The Butcher's Apprentice Goes under the Knife

What made you think you were different from any other hunk of meat?

Opposable thumbs?  A heartbeat?  Bipedalism?

You’re nothing but an upright carcass, honey.  They can slit you open just as easily as anything with hooves.  

They tell me I’ll bleed a lot.

Things that are alive typically bleed a lot when they’re cut.

Although, depending on the method of slaughter, things can still bleed a lot after they’re dead.  For example, in Tanzania, the Masai tribe kills goats by asphyxiation, so that they can drink the blood warm from the carcass. 

They say I’ll bleed a lot.  

I’m 29 in a week and I just wrote my first Death List.

Death List, not a Kill List; I’m not Beatrix Kiddo.  You know, that little piece of yellow paper that you give your mom, listing everyone you want her to notify, ya know, “just in case” something goes wrong. 

I didn’t originally plan on writing about this; it’s far too personal I think.  But come on, the irony is just too good to pass up.  Someone cuttin’ on the butcher?  Too good. 

            I have issues with people taking things out of my body that kind of belong there—like blood, I need my blood.  Conversely, I also have problems with people putting things into my body that sort of don’t belong there—getting a flu shot still gives me the heebies, because I can feel the fluid entering me, raping my veins, in a manner of speaking.

I’ve had my wisdom teeth out, and orthopedic surgeries before—no big deal, that stuff had to do with bones, not my organs (bone spur removed from a knee and screws put into a foot), not the stuff that runs my day-to-day internal functions.   

Maybe that’s why I’m taking such a morbid stance about the whole thing.  That, and . . . there have been signs.  I’ve had a great year, I’ve been very fortunate.  Lots of good things have happened to me, so I suspected my number was coming up.  And then, things started going . . . awry . . . for everyone around me.  An uncle I’m close with broke his foot, while walking.  The husband of a woman I work with tore his entire quadricep taking the last step of a staircase and had to have surgery on it; a week later, she dropped two glass milk jugs on her feet while wearing sandals.  The old man in my department spun out and hit the median when he drove over a grease spot on the highway, totaled his truck, and bruised himself up pretty bad (sixty ccs of fluid removed from his leg).  I heard that the woman who had my job before me fell and shattered her elbow.  My dad fell off a curb and hurt his right leg and his left ankle.  The mother of a girl I work with fell down five stairs (five stairs, not five flights of stairs) and broke a fibula and sprained an ankle.  The knife thrower slipped on a sock, fell down some stairs, and busted his ankle.  

I found out about this . . . “procedure” shortly after returning from Mexico.  And immediately hurt my back—my whole back—bad—from internalizing the stress.  A few weeks later I got to spend the weekend at a friends’ place in the Ozarks and had an allergic reaction to something that made both my eyes swell up.   

Honestly it’s a minor procedure; people have them all the time.  There’s really no reason for concern.  They’re going to take a thin, low-voltage electrified wire and scrape out some cells with dysplasia (it’s going to be a process getting all my piercings out so I’m not a living electrical conductor).  But any time you have to be put out and sliced on . . . there are risks, like blood clotting, or death.  Or throwing up in your oxygen mask and choking to death on your own vomit.  Or the anesthetist over- or underestimating your dosage and you either go into a coma or you wake up screaming while they’re still inside you, cutting on you. 

It’s been frustrating having to wait.  I just want it to be done; I wanted it done the day I found out it had to be done, but my doc wouldn’t do it.  I had to wait.  The longer I wait, the more time my nerves have to get all . . . nervy.

Maybe I look at things differently now because I played a part in the slaughter of living beings.  I am different now.  I stood by and watched the life drain out of their shocked, confused eyes.  I took a blade to their insides while they were still warm. 

Maybe what has me concerned is the lack of answers. 

Q:  How long is the recovery time? 

 A:  “A weekend, you know, like three or four days.”

Honey I don’t know much about your job but where I work they give us two-day weekends. 

Q:  When can I work out again?

A:  (Scoffs) “If you feel like working out, you go right ahead.”

That is really not helpful, because you see, when it comes to my workouts, I am a crazy person.  I don’t know when to stop; I do not understand the concept of a day off.

Not really inspiring confidence here.

Maybe what got me worried was my doctor saying, “There’s no way you’re worse than phase one; you’re phase one for sure,” and then it turned out that I am in fact phase two (there are four phases—phase four is cancer).  Yeah, maybe that bothers me—the fact that she was like, “Oh you’re fine, don’t worry you’re fine . . . oh wait, it’s actually worse than we thought.”  I went from an 80% chance this will go away and not turn into cancer, to a 30% chance.           

Still . . . it’s not cancer.

Not yet.  

But even that’s not what I’m scared of.  Not really anyways.  Even if it is cancer, it’s one of the most treatable cancers out there.  I’m afraid that they’re gonna get in there, and find out it’s a lot worse than they thought, and I end up being in surgery for ten hours, and they are just taking everything out of me until all my insides are on the outside . . . and I am the piece of meat twitching and bleeding on the chopping block.  So I guess . . . what I’m really afraid of . . . is being at the mercy of another human being.

