Meat Throwing

A satire by

Steve Hohenstaufen

Steve Hohenstaufen

Steve@numicron.com
 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 2.

Nora Pritzker, the oft-seen jogger, and the maudlin

Mara Arnoldson were the kind of women around which other

women, especially those who met them every Thursday at the

Tea Parlor in Park Slope to knit ill-fitting things, glared.

The rather tremendous extent of their discomfort was

evidenced by the silence it induced in their knitting

partners even upon a casting-off. These young mothers who

forced forward with Sisyphean resilience the six-wheeled

strollers in which their drowsy children sat with

monarchical posture (sometimes in twos and even threes) and

poured forth private tales in public parks and along

sidewalks of streets named President Street and likewise

would collapse into the calmer demeanors of their former

Midwestern personas upon the utterance of Mara or Nora,

or, more commonly, the two.

Infamy, as it turned out for our heroines, does not --

in gentrified Brooklyn, at least -- spread by gossipy

interlocution alone. What precisely was said about the pair,

and what exactly was being said I will reveal in a moment,

was communicated through terse messages on dark devices

shielded with the cup of the hand and through glances, most

especially through glances. To smirk, for example, was to

relate to ones interlocutor that it is still going on. To

bite ones bottom lip was to elicit that last time, it

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 3.

affected me personally. If one removed ones glasses,

cleaned them with a cloth, massaged the dents on the nose

left by the pressure of said glasses and then replaced them

on a position on the nose slightly lower than they were

propped before, then ones interlocutor could presume that

one had seriously considered contacting the authorities.

In this sense, I am reticent to promulgate these

details and, indeed, very fearful. And through my life as I

have known it is in danger, the reader should not worry

about having to testify in front of a jury at a Federal

Court or mourn in any way the death of any mentioned in this

tale for having read it. By all means, you, reader, are safe

and may continue eating your gherkins and sipping your

noisette without pause. There may, however, exist some

repercussions of a subtler nature for your narrator. For

one, I do not want to be snubbed by my neighbors. Is this

such an irrational fear?

Nora lives on a very central and important street I

am flush with anxiety in an area colloquially known as

Cobble Hill (I have never been one to be too meticulous

about the borders of the many quarters in Brooklyn), in that

many walked down this street to the entrance, like a hot,

halitosis-stricken mouth in the earth, of a subway terminal.

She was a writer, not of fictional works, within which the

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 4.

section you aptly found this story has been labelled, but

rather of the great cuisines and gastronomical dining

topics.

Nobody, at first, -- I should be chronologically clear

-- thought twice then when large shipments of meat were

delivered each week at her door. The smell did not nauseate

them as they passed her house in the direction of the

terminal opening, which outraged them olfactorily all the

more.

And if smacking and thudding sounds coupled with the

whispered crackle from the wetness and rawness that often

accompany the act of meat tenderizing could be heard from

outside Noras apartment window, most believed she must be

testing a new Tuscan technique or Mongolian method.

Only when the vegan Mara, whose occupation had nothing

to do with culinary arts I will relate to the reader at

the risk of libel that she is a kindergarten teacher and

teaches at (I will here omit mention of the school) -- when

Mara also began receiving shipments of meat (game, loin,

otherwise), only thence did the neighbors alight with

murmured inquiries.

We are, however, not lackluster people. I want to make

sure of this qualification in the readers understanding. I,

for one, have made an outstanding living as an intellectual

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 5.

property lawyer you may be shocked at this considering my

sweepingly emotional style and I am a very radiant sort of

person. If a poll were taken in this neighborhood, perhaps

as an addendum to a poll of a more political nature, that

posed a question regarding personal enrichment, I am

positive the average score would be an eight, certainly no

lower than seven and a half (I would mark nine depending on

the time of year). Truthfully, I cannot account for the

scores of the two.

We do talk, assuredly. And we talk because essentially

that which happens to one of us happens to us all. This is

the kind of caring society we have uniformly created!

Sounds of tenderizing after two days soon emanated as

well from the windows the blinds remained closed of

Maras brownstone.

What of her rug? some asked.

