Good Bones Read online

  When you get the animal home, butcher it in the backyard. Use the chain-saw again, and a diagram of a cow. The animal will still look like wood. But don’t be fooled.

  Wrap the steaks, ribs and chops in freezer paper and put them in the freezer. If your wife questions what you are doing or makes disparaging remarks about your sanity, tell her to mind her own business. Conversely, quote from the Bible: All flesh is grass.

  When you feel ready for a big meal of animal meat, take a steak from the freezer and heat up your charcoal or gas hibachi or your frying-pan or grill. This is the moment at which the animal will be forced to reveal its true nature! Season the steak – we like a little barbecue sauce – and toss it onto the heat.

  If it remains wood, you’ve made a mistake. Bad luck! You’ve picked the one dead stump out of a thousand that is not really an animal.

  Try again later.

  2.

  The favourite disguise of fish is oval stones lying at the bottoms of streams.

  Making a Man

  THIS MONTH WE’LL take a break from crocheted string bikinis and Leftovers Réchauffées to give our readers some tips on how to create, in their very own kitchens and rumpus rooms, an item that is both practical and decorative. It’s nice to have one of these around the house, either out on the lawn looking busy, or propped in a chair, prone or erect. Choose the coverings to match the drapes!

  When worn out, they can be re-covered and used as doorstops.

  1. TRADITIONAL METHOD

  Take some dust of the ground. Form. Breathe into the nostrils the breath of life. Simple, but effective!

  (Please note that although men are made of dust, women are made of ribs. Remember that at your next Texas-style barbecue!)

  Should you give your man a belly button, or not? Authorities on the traditional method disagree. We ourselves like to include one, as we think it adds a finishing touch. Use your thumb.

  2. GINGERBREAD METHOD

  Any good rolled-cookie recipe will do, but add extra ginger if you want lively results; and our readers who choose this method usually do! Raisins make good eyes and buttons, but you can use those little silver balls as long as you take care not to break your teeth on them.

  Once your man has come out of your oven, you may have trouble hanging on to him. Men made this way are apt to take off down the road, on motorcycles or off them, robbing convenience stores, getting themselves tattooed, and hopping up and down and singing, “Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man!” Attaching a string to his leg before the oven procedure may help, but – alas – in our experience, not for long.

  There’s one good thing to be said for this method, though: these guys are scrumptious! Good enough to eat!

  3. CLOTHES METHOD

  Clothes make the man! How often have you heard it said!

  Well, we couldn’t agree more! However, clothes may make the man, but women – by and large – make the clothes, so it follows that the responsibility for the finished model lies with the home seamstress.

  Use a good pattern and cut on the lines. Otherwise your man will be all screw-jiggy. Pre-shrink the fabric, or your man will turn out to be smaller than you’d hoped. Sew the darts first, and remember to give that tummy a good tuck, or you’ll be sorry later! Watch those zippers. A badly placed zipper can cause serious functional problems. It’s fun to be different, but not too different!

  Casual or formal is up to you; if in doubt, make two, and alternate. Be sure your house has a lot of mirrors. Men made this way – like budgies – seem to adore them!

  One very creative woman we know sewed her entire man out of rubber sheeting. Then she used a bicycle pump. Amazing!

  4. MARZIPAN METHOD

  We’ve often thought men would be easier to control if they were smaller. Well, here’s a tiny rascal you can hold in the palm of your hand!

  Usually found on wedding cakes, these formally dressed minigrooms require painstaking attention to detail, but it’s worth the time you spend with the paintbrush and the food colouring to see the finished result smiling at you with deceptive blandness from the frothy topmost layer of Seven-Minute Boiled Icing!

  We much regret the modern custom of substituting plastic for the original sugary confection. For one thing, there is absolutely no payoff when you feel the urge – as we do! – to pop one of these dapper devils into your mouth and suck off his clothes.

  5. FOLK ART METHOD

  You’ve seen these cuties in other folks’ front yards, with little windmills attached to their heads. They hammer with their little hammers, saw with their little saws, or just whirl their arms around a lot when there’s a stiff breeze. Alternatively, they may just stand stock-still, holding onto bridles, lanterns or fishing poles. Some of them may be in gnome costumes.

  Why shouldn’t you concoct one of these cunning fellows for your very own? No reason at all! Just coat your hubby with plaster of Paris, and

  Epaulettes

  WHEN WAR HAD finally become too dangerous, and, more to the point, too expensive for everyone, the world leaders met informally to devise a substitute.

  “The thing is,” said the first speaker, “what purposes did war serve when we had it?”

  “It stimulated production in selected areas of the economy,” said one.

  “It provided clear winners and clear losers,” said another, “and it gave men a break from the boring and trivial domestic routine.”

  “Expansion of territory,” said another. “Privileged access to females and other items in demand.”

  “It was exciting,” said a fourth. “Something was at risk.”

  “Well then,” said the first, “these are the benefits our substitute for war must provide.”

