The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories (5 page)

The Sperm Conservation Corps is lobbying to reserve a portion of the sperm’s natural habitat as a protected zone, off limits to sportswomen and the food industry. Opponents, from logging concerns to public safety watchdogs, point out that the natural habitat of pest and parasite is much too close to home, and that there is at any rate no shortage of sperm. Passenger pigeons once darkened the sky, the lobbyists reply; imagine a world without sperm!

…

Surely we have all gone for a stroll in a bucolic landscape, sperm far from our minds, and rounded a curve to see a sleek black ovoid crouched menacingly athwart the path. Though ordinarily timid, sperm have a bullish persistence when their tiny minds are fixed on one object. In some cases the old wives’ trick will work: rap them sharply on the “nose” with whatever comes to hand. The sting will startle and confuse them, and they may simply amble away. If they do, count yourself lucky, and clear out. If they give chase, remember your lucky penny!

When you see a sperm whose coat looks “sueded” or has a greenish tint, it is an old boar and probably cunning. Play your cards well. If you make a kill, though, you are in for a treat. The meat of these dotards is gamy, and must be marinated for twenty-four hours at least before it is tender enough to chew (weigh it down with a stone or it will rise to the surface of your marinade—sperm do float!—and your hours of waiting will be for naught), but many gourmets consider their flavor more sophisticated than the popular meat of pup sperm, something like a fine aged cheese.

To clean a young sperm, first seize it by the base of the tail. Be careful: they are extremely muscular and will attempt to free themselves. It takes a strong stomach not to flinch when a slippery tail twines around your wrist, but persevere; one solid whack on the edge of a table should stun the creature. Then you must core it to remove the brain. An apple corer will do if the sperm is small; for larger sperm a professional’s tool is essential. Aim well; it is possible to miss the brain altogether, since it is very small. Jam the blade into the back of the sperm,
near the tail. It is best to drive the corer deep into the sperm with one blow, penetrating the thick blubber, which otherwise will wobble and suck at the blade, spoiling your aim. Once the firmer meat is reached, it is a simple matter to drive the blade deeper, turning it the while. When the blade breaks through the opposite side, push the solid handle through, ejecting the pith. Examine the cylinder for the pale blue of the brain. All remnants of brain matter must be removed or the recipe will be ruined; the brain will regenerate and the cooked sperm will begin to twitch. If the sperm has been chopped or pureed this effect will be all the more disturbing. (If swallowed induce vomiting.)

My favorite recipe is this: lay the sperm directly on the burner. As the skin crackles and splits, releasing the liquors, turn the sperm. When it is entirely relaxed, remove and cool. Peel off the bitter skin with a fork, and discard. Under it you will find a layer of translucent fat. Cut this off, press it through clean muslin and reduce it to the consistency of gruel over a low flame. Run the skinned sperm under a broiler to brown, garnish with orange slices, and top with the reduced liquors.

With a little ingenuity, the sperm’s incredible propulsive power can be harnessed for your own enjoyment! Not just for professional daredevils, this sport can be enjoyed by practically anyone with a sense of adventure—and a few friends ready to lend a hand. Lure the sperm into a large net bag (used bags can be acquired cheap from many sporting goods stores). Cinch the bag tight around the sperm’s tail. Secure your boat to the bag with a few sturdy ropes and launch it. Whee! Carry a stick: a poke at the right moment will help steer the beast. But not to
worry: the sperm’s own self-protective instincts will keep you clear of most obstacles.

I trap them in nets I string up across their trails and sell them to a guy down in L.A. who puts them on TV. You know, those shows where they got to rassle the gladiators in the ring. Everyone knows the shows are rigged anyway, they dope the sperm, so I don’t know why they bother to get the dangerous ones, I guess they want them big. Of course sometimes they guess wrong on the dosage or they get a real sly one or something and he lays the chick out just like that! Gladiator my ass, they’re just models, gals who couldn’t make it on the runway or old ones on the way down. You know who’s the real gladiator? Take a wild fucking guess!

Yes, they’re cute! You may be tempted to try to keep young sperm as pets, and it’s true that hatchlings will remain small almost indefinitely, if kept in a small bowl or terrarium. But you must not forget that these so-called bonsai sperm are not the bumbling infants they resemble. They are cunning and they hold a grudge. It is neither humane nor prudent to keep them from answering “the call of the wild.”