What of the cows and their suffering? I and the other

vegans postulated (Over seventy-five percent of those

affected by the incident were some veg variant).

We soon began to refer, collectively as a tight-knit

and progressive community, to their addresses as the houses

of bovine pain and speciesist headquarters no. 1 and no.

2, respectively. Any such handling of so aromatic an amount

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 6.

of cooked meat would be sinister enough to inspire this

bubbling degree of characteristically New York chagrin.

At this point, whenever I ventured down the sidewalk

immediately in front of Noras house or askew from Maras

house, which is cattycorner from the front of my house,

regretfully, I exerted an atypical spurt of observatory

energy, not only insofar as I sought knowledge but also as I

cared about the cause of activist veganism.

And one day, as my wife and I please forgive me for

not providing you any descriptive information about my wife;

she is not as activistic as I am as we walked down

President Street, we saw both Nora and Mara handling with

perverse joy large cuts of sirloin, very raw and very fresh,

on the stairs leading to the door of Maras foyer.

They were dressed in light cottonelle tank tops I

regret I do not know the technical name for this item of

clothing and very short pants, or rather short-shorts as

we call them colloquially, made of taupe denim. As they

pressed and bruised the remnant carcasses, molded them into

oblong forms of animal shapes, they appeared enamored by the

feel and fragrance of the exquisite cuts of beef.

I neared them and asked, Oh, this is a great week,

weatherwise, isnt it? I thought of this unassuming

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 7.

question with swift cleverness and asked it with deftness.

Oh, gals?

They did not care to respond.

Mara daubed the slab onto her chest as if to absorb

sweat. Nora flicked around her slab as a fan.

Oh, governor! said one to the other in an Atlantan

accent.

Oh me, oh my! replied the other, quite frenzied.

If they were referencing a particular literary work,

which one I did not know. My wife fathoms it was in

reference to a Williams play, but such a conclusion

diminishes his oeuvre. (She has now uncorked a cava in the

adjacent room and will leave us to our story.)

Well, I do declaaah said Nora, lingering almost

angrily on the last vowel of the phrase.

We continued on our way and looked back at them and at

each other alternately until we were far away enough from

them to think about something else, namely, our marriage.

These events did not make us happy. We did not, as some

of lesser character might have, take joy in their decline as

integral members of our neighborhood who lived on central,

important streets within said neighborhood.

At a dinner party held by the Adelmanns very

successful physicians attended by many from Union Street,

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 8.

Carroll Street, and even old Flatbush Avenue, the estimated

cost of the meat we calculated, the amount of the grain the

selfsame amount of money could buy for those in the world

without even rice we calculated, and the potential cause for

such neo-barbarism we thoroughly discussed.

Lets say the meat is a phallic association, said

Arthur Shaiman, whose remarks tend to offend the more

Jungian therapists in our coterie.

Lets not, snapped my wife, who feigns a Jungian

bias.

We drank exponentially in our nervousness. And as the

Adelmanns had invited Nora and Mara obligatorily, we assumed

they would take the invitation in seriousness. (It was not

given in seriousness in the least!)

What of the husbands? Were they too into meat-touching,

as we coined it at the stroke of midnight? You may be

wondering this, as did we syllogistically.

Apparently, as Martha Hendricks -- yes, you may

recognize her name from The Pettibone Quarterly she

singlehandedly started up and distributed in the late 1990s

as she had come to know through eavesdropping, the

husbands had made a deal.

They were, as Martha related with immense terror,

living together in Bensonhurst for a predetermined time-

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 9.

period and even permitted their sides of the house to be

occupied for the act in which their wives so loved to

partake.

Abruptly our conversation was truncated by a loud

thwack heard and acknowledged with equal parts shock and

disturbed repugnance by all who gathered at the Adelmanns

that rainy night. Deidre Adelmann opened the blinds and this

allowed all to see that which had produced the sound.

Indeed, a large piece of meat had been thrown by an

unseen person or persons and was now stuck, in fact, glued

to the glass pane of their freshly washed window. Many in

attendance cleaned and adjusted their glasses.