I wiped my calendar clean after “the day.”  People ask me what I’m doing for my birthday.  Don’t really care—I’ll be happy if I’m still around, but probably won’t be up for much.  Will I be at so-and-so’s party next weekend?  Sure . . . maybe.

I paid my bills, caught up everything at work, watered my plants, went all handyman on my apartment, fixing and cleaning everything.  I—for all intents and purposes—made myself ready to never go back.

Part of me obviously expected to come back, though, because I made a big pot of stew meat and rice.  Sometimes you just need something easy—a few ingredients that you can throw in the crock pot at 9 o’clock at night and not have to touch until 6 o’clock the next morning. 

 

 

It all starts (as of course it must) with the meat.  Cory chops me up about three pounds of a long flat arrachera, or skirt steak.  It comes from the cow’s Plate and is similar to and often confused with flank steak.  I take it home and salt and pepper it, throw it in the crock pot with a cup of salsa, a quarter cup of soy sauce, and a quarter cup of brown sugar.  You wouldn’t expect all those different flavors would meld together to make such a savory, salty, spicy, tender dish. 

 

Frankly, I have nothing to complain about.  If for some reason I don’t make it out, I’ll die happy.  I have an awesome life, I’m not gonna lie.

My last day at the shop is eventful.  Burt’s out of town, so Max and I are working our butts off to keep the front stocked with chicken wings and jerky. 

I’m in back trimming ribs when four young guys wearing pastel yacht clothes burst through the back door, calling out for Burt.  They don’t acknowledge me.  I keep working, eavesdropping on the conversation they have with Grace.  One of the yacht boys is her progeny.  After about 15 minutes, I sweep some pork trimmings into the trash can and notice a few flies buzzing around.  I look up.  Those bastards left the back door open. 

“Son of a bitch!”

The yacht boys take a few steaks and head off “to the lake.”  I am sure to slam the door shut behind them.

Shortly thereafter, one of the other sons comes by (there are three total)—him I’ve actually met before, seen working here.  His birthday is tomorrow and Nicole has a cake sitting in back for him.  He immediately starts sampling wings, wandering around.  He sees me working on ribs.

“Ugh, are you peeling?”

More like ripping.  “Yup.”

“That sucks.”

I scrunch up my nose at him as I reply, “Nah it’s fuuun.”

He slowly backs away.  

Around lunch time, Nicole tells me that Burt wants me to call him.

“Uh oh; what’d I do now?”

“Nothing, he just wants you to call him.”

There’s a pork belly that needs to be brined for bacon, and he’d like me to make the brine up.  Burt uses a recipe from Ruhlman’s Charcuterie, of brown sugar, salt, thyme, sage, and cure.  I bag that up and grab the belly from the cooler, lay it out on the long stainless steel table in back, and almost gag.  It’s covered in mold, and it stinks.  Grace says just cut the mold off and use it, but it’s covered.  I call Burt back. 

“It’s my fault; I meant to get to it last week and didn’t have time.  Go ahead and throw it out.”

A whole pork belly.  That’s like six pounds of bacon, right in the trash.  I think I might cry. 

Dejected, I head out front and start packaging rubs to sell.  Tommy comes up behind me—right behind me—touching me . . . I don’t like the touching.  He asks, “Do you know how to do this?”

“Well, I’ve already got a bunch done right here, and I’ve been doing this for almost a year now, so . . . yeah.”

He takes the measuring cup out of my hand, and starts “showing me” how to do something I’ve done a hundred times before; something that he hates doing because he considers it “bitch-work.”  Meanwhile, Nicole is back in the same corner trying to work as well.

“You know what?  This isn’t a two-person job, and we don’t all need to be squeezed back in this corner, so if you wanna do this so bad Tommy, be my guest.”  I drop the container I was using and stomp off to take a break.   

Mid-afternoon the back door bangs open again.  Tommy and Grace struggle in with a dolly, a cooler, and two large black trash bags full of  . . . something . . . that does not nearly fit within said cooler. 

A man I’ve never seen before follows them in.  He is not particularly tall, has a bare pate and mocha-colored skin.

“Whatcha got?” I ask him.

“Cow,” he responds.

Oooh, “Where’d you get it?”  I expect to hear the name of a local farmer, or even better, learn a new one.

“Friend of mine come across it.”

That sounds . . . slightly illegal.

I follow Tommy into the cooler as he pulls the meat out of the trash bags.  We seem to have a forequarter and a hindquarter of a . . . teenaged(?) cow—too large to be veal but too small to be fully grown.  It is dirty, and although it’s been skinned, it’s got a lot of hair sticking to it.  And there’s still a muddy hoof attached to the forequarter (I’m pretty sure it’s not just mud). 

“Dude,” I say to Tommy, “you’re gonna have to take this thing out back and hose it down before you can do anything with it.”  And get that hoof off—should’ve been one of the first things to come off, there’s no reason why it should still be attached, just getting the rest of the carcass filthy. 

