Tea at Trimalchio's XI

with Paul Kavanagh



the tale of two bald mice

Last night I was drinking with Louie Slevogt. He's one hell of a chef, I mean it, although he's been unemployed for the last year. During this time he's been traveling up and down the country, cadging, borrowing and stealing. However when Louie passes by he always drops in and I have him cooking lobsters. He is a wizard when it comes to lobster. He's the kind of chef that likes to shout and bellow like White, like Ramsay et al; you get the picture. He has me splitting lobsters, the knife straight down the middle and after that the garlic, which I toss into the slowly cooking butter and cream. Anyway this is all I really remember, I'm drunk and he's drunk and the wife is passed out on the bed and we are talking about the Japanese writer Toson, I recall we talked about Broken Commandment, we confused ourselves over the hissin and eta, God I was drunk, next we discussed D. H. Lawrence, it was a wild drinking session, I veered onto Hokusai, how I don't know, but I started going on about The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, inevitably this led to Pynchon and from there to Joyce, next I started rattling on about Hans Baldung Grien's fat, sleeping Silenus, what a fat bastard, it was here that Louie leapt up, knocking and smashing a glass. Looking down upon me and he started to speak:

"Obesity is a fecundating problem in the United States of America," he finished my glass and continued, "I have traveled throughout this divine country and I have become melancholy with the plethora of fat people that sweat, fart, burp, belch, hiccup, piss and shit. And so I now deliver my proposal. I must add I deliver this proposal with a heavy heart. It was while in Chicago that the epiphany came to me. The epiphany was made concrete in Memphis. I articulated this epiphany here in Charlotte. To cure this propagating problem of obesity we must eat the fat. Yes I reiterate, eat the fat. Anybody that has three chins and a protruding gut must be spit roasted and consumed. I know at first you will grimace but think of the space that we will be creating. The next time you are sat on a train, a bus, a plane and the seat next to you is taken by an obese person think about my proposal. I believe at that moment you will concur with my proposal. Those that have only two chins and an expanding gut will be fed crack cocaine. I have never seen a fat junkie. Those that have only one chin but showing signs of developing a second will be sent to the plastic surgeon. This problem of obesity is not mendacity. America is a huge heart attack waiting to happen. I can see the veins clogging even now as I write this. The farts of the obese cause pollution. A fat person's farts are worth fifteen farts of a healthy person. If you do not believe me, be empirical, take the test, position yourself behind a runner and than go to McDonalds and get in the long queues. Now suck in just one of those deep farts. I believe that it is inexorable; you will find yourself concurring with me. There is nothing left for us to do but eat those people that weigh more than one hundred and ten pounds. Consider the aesthetics of this proposal; I have never seen a fat Mona Lisa, a rubicund Helen, a chubby Cleopatra. How many times do we have to walk down Broadway and see a large woman in a tight dress with animated undulating flesh? Recall those sweat marks permeating the fabric. I see your grimace as clearly as though you are sitting opposite me. Now when I say eat, I mean eat and nothing else. We will fry in garlic butter the appendix, bladder, brain, ears, eyes, gallbladder, female genitals, kidneys, large intestine, liver, lungs, male genitals, pancreas, skin, spleen, small intestine, stomach, tongue, and voice box. The arms, hands, feet, legs shall be roasted. All bones with pelvis, ribcage, joints, skull, spine and teeth will be boiled down with the huge amount of fat and made into a soup. I have been told that the heart is sweet and so the heart will be cooked in glucose and piss and served as a dessert. See I have thought of everything. Even the fingernails and toenails will be roasted, salted and served with beer. For this to work all that we have to do is change a fundamental, a simple ethos that is all. We have to remember that the gut is more important than the eye. If it were up to the eye we would all be dying of hunger right now. The eye is a snob whereas the gut welcomes all. The gut is an egalitarian compared to the supercilious eye. Once we have overcome the tyranny of the eye everything is possible. The gut will digest the heart of a fat person just in the same manner it will digest a strawberry. Remember this. Let us move beyond the horror and look upon this with pragmatism. For us to succeed we have to look towards the future. You might think this is hyperbola, but we must be swift. I reiterate we must be swift. The future is bleak. The sun is being blocked out. A tenebrous shadow is looming over me now. My proposal to eat the obese is delivered with the utmost sincerity. Remember we must be swift for this work."

In the morning there was that same letter: see you in two months, borrowed a copy of Flaubert, lots of love Louie.


© Paul Kavanagh 2007

image ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Kavanagh was born in England 1971. His novel, everybody is interested in pigeons, will be published by 40FT.