This is apparent when Jim surmises that, “I marched out there on the sidewalk-feeling exposed and conspicuous but marching nonetheless-for Alena’s sake” (Boyle 256). I knew only that we were on our way to rendezvous with a certain “Rolfe,” a longtime friend of hers and a big name in the world of ecotage and animal rights, after which we would commit some desperate and illegal act, for which the turkeys would be eternally grateful. Even in the confusion of the moment I could see that there was something wrong with this dog, an unsteadiness, a gimp, a wobble to its legs. “You can see the place from the highway,” Rolfe said finally, “but the only access is through Calpurnia Springs.
What can I say? “Believe it,” she said. “You know the Draize test?” This is evident where he states that, “I was on my feet now, murderous, glad to see that the thing was hobbled-it would simplify the task of running it down and beating it to death” (Boyle 253). The short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” by Raymond Carver signifies through sharing vastly different experiences, that language is inadequate in communicating a clear definition of love. The first blow seemed to drop down from above, a shell lobbed from deep within enemy territory; the others came at me like a windmill churning in a storm. Or do you have plans? Something hit the back of my legs and all at once I was down amongst them, on the floor, in the dirt and feathers and wet turkey shit. “Listen,” I said, and for the moment I couldn’t look her in the eye, “I don’t want to put you to any trouble…” It’s just an excuse for the meat industry to butcher a couple million turkeys, is all it is.” She paused; hot safflower oil popped in the pan. Carnal Knowledge 1994 AuthorLink: T. Coraghessan Boyle I’d never really thought much about meat. She shook her head slowly. She turned around to face me now. I didn’t know. On your own wavelength: the words illuminated me, excited me, sent up a tremor I could feel all the way down in the deepest nodes of my reproductive tract. “I’m ten minutes up the beach, and I’ve got a washer and dryer. She was wearing a pair of too-tight jeans and an oversize sweater with nothing underneath it. She states, about queer theory that it is “one among many of the useful ways of understanding the myriad complexities of identity, oppression and group dynamics” (Watson 68). I’d never really thought much about meat.
This gave me pause.
Was it love? Think for a moment, about the scene when Jim is marching with his sign. “I mean, I don’t eat meat myself,” I lied, “or actually, not anymore” — since the pastrami sandwich, that is — ”but I don’t really know any place that…” I trailed off lamely I looked twice round me and then broke for the near shed in an awkward crouching gait. After asking whether Jim had any plans, Jim sought to think about the daily routines that he usually engaged in such as watching movies, visiting his mother and visiting the singles’ bar.
The car crept forward. Carnal Knowledge Short Story. My Aunt Irene would be there, and so would my grandmother. I murmured something about taking it to the cleaner’s myself.
I was grateful for the question, too grateful maybe.
Now I was the protestor, a placard waver, now I was fighting for the right of every last weasel and lynx to grow old and die gracefully, now I was Alena Jorgensen’s lover and a force to be reckoned with. She laughed, but I could see she didn’t find it all that funny. “Of course,” I said. It was 2:00 a.m. by the dashboard clock. Ms. Britt
From the point Alena expresses her anger with the research conducted on her dog, Jim seems interested and shocked of Alena’s sentimental elucidation. “They used eighty-grit sandpaper on the treads, to accelerate the process.” Alena shot a glance out the window to where the surf pounded the shore; she bit her lip. It brought a lump to my throat, and something more: I realized I was hungry. “Thanksgiving’s coming.” And I could smell them, a seething rancid odor of feces and feathers and naked scaly feet that crawled down my throat and burned my nostrils. As I lay there unsuspecting, enjoying the sun, the beach, the solitude, this stupid beast had lifted its leg and used me as a pissoir — and now it was poised there on the edge of the blanket as if it expected a reward. I’d been sitting there for what seemed like hours, cursing Rolfe, developing suspicions about Alena and unflattering theories about environmentalists in general, when finally I heard the familiar slurp and roar of my Chevy Citation cutting through the mist ahead of me. I watched till their brake lights dissolved in the drifting gray mist, then fired up the Citation and lurched down the road behind them. My tone was corrosive. I wanted to get out and shoot myself, turn myself in, close my eyes, and wake up in jail, in a hair shirt, in a straitjacket, anything.