  At first the world leaders focused their attention on sports, and a lively discussion ensued. Baseball, basketball, and cricket were dismissed as too leisurely. Football and hockey were both seriously proposed, until it became evident that no world leader would last two minutes on either Astroturf or ice. One of the world leaders, who was interested in archœology, suggested an old Mayan game played in sunken ballcourts, in which the loser’s head was ceremonially cut off; but the rules of this game were no longer known.

  “We are looking in the wrong area,” said a world leader from one of the smaller countries. “Forget these rowdy games. We should be thinking birds.”

  “Birds?” said the others, sneering both politely – in the case of the older and more machiavellian nations – and less politely, in the case of the younger and cruder ones.

  “Bird display,” said the speaker. “The male birds, in their elaborate and brightly coloured plumage, strut about, sing, ruffle their feathers, and perform dances. The watching female birds choose the winners. This is a simple and I might add a melodious method of competition, and has much to recommend it. Let me just add, gentlemen, that it has worked for the birds.”

  The great powers were against this proposal, as it would pit their own leaders against those of the smaller nations on a more or less equal footing. But for this same reason the smaller nations were in favour of it, and because there were more of them than there were of the great powers, the resolution was voted in.

  Which leads to the happy state of affairs we enjoy today. Once a year, in April, the play-offs begin. Throngs of chattering and expectant women crowd the football, cricket and jai alai stadia of the world. Each is provided with a voting device, with pushbuttons ranging from 0 to 10. The world leaders compete in groups of six, with the winner going on to the next round until, finally, there is only one winner for the entire world.

  During the subsequent year the men of the winning country enjoy certain privileges, which include: modified looting (department stores only, and only on Mondays); ordering loudly and banging the tables in restaurants; having the men from all other nations laugh at their witticisms in a grovelling manner; preferential dating; complimentary theatre tickets; and two days of rape and pillage, followed by rit
ual drunkenness in the streets. (As everyone knows which days are the two chosen ones, people simply board up their windows and go away for the weekend.) Winners also get an improved foreign exchange rate and the best deals on fish processing. Each country enjoys its triumphant status for a year only, and since all know that next year it will be somebody else’s turn – the women see to that – the more extreme forms of riotous behaviour are self-policed.

  The competition itself is divided into several categories. Each one of these is designed to appeal to the female temperament, though there has been some difficulty in determining exactly what this is. For instance, the “aroma” category – in which the condensed essences of the competitors’ sweat-socks, cigars, used tennis shirts, and so forth, were wafted through the audience – had to be discontinued, as it made too many women sick. But the name-calling, muscle-flexing and cool-dressing bouts remain. So does joke-telling, since it is well known that women prefer men with a sense of humour, or so they keep telling us. In addition, a song must be sung, a dance must be danced – though a solo on the flute or cello will suffice – a skill-testing question must be answered; and each world leader must describe his favourite hobby, and declare, in a well-modulated exhibition speech, what he intends to do in future for the good of humanity. This is a popular feature, and occasions much giggling and applause.

  Best of all is the military uniform category, during which the contestants march along the runway to the sound of recorded brass bands. What colours we see then, what festoons of gold braid, what constellations of metal stars! Gone are the days of muted khaki, even of navy blue: we live in the age of the peacock. Epaulettes have swollen to epic lengths and breadths, headgear is befeathered, beribboned, resplendent! The stimulus to the fashion industry has been prodigious.

  From our new system a new type of world leader has emerged. Younger, for one thing. Lighter on the feet. More musical. Funnier.

  And history too is being revised. Daring military exploits, megadeaths, genocides and other such emblems of conquistadorial prowess no longer count for much. The criteria have changed. It is being said, for instance, that Napoleon was practically a catatonic on the dance floor, and that Stalin wore ill-fitting uniforms and could not sing to save his life.

  Cold-Blooded

  TO MY SISTERS, the Iridescent Ones, the Egg-Bearers, the Many-Faceted, greetings from the Planet of Moths.

  At last we have succeeded in establishing contact with the creatures here who, in their ability to communicate, to live in colonies and to construct technologies, most resemble us, although in these particulars they have not advanced above a rudimentary level.

  During our first observation of these “blood-creatures,” as we have termed them – after the colourful red liquid which is to be found inside their bodies, and which appears to be of great significance to them in their poems, wars and religious rituals – we supposed them incapable of speech, as those specimens we were able to examine entirely lacked the organs for it. They had no wing-casings with which to stridulate – indeed they had no wings; they had no mandibles to click; and the chemical method was unknown to them, since they were devoid of antennae. “Smell,” for them, is a perfunctory affair, confined to a flattened and numbed appendage on the front of the head. But after a time, we discovered that the incoherent squeakings and gruntings that emerged from them, especially when pinched, were in fact a form of language, and after that we made rapid progress.

  We soon ascertained that their planet, named by us the Planet of Moths after its most prolific and noteworthy genus, is called by these creatures Earth. They have some notion that their ancestors were created from this substance; or so it is claimed in many of their charming but irrational folk-tales.

