that your eating disorder is old enough to run for president, and your weird relationship with food is actually a marriage. It was years before Hana held my hands in hers, feathers wrapped around bones, and nodded. Now she sneaks me za鈥檃tar from her galley, garnet flakes like noncaloric fairy dust for my cauliflower.
I have not forgiven my body for what it did when I was nine, bludgeoning beta cells until none remained. Fondant flowers wither without an insulin sprinkler system. I cannot trust the fairground organ that took all the funnel cake off the table. I keep my bones close to the surface so I can see what they are doing at all times.
Hana still found me. She emailed to admire my blog, and within a month we were each other鈥檚 blank journals. We exchanged pictures of brown tabbies and neighbors鈥 gardens, shameless speckled bellies and apricot pennants called 鈥渉appy chappies.鈥 From separate desks, we declared each other anam cara 鈥 鈥渟oul friend.鈥 Affection outruns knowledge.
We discovered differences and massaged them into matching tattoos. We were both dopamine fiends, hunting parallel prey. I slathered my ego with action items. She lay waste to darkness by baking thirteen dozen rugelach before dawn. I wrote torrential prose until I felt I deserved breakfast. When her boss gave her a written warning for tardiness, she bought herself a cinnamon roll the size of a human head.
Hana eats outside earning. I am illuminated and repulsed. She refuses absolution when I confess an impulse purchase. She lists her new palazzo pants and magenta dresses 3 like a litany of permission. She favors the prints of apex predators, a suburban leopard at the deli counter.
I cannot have tea until I reach inbox zero, and Hana鈥檚 recaps come at the wrong times. I will respond later. I funnel them into the 鈥淗ana鈥 folder. They ooze over the sides, and I feel guilty. I write back. I congratulate her. I thank her for being Hana. I ask her to send me pictures.
Hana takes it for granted that we were given delicious things to survive just being this species. Every mozzarella stick is a bayonet in the gut of debt. Falafel laughs at abnormal test results. All those former mammals sleep under parmesan blankets so mortals can rise again.
Hana feasts so she can forgive. Her big fig eyes would fill with tears if I ever spoke of 鈥済luttony.鈥 She is treating herself. It is medicinal. It is not far from what I am doing when I write, rolling hours into paragraphs until the growling stops. Hana does not know that I do not 鈥渓ike鈥 her cassoulets and Reubens, because Hana does not scroll back.
I am as inconsistent as every heretic. Should the blesseds convene a third Council of Chalcedon, they would find evidence that Hana makes me feel safe. I pass the tureen of indulgence, but I am glad it is there. Perhaps someday. I am more relieved than exasperated. When the wind dies down, I drift to a kitchen island where it is no crime to be fed. The voice under my ribs jabs me to go back and like all of Hana鈥檚 posts.
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