CW: Self Harm

The first thing I think of when I remember my month on meat is brilliant, all-encompassing whiteness, like TV heaven. It had snowed the night before I went to pick it up and the sun was ricocheting off it all, making me squint when I stepped out around noon. Some of the snow was starting to melt, and if I listened, I could hear its orchestral dripping all around me, the water rushing by in the sewers below. I too felt like I was thawing out, finding myself out in the world for the first time in days, and though my face was numb by the end of it, I still thought to myself that maybe winter wasn’t so bad when it was like this. Whenever I got the chance, I would tilt my chin up to the sky and smile, a gesture that I could usually only muster when Nat was around. All this was happening before I even had the stuff in my hands, before I even put it in my mouth, as if I was already leaning into the change.

My therapist, Monica, had written me the prescription five days before, after our weekly virtual call. The past few weeks I’d been calling from my bedroom, which barely gets any light; the only thing my camera could pick up was my face shining in the darkness, lit up by the digitized brightness of my laptop screen. I guess what I was really looking for showing up to our meetings like that was some pity. But that wasn’t Monica’s style, and that’s probably what makes her a good therapist. 

That morning, Monica led me through a seven-minute meditation, which was a new thing we were trying, though it also didn’t seem like her style. When she asked me where my mind had wandered after it was done, I was too depressed to lie. The whole time I couldn’t stop thinking about Nat’s smell, which must’ve been lingering on the blanket wrapped around me. I was so preoccupied with describing it, attributing it to some perfume or other item she favored, that the seven minutes seemed to pass by without me in them. Maybe I was starting to forget her. All that I could conjure up were the oils on her skin in the early morning, my nose nestled in her unwashed scalp, and the feeling that by smelling I was somehow parting something and reaching inside of her. I imagined us tangled up in bed, pressing together as if we could bypass the boundaries of flesh. How easy it had felt then, to know and seduce each other, to bore into her eyes and say things like “I wish to crawl underneath your skin,” adoringly. I was certain that I had never experienced this lack of self-consciousness with anybody else. 

“Don’t you think that things can be made special by being indescribable? That there’s a certain divinity in that?” Monica asked when I was done sharing my frustrations, furrowing her brow as she often did. 

Of course, I knew that, but the knowledge did nothing to settle me. When I didn’t answer she pursed her lips, another classic Monica-ism. She was very attractive, her gray hair styled in a way that could only be described as “French” and thick glasses that framed intelligent, stony eyes. I often wondered if I trusted her expertise so much because of how expensive she was. 

“Why do you think you’re so obsessed with describing Natalie?” 

This second question made me feel like she was just showing off with the first. Like she had to prove how smart and insightful she was even though her wisdom wasn’t relevant to my current situation. 

“Do you think putting her into words will diminish some of her power over you?” 

Monica was also very anti-Nat, as any sane person would be. 

“I can’t help it. I just want to feel closer to her.” 

This was when she made an expression that was entirely new: a furrowed brow and pursed lip combo, plus this look in her eyes like I was her own daughter telling her this. For a second I thought she might cry, but it turned out to be just a trick of the abundance of natural sunlight hitting her camera. Luckily, instead of committing me somewhere, she prescribed me the meat. She told me I wouldn’t be able to pick it up at my usual pharmacy, that I would have to haul ass to some facility for it. Except she didn’t use the phrase “haul ass.” 

Nat was gone longer than usual this time, almost a month now. We met at a gallery show near my apartment, six months after my mother died. She was one of the artists. There was a tough, lanky way about her, the way she held herself, that I immediately envied, though it could’ve just been the beauty-induced confidence. The first thing I noticed about her, though, were her eyes. They were so dark that they seemed black from a distance; and she had this crazy, arresting stare, like she was seeing into nothingness. 

Our first date started right after the gallery show, in my apartment, and it was the kind that lasted a whole week. The first time she disappeared it was just for a few days, and it was no big deal. We’d just met, and I understood how these things worked. Afterward, she said she was busy visiting family. The second time it was that she was swamped with work. Then an artist’s retreat for a week, then a research trip in Europe for two.  

I had to take a bus to the facility. Its windows were all scratched up and dirty, but I could still see the sun going down, and the way it reflected off the snow and behind the snow, the water, sparkling like an infinite sea of diamonds. Occasionally, the sun would catch on the grimy window, and its splintered rays would fill the bus with orange light, making me squint again. Usually, it getting dark so early in the day — especially with the bus crawling farther and farther away from my apartment — would freak me out; but I felt safe enclosed within the bus’s moving walls, with its dryness and funky odor. Like for the first time in a long time, I was exactly where I needed to be. 