Sitting on the couch inside, you could feel the dull reverberation of each wave hitting the shore, a slow steady pulse that forever defined the place for me. “Yuppie poultry,” Alena’s voice was drenched in disgust. Half an hour later, after a breakfast of brewer’s yeast and what appeared to be some sort of bark marinated in yogurt, I found myself marching up and down the sidewalk in front of a fur emporium in Beverly Hills, waving a placard that read how does it feel to wear a corpse? The lights glowed. The placards danced. And more: there was flesh there too, slick and greasy, a red pulp ground into the surface of the road, thrown up like slush from the tires of the car ahead of me, ground beneath the massive wheels of the truck. Mascara. I could only nod and exclaim, smile ruefully and whistle in a low “holy cow!” sort of way. She never intended for Jim to be among them.
Carnal Knowledge is chock-full of bullshit theory and there is even queer theory within the story as well. I heard the engine race and listened, helpless, as the car roared off in the opposite direction. There was her beauty, of course, a triumph of evolution and the happy interchange of genes going all the way back to the cavemen, but it was more than that — it was her commitment to animals, to the righting of wrongs, to morality that made her irresistible. Turkeys. I looked down into the amber aperture of my beer bottle and nodded my head sadly.
Of course, my feet hurt and I was running sweat and praying that no one from work would drive by and see me there on the sidewalk with my crazy cohorts and denunciatory sign. Run!
Gulls coasted by overhead. Alena leaned forward. At first, Jim encounters Alena through her dog, Alf. She stopped rubbing and straightened up. Her interest in Jim was purely physical.
At this point, the reader is able to see the conflicts that Jim faces concerning the type of food offered. I was so close to the old woman I could smell her — her perfume, a whiff of mothballs from the coat — and it intoxicated me, maddened me, and I stepped in front of her to block her path with all the seething militant bulk of my one hundred eighty-five pounds of sinew and muscle.
One is acquainted, Stephanie Horan Suddenly I was angry.
From beginning to end, Jim is full of nothing but bullshit. I glanced at Alf and then back into her angry eyes. I got control of my feet then and stood stock-still in a flurry of turkeys, squinting into the wall of fog. “Control group?” I could feel the hackles rising on the back of my neck. “Not like us, no. And then it lurched and fell again, bobbing and weaving across the sand like a seal out of water. It was now or never.
“Oh, you bad boy, what have you done?” she demanded, and I was ready to admit to anything, but it was the dog she was addressing, and the dog flopped over in the sand as if it had been shot. By the end of the protest, he is screaming in people’s faces and getting extremely involved. Here Jim takes things into his own hands and makes a move on Alena. Alena leaned forward and there was real hate in her eyes. Even though Alena seemed to accept Jim as an activist, her thoughts regarding Jim focused on her satisfaction as well. Stricken, I could only drag my head across the pillow and gaze into the depths of her parti-colored eyes. Could there be a whiff of grilled flesh in the air? There was no invitation in that, no plurality, no acknowledgment of all we’d done and meant to each other. There was a truck stalled in front of the sign for our exit at Calpurnia Springs, and I had to brake hard and jerk the wheel around twice to keep the tires on the pavement.
The reader sees the strain Jim endures in order to satisfy his desires. Alf took a quick pee against the side of the house, then fumbled up the steps to roll over and fawn at his feet. She laughed, but she pushed herself up and crossed the room to stare out the occluded window. “Can we take your car?” The hollowness opened up, cored me out till I felt as if I’d been plucked and gutted and served up on a platter myself. Rolfe didn’t have much to say either, save for the occasional grunted command: “Hang a right here”; “Hard left”; “Easy, easy.” I thought about meat and jail and the heroic proportions to which I was about to swell in Alena’s eyes and what I intended to do to her when we finally got to bed.
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