Adrienne Chung
Feral Spice
At a stoplight, I witness a man in jeans cross paths with another on his morning
run. After a brief bro-down, they run off together into the San Francisco
fog like two golden retrievers.
Not a block later, I pass a red van loudly inscribed with WHO LET THE DOGS
OUT? in the appropriate typeface.
I almost take a photo but cannot summon that thing which moves me to act.
My analyst asks when I first noticed the pattern.
What pattern, I ask, before I realize that he means my pattern of misfortune.
How nice of him. I’d always called it fate.
Well, I say, Tibetan Buddhists believe that preceding a person’s birth, the soul
wanders through an infinite plane of naked couples copulating. It stops
when it finds its match and then, presumably, steps between their genitals
and—
A human is born, into the fate it chose.
No—I meant pattern. Yes, I first noticed the pattern late last year when I sus-
tained two car accidents in as many months. But really, I say, it began in
that infinite plane before I was born, and—
Yes, I can see why I chose this pattern, why I chose to spend my child-
hood alone, watching cartoons from morning till night, eating bowls of
Grape-Nuts in nothing but water, the little seeds cutting into my 4-year-
old gums until finally the sun set and my mother woke up.
My analyst tells me that I must learn to mother myself but I have already begun
talking to my houseplants.
On the way home, I stop to pet two dogs in hopes of activating a triplicate canine
synchronicity.
Later, I have a beautiful bowel movement and recklessly sage my apartment,
nearly setting a blanket, then a book, on fire.
Say I chose this.
I strip naked in front of a window in darkness. I turn over a mousetrap to look
at the dead body, its white belly soft and distended beyond proportion. I
wanted to touch it.
In the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge arcs toward the hills of Marin County,
where two friends once cast me as ‘Feral Spice’ in a music video. They
drew red scars down my cheeks and gave me a baseball bat wrapped in
barbed wire.
You’re half feral, half domesticated, they explained.
I ran through thorny acacia bushes in a dense machine-generated fog, swinging
the bat at the sky.
What if I said I touched it—
What if I said I waited all night for another to snap.