The prescription was a month’s supply. That is, I was expected to finish the whole body in a month. I sent the facility a spit sample the day of my call, and they emailed me three days later saying it was ready. I’d heard of this type of thing in the news for about a year now, and Monica had brought it up before, saying she’d tried it with some of her other clients with positive results. I had filed the idea away somewhere between ketamine therapy and mothers who ate placentas, and whenever Monica brought up those clients, I always imagined the retired trust fund hippies who bought up all the kale juice at my local Whole Foods. But apparently, the treatment is covered by most insurance companies now.

“Of course there’s a whole science behind it, chemically speaking, but I like to think of it more as a form of radical self-acceptance. Like being made whole again,” Monica had said during her pitch.

  We’d tried everything from journaling to Lexapro in the past, but nothing had stuck. I think I agreed partly because I wanted to please Monica, who reminded me of a more intelligent, helpful version of my mother. But it was also because as soon as she asked me what I thought, I had this strange vision of the future. I could imagine myself after things had run their course, basking in sunlight and warmth and the easiness of spring, and I felt the typical relief as well as a certain sadness, a tenderness that I couldn’t quite identify no matter how far I reached within. I got the silly urge to time travel then, feel all these things through and figure out what they were. 

Essentially, the facility clones you and grows some of your meat in a lab — the parts that taste decent. And then you eat it. Something about eating yourself was supposed to do wonders for your mind, cure the depression that even ketamine couldn’t touch. 

Of course, the meat just looked like meat and bore no resemblance to you. This particular service stored each cut in a vacuum-sealed tray, with preparation instructions printed on the sleeves in a trendy font. The process of picking up was straightforward and reminded me of this fancy dispensary by my apartment. You just waited in line amongst the fake plants and lo-fi beats, gave the lady your ID and insurance, and got the bags. That’s all I saw of it, though I could tell from the outside that it had at least 20 floors. They kept the lights dim in the pickup lobby and there was an ATM in the corner, which also made it similar to the dispensary, but it smelled very strongly of antiseptic, which made it different. I received two big insulated bags, something I’d failed to anticipate for the journey home.

The trouble started when I got back to my apartment. It’s funny the way these things always take me by surprise, right when I start to think that maybe it’s possible to just trudge along like this forever. I’d already unloaded the entire supply into my freezer and confirmed that the meat did indeed just look like meat, deep red and marbled with fat. I was taking stock of the few ingredients I had in my kitchen, opening cabinets I hadn’t touched in weeks, when I stumbled on Nat’s spice rub. She’d hyped the stuff up since the day I met her, calling it her “signature blend,” and claiming that it would “change my life.” She was into that type of quiet luxury: perfectly dialed-in espresso, sourdough starters, and good vintage leather. It was another thing I liked about her.

She finally brought the rub over one night after disappearing for two weeks. I came home to find her in my kitchen because, of course, she had a copy of the key. The apartment was alive with ambient lighting and some Ethio-Jazz record that was playing in the living room, a stark contrast to how I’d left the things on my way out. It was immediately obvious that she had been cooking, and it smelled foreign and delicious, like nothing I’d ever made myself before. Nat, hovering over the stove, turned her head when I came in, offering me a knowing, welcome-home smile. I realized that I’d forgotten what her face looked like — the softness around her eyes and the stun of her cheekbones — and then remembered again. There was this shimmering quality about her that I only noticed after we’d been apart for a while, some mysterious force that slowed time down and made our surroundings fade away, like in the movies. 

Maybe that same magic was what made me forgive her for leaving, just as I always did. Despite its familiarity, the decision still came as a relief. It was the easy thing to do: to forgive, to burrow my face into her back, firm and warm under the soft fabric of her t-shirt. The ends of her hair, impossibly soft and smelling of citrus, tickled my forehead. And here again was that familiar feeling of love’s steady ship. Of two becoming one. Of falling and being weightless. The thing Monica would never understand in her entire dusty, shriveled-up life. 

“You’re going to love what I’ve been cooking up” she said, and it was really her voice; she was really back again. 

“Did you change your shampoo?” I whispered in return. I couldn’t place the smell. 

Nat had always been careful not to leave anything behind when she disappeared, and I’d grown used to it this way. At the sight of the rub, so innocent amongst my other pantry items, my heart dropped through my chest and my body filled with cold sludge. I worried first that something medical was going on, and then that I had fallen into a parallel universe, one devoid of any love or warmth. I got the urge to do something big, like open up the freezer door and slam it shut on my hand, or knock my face against the counter. Instead, I sank to the floor. There was this metallic clang of me coming up against some truth: that things had run their course, that Nat was gone, and that I would never again come home to find her in my kitchen. Each time I thought of the rub, in its cute hand-labeled packet, the truth resounded again. There was nothing to do except let the waves wash over me until I tired myself out. 

“This is good. It’s good to let yourself experience the … loss, and everything that comes with it,” I imagined Monica telling me when I eventually described what had happened, sans hand in freezer door. I thought I knew what she was getting at. 

