RED MEAT

Actin— myosin— tropomyosin— contracting in unison to pull my finger flexors inward, yanking my fingertips down to hammer the keys of this computer. Blood saturates my muscles, delivering oxygen, returning carbon dioxide, delivering oxygen, returning carbon dioxide. A never-ending symphony of red meat moves beneath my skin, zapped with different frequencies of electrical impulses to puppeteer my body exactly how I’d like. I eat my steak medium-rare; I enjoy the similarity to my own flesh— the aforementioned saturation of blood. Delivering oxygen, returning carbon dioxide. The second-closest I’ve come to red meat was in the Toledo Medical School’s cadaver lab. The donor was an 87 year old female taken by non-alcoholic cirrhosis. She was inexplicably missing a kidney, pancreas, and gallbladder. I held the sawed-off ventral section of her ribcage. The intercostal muscle stuck between the ribs was textured similarly to the dry rotisserie chicken legs I used to discreetly toss in the trash. I held her heart. The myocardium had the same dry texture. Her aortic tissue was flimsy and reminded me of the slippery-thin layer of fat I peel off my chicken breasts. Still, it served her well for 87 years. Delivering oxygen, returning carbon dioxide. I held her liver. It resembled overcooked pork: stiff and scarred. The medical student conducting our field trip made an incision in the skin of her thigh. At once, I recall the first-closest I’ve been to red meat: sitting cross-legged in my bedroom a month prior, holding a scalpel over my leg in the same fashion. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t anxious. I was listening to Clair de Lune in an eerie Lexapro-induced calm. The blade went through my skin like butter. Parting epidermis, dermis, blood beading before I reached subcutaneous fat. Delivering oxygen, returning carbon dioxide. It looked just like the anatomy diagrams in the books on my shelf. Like red meat. I wasn’t depressed. I wasn’t anxious. Just taken by morbid curiosity and a craving for physical sensation. I scrubbed the incision out with isopropyl alcohol and slapped a band-aid on it. It didn’t happen again. Like I said, I wasn’t depressed. My curiosity was sated. I gained tactile proof that my steak, my cadaver, and myself were all the same beneath the surface. All red meat. Two warm, one cold on the metal table. Two dead, one terribly and wonderfully alive. Two saturated with blood, one exsanguinated and embalmed. Delivering oxygen, returning carbon dioxide. All rapidly propelling themselves toward the same fates— enzymatic breakdown, bacterial consumption, disappearance at last.