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I had a summer job flipping burgers at Peacock Patio, out behind the lion pit in the Turtle Back Zoo. I was seventeen and horny, a vegetarian and a smoker of Parliaments—I liked the recessed filter, a kind of metaphor for living life at one cool remove, smoking and bussing tables out on the eponymous patio, a Parliament between my teeth. I very much admired the erectile function of the male birds’ tail-feathers which reminded me a little of myself. I was masturbating several times a day back then and I longed to display my erections to a female of my own species. I could really identify with those peacocks roaming around, trying to balance their erections in the summer breeze with the demands of a life, summer school, my grandmother who was staying at our house all that August and sharing my bathroom. It was quite the balancing act. I remember one slow afternoon at the zoo, a colleague and I shared a joint in the walk-in freezer, and then we each smoked a Parliament and headed back outside. As soon as I hit the heat I felt paranoid, like the eyes of the male peacocks whose feathers were all eyes were on me— I was seventeen and homophobic. I started back-pedaling toward the lion pit, pursued by a train of extravagant erections straining in the breeze, turned tail and ran, not stopping till I got to the house of the giant Galapagos turtles, and lay down among them, breathing hard, hiding myself beneath their ancient stillness. |