In the following days, the meat-touching ended. For a

while all was quiet. Then, after a week from the time of the

incident at the dinner, one of the guests I cannot tell

who out of my respect for covenants was struck while

passing the blood-drenched steps to Mara Arnoldsons house

in transit to the terminal with not one but five veal

cutlets. The cry of the victim was heard throughout the

international progressive village.

If the cutlets were thrown as the porterhouse was

before it, were the two now afflicting us directly with the

barbarity of their ignoble fetish? Certainly, the following

preponderates any denial of our affliction:

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 10.

On July 2nd, a turkey landed in the empty stroller of

Natasha Froebose after she fortunately had already delivered

her child to its nearby dayschool.

On July 3rd, a man who instructed I could not reveal

his identity, even though it was explained it would add

dramatic effect not all are of acute literary taste was

pummeled with balled-up slivers of bacon and three to seven

savory pies.

` On the 5th: a toddler nearly tripped on a raw shish-

kabob that had landed in front of him only seconds before

his mother registered what the strange row of meat could be.

Several of my closest friends and colleagues suffered

from the humiliation of what we called meat-throwing. (I

heavy-heartedly abridge this chronology for your sake,

reader.)

August 1st: a morsel of beef chuck hit quite directly

the ear of your narrator. If the reader was hit also at some

point in the summer and autumnal months of the previous

year, I would not be surprised and would encourage joining

the joint suit I am spearheading.

It is crucial to mention that none of the meat was

being eaten or enjoyed. Think, if you please, of the kind of

preservation and ice storage the vast volume of meat held

within the two apartments and in the streets after they were
 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 11.

dispelled from said apartments would require. All efforts to

usurp the beef shipments and shank deliveries were eluded by

the varying and unscheduled times which Nora and Mara had

had them delivered.

Many nights my wife and I spent in black shirts and

trousers in a hidden place of clandestine observation,

namely a shrub and a tree, respectively, in an attempt to

gather data about the time between when they had meat

delivered and when they commenced shot-putting such meat.

My wife and I failed to ascertain any information

because too often we were distracted by our own conversation

on the subject of my investigatory work and its effect on my

marriage. She feels, namely, that I am unadventurous, and my

claim was that she does not truly know how to relax.

These conversations may seem petty and uninteresting to

you. But ultimately they became so long and so heated that

they were nearly a finite, absolute distraction from my

investigation of the whole affair of waste and abuse here

described.

The quality of many marriages has been greatly affected

by the throwing of meat which, keep in mind, did not remain

the hobby of choice for the two alone, though they were

expressly to blame for this epidemic.

 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 12.

My marriage -- I will admit here -- is completely in

shambles. For my wife became very upset when I began to cook

the grouse found on the sidewalks of Carroll Street and

Graham Street and feeding leftover burger to the homeless of

Prospect Park. We had different opinions of this solution

which we could not reconcile.

The reader will be very happy to know that the meat

affair has ended. Nora and Mara do not throw meat, order

meat, or encourage others to act out the same any longer.

The reason for this sudden change is a matter of continuous

debate in the vicinity of Park Slope.

Their husbands are back. Case closed, says Freudian

therapist Arthur Shaiman.

Why do you care so goddam much? demands my wife.

The Adelmanns have not issued any further remarks.

Indeed, the great silence that accompanies any weird

perversions thorough fulfillment now afflicts the

community, in fact, to the point that I believe some may

wish with a certain modicum of nostalgia that the era of

meat-throwing were fanatically revived.

I, in my solitude, do not have any such fantasies. A

great silent rage overcomes me when I hear of the Noras and

the Maras.
 Hohenstaufen / Meat Throwing 13.

In contrast to those who experience Schadenfreude at

the demise of their reputation I have only contempt. For

their actions seem to have done nothing but kicked up the

dust of what had remained previously unsaid, unexpressed,

unlitigated.

If I committed libel by telling this story heretofore

and am to be tried, then that was meant to be. I accept

anything now. For, though my membership in this activist and

progressivist neighborhood remains, I am very much now alone

with a freezer of leftovers and have nothing more -- not

even my attempted ovo-pescetarianism -- to lose.

The End

Steve Hohenstaufen

Steve@numicron.com