“This isn’t a cow,” he responds.

Say what now?

“S’a fuckin’ horse.”

He throws the meat atop a box of pork loin primals.  A drop of blood glides down the ribs, stops dangerously close to dripping into the box.  I’m no expert on hoofed animals, but the long wiry black and white hair looks bovine enough to me.

He sighs, “I can’t do anything with this, but I can’t say no to the guy because he’s a health inspector.”

“Well you can’t leave the carcass bleeding into the pork like that.”

Tommy and Grace put the meat back in bags and place it on its own shelf.  He tells the health inspector, “Yeah I’ll get to work on that over the next couple days and call ya when it’s ready.”  Damn.  I’m gonna miss all the fun!

As the health inspector is leaving, he sees me tossing a few boxes into the dumpster in the parking lot.

“Hey girl you wanna go for a ride?” he gestures towards a 1967 convertible Camaro.

“No man, I’m gonna go play with those cow parts you left for us.” 

Priorities, man.  Priorities. 

I set aside a bag of jerky for a party I’m attending in a few hours; the knife thrower’s having a barbecue for his girlfriend turning 30.  I’ve never met her before, but beef jerky is the perfect gift for any occasion.  Besides, I like being able to say, “Nice to meet you; I made this for you today.” 

Before I even get to talk to the birthday girl, I am stopped on the steps by one of the most talented people I know.  She is a dance and pole instructor and has performed all over the world, and she tells me I am sexy and fascinating and she stalks me on Facebook and wants to hear me talk about meat.  Her boyfriend is a butcher at Schnucks.  It’s not every day you get to have one of your heroes tell you that they think you’re awesome. 

A little later, I find myself engaged in conversation with another dancer, a redhead who always looks like she’s ready to model in a pin-up photo shoot, about the state of the food industry in the U.S.:  how it’s harder to stay thin here even when eating “healthy”; how it’s easier and cheaper to find food riddled with chemicals than it is to find anything natural; how bigger equals better by the American standard.  I tell her about Green Bean Delivery, a service that delivers local organic farm products right to your door every week.  Just then a police helicopter swoops low and loud overhead, spotlights beaming down over the neighborhood.

“Oh god they heard us, they’re coming for us!” I laugh.  “Maybe we’ll get deported to a country that doesn’t support GMOs. . . .”  

My friend The Tattooed Gentleman—a sideshow oddity I met while working a carnivale game for Naughti Gras—told me about the butcher shop that his great-grandfather used to own, then sent me these great pictures:

 

 

(His grandfather is the little guy sitting on the stool in the middle front.)

It’s kind of fucked up that there are no family members on my Death List, but that’s because my parents will be with me, and they know how to get in touch with the whole family.  I seem to know a lot of disparate groups of people that don’t always have a common link (other than me), and a wide-ranging surrogate family that I’ve accumulated over the years.

So here’s the rundown of my Death List:  

My boss (because, duh, he’ll need to know that I won’t be coming in to work, um . . . ever) 

My counterpart/best friend at work (because even though the boss will know, she’s the one who really gets shit done)  

My best friend Allsion (because she lives two hours away, and can notify my “college family”)  

Spirit Guide Sam (for the obvious reasons of karmic repercussions, and he can relay the message to my city friends)  

My surrogate grandma (since she’s not part of the biological family, my mom wouldn’t know how to get hold of her)  

Burt (for the same reason as my day-job boss, and because he told me I’m like the daughter he never had)  

My best friend going all the way back to middle school (because he can tell everyone from that part of my life; plus he’s getting married in a couple weeks and might be a little pissed if I’m not there)  

My surrogate parents from when I lived in Bloomington, Illinois (otherwise they’d never find out)  

Captain of my soccer team (so she can find a new keeper)  

David.  

Yeah.  “The” David.  I certainly didn’t see that one coming . . . and before you jump to any conclusions—we’re not back together (though that hasn’t stopped the rumors from flying fast and furious . . . good ol’ St. Louis).  Prior to Mexico, we had a really good run-in at a mutual friends’ baby shower.  It was like someone finally just flipped the bullshit switch to OFF.  We hugged, we apologized, we smiled, we laughed, we talked like old friends, and no one called anyone “the c-word.”  And we’ve stayed in contact ever since.  I helped him move into his new apartment—even “wing-manned” for him with his new very attractive (very chesty) female neighbors.  (Yeah. I’m pretty much the best fucking ex girlfriend ever—maybe that’s why I keep getting dumped.  Totally not to do with the fact that I like to play with big scary knives and dead animal parts.)  And he’s been very adamant about being in the loop in case he can help me with anything post-op.  So there’s that.  Being sick, being weakened by pain, is so much worse when you face it on your own.  So maybe he can’t give me all the answers, and maybe he can’t heal me faster, but maybe I won’t feel so alone.   

Who’s on your Death List?  

 

(Oh, and you guys, obviously.  You all made the Death List, don’t you feel special??)