Defense Mechanisms

My dog emits static electricity. Tiny volts course through her fur. My father says she’s cursed. She says it is a dog’s reason for being, to be pet. But I’ve seen our dinner guests reach out to touch her when she’s belly-up, then they retract their hands in horror. And I’ve seen my dog smiling at them with her corn cob teeth.

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Every morning I paint a new layer of super strength super glue on my body, all over, and it dries like a sunburn, bubbling, translucent, but it cannot peel from my flesh the way a burn might. Instead it hardens, a shell, and every movement pulls new hairs from my skin, but pain is the price charged for safety.

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There is a lizard, the Texas Horned, who shoots blood from her eyes to keep the men away. Only the reptile is known to abuse her defense, to empty her body of blood until she is a pile of scales. People might point and think a snake has shed her skin but our lizard deserves martyrdom. She died for his cause.

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My friend told me you were asking for it because I never purchased a whistle made for such dogs. And so afterwards I bought that plastic phallus and I looked at it every day. I knew that even were wet fingers to intrude on my insides, I could not get myself excited enough to blow.

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An amphibian, the Hairy Frog is her name, which makes me think she doesn’t get much unwanted attention, anyway. But when a hand reaches for her rubbery thighs in the dark, it is all she can do to break her own toes, press the bones through her skin, and use the shards as claws. And once the fight is done, her feet are left holy as some religious experience. And I know that the other frogs say to her, who is going to want you now, hairy little frog.

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He said, let me buy you a drink, and that is the peacock fan of the homo sapiens, its indigo rich enough to afford the espresso martini. I accepted the drink and then the bar turned watercolor and my body was on autopilot, because my mind was not there. Perhaps it is the defense of the woman to leave her self unattended.

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The French Guiana rainforests are home to a race of termites, a lesbian colony, who live in peace until their fetishizers come for them. In this case, the young send the elderly on suicide missions, to surround their home, and upon contact, the old bugs explode, dousing their attackers in poison, and the adolescent termites wave, goodbye, grandma. And I look at my grandmother, teetering on the brink of sleep, drooling pointless saliva, and I think, if only.

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I woke up and threw up. My insides, neon bile, painted unfamiliar carpet abstract. I watched his tumorous body, heaving with slumber under a force field of linen and it is a strange thing, to watch a complete stranger sleep. My confusion was secondary to the pain that blossomed in my gut; the ache that flowered between my thighs.

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We might take cue from the sea cucumber, who for better or worse, expels her organs to ward off those eyeing her from the ocean’s gloomiest corners. We might learn to secrete our gummiest parts, slick with fluids, blushing with blood, to repel those who call us, hey beautiful. Were I to get coffee with Ms. Cucumber I would ask: is it to show him you are ugliest on the inside?

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Before he awoke, I climbed atop him and considered my options. I could have dropped the pillow over his face, but the male human is stronger than his female counterpart. So instead, I prepared him by licking his length, grazing the satin skin with my teeth to remind him I was only animal. And I pierced myself with him as he snored, because humans invented justice; an eye for an eye.

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Most interesting might be the opossum, who, as you know, plays dead when approached by her predator. It might work for her, but when I was stretched across his altar, thick with sleep, he didn’t let my stillness stop him.