At times, for reasons we don’t fully understand, the normally evasive spermatozoon will form a permanent bond with one woman. When the sperm is young, the woman may be inclined to subtly encourage this fidelity, perhaps without even knowing she is doing so. As the sperm grows older and some awareness penetrates its puny brain of the gulf that separates it from the beloved, the relationship turns treacherous. The sperm will stalk her with increasing cunning. Sperm can bounce several
stories, and their elasticity also enables them to squeeze through improbably small spaces. In the movie theater where she has sought refuge, she will spot the ominous dome across the aisle, dully reflecting the changing light. In the ladies’ room she will see a glistening tail on the floor of the next stall. Outside the window of the restaurant where she is holding hands with her date something will rise and fall in the dark, blotting out the city lights below. The clever antics of a pup are not so cute when the sperm is fully grown. Indeed, the mature sperm are all the deadlier for their devotion, and more than one woman has been crushed to death by a creature she once jounced on her lap.

Sperm-brain swallowing is considered dangerous by the medical establishment, but devotees disagree. What is known is that the sperm brain does not die all at once but forms a temporary bond with the stomach lining, marshaling an unknown number of the host’s cells to its service for as long as six hours, after which time the brain is digested and the host cells revert to their usual condition. Doctors claim the “high” users report is largely imaginary, but stories are consistent of a spreading “spermishness”: a sense of haste and unstoppable purpose. The concomitant disregard for personal injury, property, or propriety can lead swallowers to extravagant ventures, some criminal or self-destructive, some visionary. Great works of art have been inspired by sperm-brain swallowing; so have hideous crimes, including the infamous “Ballet of Decapitations.”

The cloud image of a sperm stretched out across the sky over Lisbon and again in Nubia has been taken for a sign by cultists
who await the day they will be “exalted” into the creatures they worship, and allowed to join their packs. Adherents are gathering in public places, where they drop to their stomachs en masse and undulate in imitation of the movements of their totem. Ironically, several of these “Spermists” have fallen prey to bona fide members of the species who do not seem to recognize their special status.

We lodge our sperm in stalls we have painted with polka dots, and curry them with soft brushes and chamois cloths. We show them the spigot so that they may approve it, then tamp the sharp end into their side with a small mallet, and hook on the bucket. The milk is thick and sweet. Fresh, it is an aphrodisiac. It is also good for the digestion and, rubbed on the face, it clears the complexion. Reduced and dried in cakes it makes a nutritious trail bar and a good soap. We are working on a motor that will run on sperm milk. We do make good money from our products, but we channel it all back into the sacred community, to buy softer bedding for our sperm, and hire musicians to play the songs they love.

Once numerous, their herds raised a line of dust across the Great Plains, racing the locomotive. This opening sequence has become a cliché of film westerns: dust first, then a line of bobbing backs stretching across the screen. The nearby whistle of the train; some of the sperm cross the tracks, some turn, some scatter. Beside the tracks as the train thunders by, a sperm slumps in the dirt, transfixed by an arrow. Its oily coat is covered with dust, dung, and straw. It looks like a breaded drumstick.

…

The midwestern strain of the spermatozoa, who ravage wheat fields in bouncing armies, is lighter in color and has unusual markings which help to conceal it in tall grass. While most sperm drop their tiny young in water, these have devised other means of providing their offspring the moist environment they need. In early summer, the adults congregate head to head in small circles of five to eight and begin to blow wetly through their snouts. They puff and bubble until they work up a sizable mound of viscous foam, then position themselves and insert the infant sperm deep within the trembling dome. The outside of the dome soon hardens to a glassy sheen under the sun and prevents further drying. The dim shadows of the young can be seen to pike and writhe from time to time, but the hug of the thick foam holds them safely in suspension. They grow all summer long undisturbed—their only real enemy, aside from the occasional vigilant farmer with a pickaxe, is a species of heron that has adapted its long bill for the purpose of drilling through the dome and spearing the baby sperm. However, since the bird rarely catches more than one sperm at a time through the small hole it has gone to such pains to open, it poses little threat to the sperm population as a whole. By fall the spermatozoa are large and restless, and their dark skins are clearly visible through the dome. Here we see nature’s genius: the shells that withstood sun and wind so imperviously melt in minutes under the first warm rain. The sperm are released into the wet grass. They lie there, quivering with surprise. Then they take their first timorous bounce.