After sitting on the floor for what felt like a while, peering around my ghostly kitchen, I decided to invite my friend Julie over for dinner. She was into that kind of thing, new technology and weird food, and I figured she’d be interested in trying a bite. I was right. She arrived about half an hour after I called, which was how long it took to walk over from her place. While I waited, I chose a tray labeled “Shank” to thaw out on the counter. I’d started chopping up onions according to the instructions before remembering that my mother used to make lamb shank for special occasions. I dug up the recipe — which called for double the chopping — in a box of her stuff that I kept in my closet. By the time Julie knocked, my eyes stung and welled with tears.   

“Jesus! Is it working already?” Julie asked as she stomped snow onto my doormat. I must’ve looked as tired as I felt. 

“Ha! No, it’s just the onions.” 

“You sure? I saw this one girl online who tried one bite and started bawling immediately. It was like the floodgates completely opened up, you know?” 

I hadn’t talked to anyone besides Monica in a while, and I was starting to feel a little awkward around Julie now, who was so alive and full of energy that it was hard to keep up. Her hair, which had been blonde just a few days ago, now had sections dyed a dark red. The red was bleeding into the blonde in a way that made my stomach churn, and I realized then that I hadn’t eaten all day. 

“Which part is the shank?” she asked, inspecting the tray. 

I wasn’t sure, so I looked up a diagram on my phone.
“Like the outer thigh area, I guess.” I turned my screen around so she could look at the divided-up cow. 

“Oh. Gross.” We both took a second to squirm at the thought of all that residing under our skin, of being cut up and eaten. 

As I cooked, pausing every now and then to decipher my mother’s faded scrawl, I wondered what it was about my meat that was distinct from another’s. Would it taste different? Would it be fattier, compared to say, Julie’s, who’d been born with ballerina legs? I’d always been insecure about my thighs, and I could feel my face growing warm at the thought of Julie experiencing them so intimately. As I gingerly poked the meat with my tongs, I had a flashback — like I often do when looking in a full-body mirror — from middle school, when I was just starting to grow familiar with the feeling of my skin being too tight. I had come into the kitchen wearing shorts for the first time that spring — particularly tiny ones that rode up my ass — and my mother had stopped whatever she was doing to stare at me. I was already starting to forget some things about her, the way her ears looked and the way she smelled, but I knew I would never forget her eyes as she told me that I couldn’t wear those shorts anymore. She’d said the sight of me made her nauseous. 

Truthfully, my mother rarely crossed my mind at that point; I was too busy with Nat. But I felt an archaic flash of anger remembering her then, like some strange hibernating animal that was finally peeking its head out the cave. I kept thinking of her as I cooked, wondering what she would say about all this and concluding that she might also try a bite after warming up to the idea. Above all, she had always loved good food. 

By the time our meals were ready the air in the kitchen was thick and my mouth watered. I couldn’t help it. I plated my shank and slid a small chunk that had detached in the pan onto Julie’s dish, which housed a complicated-looking grilled cheese. Julie poured both of us some red wine and we sat down at my tiny table in the living room, right by the patio door, which she had cracked open at some point. It was finally dark out, but despite the temperature drop, there was a certain friendliness in the air which told me spring was coming. Someone was enjoying a cigarette. Julie started playing dinner party jazz on my speaker, semi-ironically, like everything else she does. 

“I think Nat and I are done,” I blurted out after a few unbearable seconds of jazz, somewhat surprising myself. 

“Oh! Did you end things … officially?” Julie was suddenly beaming ear to ear.

“Well, I’m not sure if she’ll even come around again.” I heard myself let out a nervous laugh, which I knew I would cringe at later. “But either way, it’s done. For real this time.”

Julie nodded like she believed me, taking a pensive bite of her sandwich, but I wasn’t sure if she did. I felt my cheeks heat up again, despite knowing I’d prove her wrong. The lack of human conversation caught up with me all at once then, and I clutched the edge of the table as if to tether myself to the present moment. 

“We should take a trip somewhere — to celebrate! We haven’t gone anywhere in forever,” she finally said, to my relief. 

“Remember that one time on the shore, with the mimosas?” 

 “Oh, yes! And that stupid seagull? God, I should’ve cooked him.” 

We were both laughing hard now, and all I could think about was how good it felt to laugh like this with your friend. But the fact that I was thinking about it instead of just laughing made me a little sad. I suddenly remembered my weird vision when Monica first brought up the treatment. Here I was, feeling the same tenderness that I had anticipated so vividly before. But now — in the midst of my laughter — I realized that the feeling was actually a question, or maybe a few: What was it all for? Would it happen again? Will it happen again forever? And if so, what’s the point? I was sure Monica would know. 

I cut off a piece of myself, surprisingly soft, and took my first bite.