on out. We’ve seen it all before,” Jaron says.
All this polite blather makes me nervous. Why is everyone being so considerate, so gentle? Usually we’re like a pack of starving baboons, gnashing teeth, a flurry of prehistoric birds. The violence, the fear perhaps, the crushing anxiety of one attack on the news after another has made us strangers.
“Good afternoon.” I sit down at the table, figuring that’s where I’m best suited. Any closer to the kitchen and I’d just be clumsy and in the way. “Jaron, what’s going on?”
“Nothing. All is well.”
Louis says, “I made a big fruit salad.” He gestures at the bowl, snapping the napkin off like he’s unveiling a work of art. I notice the way he’s moving, the consciousness in his gestures—he’s aware of the hurt in his body, and it pains me a little to watch him.
“Thank you for thinking of me,” Jaron says.
“No nuts,” I say.
Jaron says, “My grandmother used to put nuts in her fruit salad and it always felt to me like crunching a tooth.”
Louis says, “Well, you know, I just—”
Jaron says, “Thank you.”
Farmer bolts up. “I love nuts in fruit salad.” We all look at him like he’s from another planet. He recoils.
I lean back, annoyed by all the civil banter. I want to knock over my drink, dig my hand into the fruit, get naked. Louis’s hand on my shoulder quiets everything, his touch like antibiotic—he can sense when I get like this. I calm.
“Farmer! What’s doing?” I sound like some over-compensating father-in-law. Like some straight-acting family member from another dimension.
Farmer reaches into the bag at his feet. Farmer carries this blue zippered bag—I have never seen him without it. Once, on the subway, a drunken frat boy tourist had cut his finger, and was wandering through each car asking for a Band-Aid. Farmer reached into the bottom of the Blue Bag and produced not only a sterile bandage, but antibiotic ointment. He produces a glossy postcard. “Look,” Farmer says. “The Museum of Natural History recently acquired a forty-seven-foot giant squid. Dead, of course.”
“Really?” I’m genuinely interested. “Will you take me to see it?” The card is dark, with a jumble of suckers and tentacles surrounding hours and admission prices. And, of course, that lone gleaming eye, big as a dinner plate, staring out of the deep, staring right through me. The squid looks like he knows something the rest of us don’t.
“Of course.” He takes a sip from his glass. “They’re having a hard time with things in the natural specimen departments. Especially the African mammals.”
Jaron cuts his eyes at me. He mouths “boring” and rolls his head around. I watch him swallow a strawberry.
Louis says, “What do you mean?”
Farmer resituates himself, feeling more confident now that he’s in a situation he can handle—exploring the goings-on at various scientific not-for-profit institutions. “Well, you see what kind of animals there are in those exhibits? Elephants and such. See, those are real animals. And they’re very old, decades. Naturally, they’re not doing so well. Fur is falling off, noses are pulling away from the faces, the skin isn’t holding up like they’d hoped.”
Jaron says, “Sound familiar?”
Farmer ignores him. “The museum is at an ethical crossroads. They have to ask whether they should go out into the wild and gather new specimens. Find a family of African elephants, kill them, taxidermy and all that, which, never mind morality, costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then replace the existing grouping. These animals are now endangered, threatened, or protected, mainly.”
Louis says, “They can’t kill living animals for the sake of a motionless zoo.”
Farmer says, “No, of course not. That’s why they’re stuck. It’s practically impossible to collect dead animals from the wild, I mean you don’t find things lying around in salvageable condition. The question becomes, how do we preserve the current specimens so that future generations will be able to see an elephant up close? There won’t be real living elephants forever.”
Eventually everything goes extinct. Animals, technology, languages, fashion. Culture and community. Queers, maybe—these attacks are speeding us along.
We all look at each other. Jaron breaks the silence. “Way to bum everybody out.”
Louis slices the quiche and I realize how hungry I am, not even remembering the last time I ate. My stomach growls. And this is what Jaron feels all day.
Farmer says, “I’d like to know how it’s coming up there, but I can’t seem to get anyone to get into it with me.”
Louis says, “I thought you were well-connected there.”
Farmer says, “Not in that department. It’s very cliquey. I’m more of a stars and space guy and those people don’t always get along with the life sciences.”
I say, “Why don’t the departments get along?”
Farmer says, “It’s all about funding. Astronomy gets a new planetarium, world famous, and the agriculture exhibits still have the PRESENT labels noting the 1950s.”
Jaron says, “I don’t understand why they don’t run out into the peaceable kingdom and jerk off a bunch of elephants, then bring the spooge back to the elephant fertility clinic and get some lonely old chick elephants knocked up.”
Farmer says, “It’s far more complicated than that.”
Jaron says, “Anyway, how boring is this topic?” Farmer stuffs his mouth with quiche and gulps at his water, silencing himself. “Simon, what’s up with you?”
I say, “Nothing.”
Then the table goes quiet. The air gets sticky while we’re all looking at each other and chewing. Silverware clinks down onto plates. The whirring white noise of the refrigerator. Are we going to talk about it? I decide to throw a wrench in.
I say, “So, what’s up with all these people getting beat up?”
Louis and Farmer say, “I know.”
Jaron says, “Seriously.”
I say, “Pretty scary, huh?”
Louis says, “After seeing what they did to the other people, I know how lucky I was.”
Farmer says, “Lucky is sort of relative here.”
Everyone is looking at Louis, waiting for some kind of reaction. “Simon has found a new love interest, a bearded fellow across the street,” he intentionally changes the subject. “Mr. Laundry, we call him.”
Jaron says, “Tell me about him. Tell me everything.”
“First of all,” I say, “I never mix business with pleasure. And two, he’s extremely hot. And the way I see it, it would be nice to have a regular who lived across the street. Easy money.” I try to be vague here. I don’t normally tell people the details. It helps me to forget them.
Louis says, “Tell them how you hang out the window on Friday nights and watch him go in and out of his building.” Everyone smirks.
Farmer says, “You should be locked up.”
I say, “He’s hot. What can I say?”
Jaron says, “Oh, Simon, come on. Forget it. You’re head over heels in mad sweet love.” He flutters his hands around his face, like tissue paper butterflies on strings.
I say, “I don’t even know him.”
Louis says, “Exactly. You do better at unrequited love than you do at regular love.”
I say, “Ouch. Thanks a lot.”