Civet Servant

200 degrees of boiling water distilled with a concentrate of magnesium sulfate and sodium bicarbonate, ordinator-programmed for exact temperature control, heated in an industrial-class boiler, blasts through a stainless steel metal filter into Riparian’s cup, spurting from the leather and mahogany and rose gold $4000 coffee maker, complete with burr grinder and steam wand.

The dark-haired man dips his nose into the darkness of the cup, and inhales. His heart beats faster, as if the caffeine was already in his bloodstream. His eyes dilate over the ceramic rim, stark and creased as if sleepless from the womb.

He falls into the coffee, and washes up at a board meeting. He is a hot black substance in the form of a man. No one can see what he is. His black driving gloves grip the white mug. They speak of prices and speculation and it’s just blood washing past him. He sips his coffee slowly, darkly syrupy and umbilical.

Riparian, someone says. This animal cruelty legislature. Do we really…

He puts the coffee down, already missing the heat of it.

Well, he says. You and I as reasonable men know the scat of a wild civet cat contains the healthiest cherries. They act as a kind of—selector. If we battery farm them, we make more money, but lose that benefit.

Smile.

Wild. Free. In a cage. At the end of the day, what people really want is to eat something special.

*

I live on the leafy green knuckle of the atoll. I like being alone with myself. Away from the hot glass buildings and the antiseptic pouring through them like punishment enemas.

I walk through the coffee trees, and my breathing is loud and rubbery in my ears. Something stirs in the foliage. Maybe a civet cat. I wait until it is gone, then reach into the earth and open it up. The hatch is heavy, and behind it, steel rungs embedded in concrete. Sun shines on my black leather knuckles as I grip the ladder, fading with each drop of my heel.

*

A row of cages in a dark room. Earthy, barnyard smell.

I walk to the last cage. The animal must see something like a big fly coming. My bulbous black eyes. My proboscis snout. My thorny hair spilling out the back like antennae.

I pull the gas mask off. A retrograde model from the war. Not that one. The one before it.

I drink from a thermos, savoring my coffee in its fragrant womb. It comes on aggressively bitter, then swirls to a muddy sweetness. Sparks of flavor linger like phosphenes on the eye. Every sip is a half-remembered dream.

The animal in the cage stirs. I have the sudden urge to reach for the source instead of contenting myself with this mere fluid, so insubstantial and watery, when the beast that birthed it is right there, a tangle of muscles and hunger, dense and smelly and real.

I sniff at the wire bars of the cage, at the tingling metallic matrix which seems to be conducting something so satellitic and inborn as to hurt the permanent cavities of my jaw. I jerk back as the animal’s teeth snap at my nose. A hot spray of unwashed breath mists my face. The cage is a furnace. Diarrhea is more acidic, and heat transfers better through watery things. Need to feed you less water. It’ll teach you to be efficient with your mouth. And we can thicken the slop, but not too much. Your teeth will fall out eventually, and we shouldn’t set a precedent. And I really just don’t want you to eat solid food. The most solid thing that goes in your mouth should be the coffee cherries. The hard limit of your world. Uneaten. Swallowed. You will never know the pleasure you give. It passes through your body intact.

Dirty fingers thrust through the wire grid. The blond boy pants in the oven heat. That once-genteel skin, pale and protected from the tropical sun, is now red and festering, and muddy brown, dry and encrusted in some places, shining slick in others.

You gasp for air. Burning alive. Desperate for a little tepid water. And when you have nothing but water in your guts, you feel cramped. Just like your space. No fancy meals, no icebox, just this pellet dispenser which I am filling with coffee cherries.

I add a little more each day. Slowly stretching your belly. Does it give you a doomed feeling? Watching me blithely pour calamity into your digestive horizon? Here’s some nutritive slop. The taste will never change. We’re creating a product.

Too shy to eat in front of me? I can wait.

It’s easier if you eat. Or you’ll start to think. About why you stink.

Your father is a battery farmer. He’s cruel and efficient and no one thinks much about it. It’s what animals are for. He outsells me. I don’t care about the animals, but I care about quality. The civets need to hunt the cherries.

They said my company was done. Then the flavor changed. Even in the business of selling overpriced shit, there is something special about my high-end offerings. Very important people expect you to be served at their business meetings and diplomatic summits. And with the money, I will become one of those important people. Run for office. Civet servant.

Do you remember the first week? You were so hungry. I brought you to the point of starvation. Then I introduced a shiny (at that point) metal bowl to your environment. A buzzing, steaming bowl. In the dark, in your delirium, you assumed it was a mash or gruel, something crude but nutritive. And it was hard to pick out the olfactory warning signs in this dirty room, with the smell of jasmine coming through the vents, a confusion of skatole. But as your nose got closer, there was no mistaking it. That primal disgust. Your body warning you of rot and disease.

But it was very important for you to consume the civet feces. A fecal gut transplant. I mix it into your food every day. The inside of you: catgut. Your organs are an animal’s organs. Do you have gruesome moments? Knowing the smallest swarming recesses of you are populated by the bacteria of that precious cat? You are corrupted in the trillions.

Now your intestinal biome is identical to a civet cat. I tasted your brew every day until it was perfection. The flashy, new money artifice of your bowels, devolved into a feral sludge. Raw, animalistic…I’ll spare you the marketing copy.

I see you sniffing it. Trying to convince yourself of something. You’re a little sick, aren’t you? Unable to reconcile yourself.

What do you see?
What do you see?
What do you see?

A dark shape falls from the sun, or your closest approximation. Hatching from the hatch. Photons slip off me like water. Your father was arrogant, and you were arrogant, and a dark shape has cursed you.

I drank you in the boardroom. If that cup puked you up. Brown and crawling on the glass table. Slippery whelped from my tannins. The glass table would shatter under your naked weight.

Snap.

Here you are.

Do you remember?

I conjured you.

Away from your bodyguard. Away from your body. Away from your God.

A shared glass. A creep of flora. The swarm in my gut. Peristalsis, my metronome. You digested my suggestion. And then, at the entrance of this chamber, you disappeared. You are the dregs of yourself. A brown ghost.

You are in my stomach.

I finish my coffee. I contemplate the flavor lingering on my tongue. A note of defiance. I drag my empty thermos along the row of cages, a rattling spree.

They used to beg. Shout. Scream. They tried to talk. That’s fine. Just humanity being squeezed from their bodies. When the vocal cords fail, they plan. They manipulate their environment. Loosen the bars, grab my finger. Try to surprise me. Look for a big old jangling ring of keys dangling from my waist like a gaoler of yore.

Then they bite. The animal comes out. Then their strength finally leaves them. Eat. Shit. Repeat. Fecal battery.

You’re not broken. I can tell. You’re waiting. Can stain you brown as mud, but can’t dirty those blue eyes. Although they are looking a bit pink from the fecal dust in the air, and bloodshot from straining at the bars.

For what?

Cherries pour through my black leather fingers. It must hurt when it comes out. Those clumped, nutty coils. Hot rage and burning biomass. The essence of boy ass, distilled to a cup.

Does he taste you? Trying to deconstruct that special flavor that makes my coffee so rich, so pure, so intoxicating. It comes from your discomfort. Where the sun doesn’t shine, it shines brighter elsewhere.

Your father will never find you. But he might drink you.

I’d like to thank PETA and the Foundation for Sustainable Civet Farming for reaching out to me as part of their campaign for cruelty-free coffee. Civets everywhere are battery farmed in horrific, isolated conditions, just to sell an overpriced luxury product. Remember, save a civet, farm a twink!

✦

part of 18ft Leash