The first fœtus was sighted in the abandoned hangar outside our town. Just floating there, almost weightless, it drifted down until its coiled spine rested on the concrete and then sprang up again with a flex of that powerful part. Then the slow descent began afresh. It was not hiding. It was not doing anything, except possibly looking, if it could see anything from between its slitted lids. What was it looking at? Possibly the motes of dust, as they drifted through the isolated rays of sun and changed direction all at once like birds flying together. Or at the runic marks of rust and bird shit on the walls. Maybe it was trying to understand them, though that might be imposing too much human order on the fœtus, who is known, now, for being interested in things
for
(as they say)
their own sake
—incomprehensible motive to most of us!

The fœtus rarely opens its eyes when anyone is watching, but we know they are deep blue-black, like a night sky when space shows through it, and its gaze is solemn, tender, yet so grand as to be almost murderous.

…

“We weren’t afraid,” said little Brent Hadly, who with his cousin Gene Hadly made the discovery, and took the first photos—we’ve all seen them—with his little point-and-shoot. “We thought it was Mr. Fisher in one of his costumes.” (Mr. Fisher is one of those small-town loonies affectionately tolerated by the locals. He did indeed don a fœtus costume, later on, and paraded down to the Handimart parking lot—where he gulled some big-city newsmen, to their chagrin.) “Then my daddy came and said, ‘Cut the fooling, Fisher!’ ” But even when the Fisher hypothesis had been disproved, no one felt anything but gentle curiosity about the visitor. Indeed, they scarcely noticed it had drifted near the small crowd while they debated, and trailed after them when they left.

The fœtus is preternaturally strong. It grabs its aides and knocks their bald heads together. It carries pregnant women across busy streets. It helps with the groceries. These are the little ways it enters the daily life of its parishioners: it turns over the soil in an old woman’s garden. It lifts waitresses on tables to show off their legs. The fœtus has a formal appreciation for old-fashioned chivalry, and expects to be thanked for such gestures.

The fœtus roved about the town until it found a resting place to its liking in the playground of the municipal park, among dogs and babies. The mothers and the professional loiterers appointed themselves guards and watched it sternly, heading off the youngsters who veered too near it, but they softened to it over time, began to bring sandwiches and lemonade along and make casual speculations about the fœtus’s life span, hopes, and origins. When the crowds of tourists pressed too close, they
became the fœtus’s protectors, and formed a human chain to keep them out.

Nobody’s enemy and nobody’s friend, it hides its heart in a locked box, a secret stash, maybe a hollow tree in the woods under a bees’ nest, maybe a tower room on a glass mountain on a wolf-run isle in a sea ringed by volcanoes and desert wastes. The fœtus always keeps its balance.

Someone observed that the land seemed disarranged. Bent treetops, flattened grass, weeds dragged out of their seats, clods dislodged. Tedious speculations about crop circles and barrows and Andean landing strips made the rounds. Of course, we knew the fœtus’s little feet dragged when he walked. We had seen the marks in the sandbox at the park. We should have noticed the resemblance, but we resisted the idea that the fœtus was only a transient resident. We had grown accustomed to, even proud of it; the fœtus was a municipal landmark. It had put our town on the map and filled it with visitors, so that our children had a chance to envy the latest haircuts, and our adults the latest cars and sexual arrangements.

Plus, the marks were disturbing. They were careless. They passed over (sometimes through) fences, even when the gate swung close at hand. Mrs. Sender’s oleanders were uprooted and dragged for miles. Even after we knew the fœtus caused the marks, a mystery clung to them. For everything the fœtus did, though, there was someone to praise it. Followers did their following on the paths it left. They said the paths proposed an aesthetic that could not at once be grasped. Some began dragging a foot behind them as they walked, scorning markless movement
as noncommittal, therefore cowardly. But why was the fœtus so restless? Was it seeking something? We had all seen it peering through our curtains in the evening, and found the marks in our flowerbeds in the morning. Was it exercising, or aimlessly wandering? Or was it writing a kind of message on the earth? Was it driven from rest by some torment, a plague personal to it, or a plaguey thought it couldn’t shake: was the fœtus guilty?