How to beat the heat... sip sip sip

 Summer is a vulgar season, and that redeems it. Bride and groom sit at the end of the bar. They sip their drinks sullenly through straws. They stare down at the oak. Occasionally they look up and smile into her phone camera. 

She is Korean. Her white dress is short and her veil made of nylon. He is Italian. His tuxedo is traditional. I watch them and feel sorry, because they seem unhappy on their wedding day. But people in New York become not so much people, but impressions of them… so I’m only a little sorry. Heat is a confusing sedative. People cannot think or speak properly, so they scream out loud or in their melting subconscious. Bodies burst out of clothes. People don’t bother to wrestle them back in. Man and woman are sweating at the end of the bar. But yes, stay just as you are. sip sip sip

This week my emotions were like bombs. I saw them in front of me, popped them in my mouth, swallowed them naively, and they burst inside of me. I rode the N from les to the edge of astoria, drawing a horse, and then back to les and into Brooklyn, drawing a lady. I got off and took buses back to queens, smoking cigarettes at transfers and crying uncontrollably behind big sunglasses. sip sip sip

While cold makes me sink deeper into my body, heat makes me want to escape it. Summer heat makes me feel as if I’m on the brink. My skin feels too tight, my hair too thick, my time too long

Sometimes New York gets me in a tizzy. I can find the people in it bleak and belonging to a world that is offensively small. And I don’t mean small, like, the barrier of entry is too high, or exclusive, or impenetrable. I actually think it would be somewhat easy to penetrate; so many of those inside want so badly for love by someone halfway attractive, talented, or with some professional potential. I mean small as in spoiled, unimaginative, repetitive, and predictable. It happens. I understand. I’m sure it’s livable from the inside. But watching it has depressed me. As has the heat. sip sip sip

lamb

 I roasted a leg of lamb because I felt like I needed to. I lived with my grandparents on their sheep farm when I was growing up, twice. First for three years when I was a child, then for a few when I was a teenager. Every spring lambs would be born. Some ewes birthed three or four, others only one, a few lambs were born still. My pépère showed me how to clip their tails off with a contraption that looked like a nutcracker. You insert their tails into the slot and squeeze the handles closed. The tail falls to the ground and you plunge the nub into a chemical that sterilizes the wound. As a child I preferred to just hold the lambs in my arms as he did the chopping. I squeezed them very tight and they became still. I nuzzled them against my cheek and whispered to them so they’d be calm. When the cleaver closed, they jolted and mewed and often writhed out of my small arms. I played with them afterward.

My pepere sheared sheep expertly. He has since he was 16. He wrestled them into a position in which their shoulders were against his knees, and their back hooves and legs perpendicular to his legs. In this position they fell limp, like dummies. Their bellies fell over their thighs. They understood now was not the time to fight, but be taken. He sheared up and down with a razor, until their wool was short and groovy. Fluffs fell on the cement slab that was at the entrance of the barn. I would play with them in my hands, stretching them apart, padding them together, pulling them into shapes. The rest he swept up into a pile.
The lambs would stand close to their mothers in the field. They’d play, kick their legs up. They’d also lay and nuzzle against their mums’ new haircuts. The girls would grow up and most boys would be picked up and brought to slaughter. We would get some of the meat back and eat it for supper. Lots of stews and curries. On more celebratory occasions, my mémère would cook a roast.
I'd never cooked one myself. My birthday is near and I deeply wanted to cook a hunk of meat and serve it to people I love in a beautiful way. Providing in this way is very romantic to me.
I bought 6.5 pounds from Akropolis Meat Market. They weighed it in front of me, and I asked them to keep the bone in. I brought it home and dropped it on the counter and unwrapped the paper. It looked very much like a muscle. Pale ligaments stretched beyond its deep redness. Snow white fat fell in thick lines. 

I made a dozen incisions in the meat. 

I ground up anchovies, garlic, and rosemary and 

I stuffed it inside them with my fingers, heavily dosing the little cavities. 

I squeezed anchovies into butter with my hands and 

I smeared the paste atop the whole surface, covering it completely. 

I licked off every remnant left on me. 

I placed it on the oven rack at 325° for 20 minutes per pound, per memere’s instruction—

she likes it bloody and so, 

I like it bloody. 

I put a pyrex pan underneath it to catch excess drippings, and 

I used that to season the potatoes I roasted afterward, along with olive oil, salt, pepper, and more rosemary. (Next time, 

I will roast the potatoes underneath the lamb simultaneously.) 

The lamb is such an innocent thing, a famous beacon of purity. But there is something so vulgar about the act of cooking it. What a delicious contradiction I served on a silver platter