  In an attempt to establish common ground, we asked them at what season they mated with and then devoured their males. Imagine our embarrassment when we discovered that those individuals with whom we were conversing were males! (It is very hard to tell the difference, as their males are not diminutive, as ours are, but if anything bigger. Also, lacking natural beauty – brilliantly patterned carapaces, diaphanous wings, luminescent eyes, and the like – they attempt to imitate our kind by placing upon their bodies various multicoloured draperies, which conceal their generative parts.)

  We apologized for our faux pas, and enquired as to their own sexual practices. Picture our nausea and disgust when we discovered that it is the male, not the egg-bearer, which is the most prized among them! Abnormal as this will seem to you, my sisters, their leaders are for the most part male; which may account for their state of relative barbarism. Another peculiarity which must be noted is that, although they frequently kill them in many other ways, they rarely devour their females after procreation. This is a waste of protein; but then, they are a wasteful people.

  We hastily abandoned this painful subject.

  Next we asked them when they pupated. Here again, as in the case of “clothing” – the draperies we have mentioned – we uncovered a fumbling attempt at imitation of our kind. At some indeterminate point in their life cycles, they cause themselves to be placed in artificial stone or wooden cocoons, or chrysalises. They have an idea that they will someday emerge from these in an altered state, which they symbolize with carvings of themselves with wings. However, we did not observe that any had actually done so.

  It is as well to mention at this juncture that, in addition to the many species of moths for which it is justly famous among us, the Planet of Moths abounds in thousands of varieties of creatures which resemble our own distant ancestors. It seems that one of our previous attempts at colonization – an attempt so distant that our record of it is lost – must have borne fruit. However, these beings, although numerous and ingenious, are small in size and primitive in their social organization, and attempts to communicate with them were not – or have not been, so far – very successful. The blood-creatures are hostile towards them, and employ against them many poisonous sprays, traps and so forth, in addition to a sinister manual device termed a “fly swatter.” It is agonizing indeed to watch one of these instruments of torture and death being wielded by the large and frenzied against the small and helpless; but the rules of diplomacy forbid our intervention. (Luckily the blood-creatures cannot understand what we say to one another about them in our own language.)

  But despite all the machinery of destruction which is aimed at them, our distant relatives are more than holding their own. They feed on the crops and herd-animals and even on the flesh of the blood-creatures; they live in their homes, devour their clothes, hide and flourish in the very cracks of their floors. When the blood-creatures have succeeded at last in overbreeding themselves, as it seems their intention to do, or in exterminating one another, rest assured that our kind, already superior in both numbers and adaptability, will be poised to achieve the ascendancy which is ours by natural right.

  This will not happen tomorrow, but it will happen. As you know, my sisters, we have long been a patient race.

  Men at Sea

  YOU CAN COME to the end of talking, about women, talking. In restaurants, cafés, kitchens, less frequently in bars or pubs, about relatives, relations, relationships, illnesses, jobs, children, men; about nuance, hunch, intimation, intuition, shadow; about themselves and each other; about what he said to her and she said to her and she said back; about what they feel.

  Something more definite, more outward then, some action, to drain the inner swamp, sweep the inner fluff out from under the inner bed, harden the edges. Men at sea, for instance. Not on a submarine, too claustrophobic and smelly, but something more bracing, a tang of salt, cold water, all over your calloused body, cuts and bruises, hurricanes, bravery and above all no women. Women are replaced by water, by wind, by the ocean, shifting and treacherous; a man has to know what to do, to navigate, to sail, to bail, so reach for the How-To book, and out here it’s what he said to him, or didn’t say, a narrowing of the eyes, sizing the bastard up before the pounce, the knife to the gut, and
here comes a wave, hang on to the shrouds, all teeth grit, all muscles bulge together. Or sneaking along the gangway, the passageway, the right of way, the Milky Way, in the dark, your eyes shining like digital wristwatches, and the bushes, barrels, scuppers, ditches, filthy with enemies, and you on the prowl for adrenalin and loot. Corpses of your own making deliquesce behind you as you reach the cave, abandoned city, safe, sliding panel, hole in the ground, and rich beyond your wildest dreams!

  What now? Spend it on some woman, in a restaurant. And there I am, back again at the eternal table, which exists so she can put her elbows on it, over a glass of wine, while he says. What does he say? He says the story of how he got here, to her. She says: But what did you feel?

  And his eyes roll wildly, quick as a wink he tries to think of something else, a cactus, a porpoise, never give yourself away, while the seductive waves swell the carpet beneath the feet and the wind freshens among the tablecloths. They’re all around her, she can see it now, one per woman per table. Men, at sea.

  Alien Territory

  1.

  HE CONCEIVES himself in alien territory. Not his turf – alien! Listen! The rushing of the red rivers, the rustling of the fresh leaves in the dusk, always in the dusk, under the dark stars, and the wish-wash, wish-wash of the heavy soothing sea, which becomes – yes! – the drums of the natives, beating, beating, louder, faster, lower, slower. Are they hostile? Who knows, because they’re invisible.