The Plight of Chickens

For all the trouble he was, Olivia held the fondest memories of Jacob. Although she could honestly say that she didn't dislike any of her old lovers - at least not beyond the few weeks after breaking up with them, or vice versa - Jacob was a favorite. As a young woman, Olivia loved to be in love. She watched her relationships blossom from a place outside of herself, as if they were movies she was starring in. Back then, her romances might last a year, sometimes longer. Or they might fizzle out after a few months. A new man would capture her interest and she might stop returning her paramour's phone calls, or tell him she wished to be only friends. She liked meeting new people, and beginnings made her feel alive.

She and Jacob dated for eight months. Her intent upon meeting him was to have her first one-night stand. At that particular time, the idea of not getting entangled with a man appealed to Olivia. Plus, she was curious about the transactional nature of mutually satisfying sex for the sake of itself. No ties and no promises sounded like uncomplicated fun.

So many men she knew would talk of their secret sexual rendevous; and not a few women friends. She was intrigued by the mystery surrounding casual sex and felt like an outsider for never having experienced it. As if she were missing out on a rite of passage that kept her immature and underdeveloped. Instead, she found herself always falling in love with a guy; his life, his interests, his humor, his friends. She was intrigued by how a relationship grew slowly, day by day, into more than just flirtation or casual dating, and she liked to contemplate it. Olivia guessed that she was in love with being in love.

They first met at her job on a slow Saturday. Jacob and his friend had strolled in to the carpet retailer where she worked as a salesperson. They were looking to carpet his boat. He was younger, good-looking, and their attraction was instant and sizzling. The two men and Olivia struck up a witty banter straight away. Later that afternoon, after she sold him a remnant of blue synthetic grass carpet, Jacob returned to the shop, without his friend, to ask for her phone number; and playfully refused to leave until she gave it to him. In fact, their entire relationship could be most characterized by play. This fact is perhaps why she remembered him fondly years later.

Their first meeting set the tone for what would be an energetic and exciting affair. For much of the year that followed they traveled together on weekends, went to concerts, drank a good bit of tequila, and had playful passionate sex. They had their struggles, to be sure. Not the least of which was jealousy. Not his, but hers. Jacob wasn't the jealous type. Olivia found his lack of jealousy to be a refreshing change from the men she had dated over the years before meeting him. And the intensity of her own felt like an unwelcome surprise visitor. What bothered her most was how women flirted with him right in front of her when they were out dancing in the clubs. Jacob had a dazzling smile, a confident demeanor, and he bore a charm that attracted women of all ages. Jacob, Olivia thought, was an electrostatic force, rubbing against the desire of women around him. And without him even so much as uttering a word to them. It wasn't just his looks that attracted women to him, but his looks didn't help matters. Jacob would tell her that it was her looks that attracted women to him. He told her that women compete with each other and that she was a beautiful magnet for other women's desire for him, simply because she was with him. Jacob was a 3rd year Psychology Major, and Olivia, while not a student at the time, was most interested in human nature and interpersonal relations. She guessed this fact was the underlying force of their attraction. They fit together subconsciously, snugly. Though she hadn't initially believed his psychoanalysis of women, she later wondered if he wasn't close to the mark. 

They were inseparable during their months together. They pushed the boundaries of their emotional waves and reactions to each other. After sex or during long road trips they would talk about things that mattered - family, old lovers, work, school, and human nature. It was likely through this mutual interest in relationship dynamics that they fell in love along the way, even if Olivia never called it that. Jacob, she maintained, was just her one-night stand that lasted eight months. In fact, the couple never spoke of a future together at all. Eventually she met his family, and even introduced him to her friends, all the while knowing the relationship would end. Ideally before either of them got hurt. Jacob once told her that from the instant they first kissed he worried about losing her, and imagined how he would feel when she finally left him. They didn't idly talk about their relationship, or their relationships with others. Their talk was more like that of inquisitive researchers seeking answers inside of the other. This tango around life's meaning, like two people learning the dance moves, was what left Jacob's permanent mark on Olivia's heart. Jacob was light-hearted, smart, fun, and only half serious about anything, right up until the affair ended.

They had been together for a couple of months when Jacob began crawling through her small bedroom window in the night, sometimes hiding in her room while she was out with friends. His presence would startle her when she returned home expecting to sleep after seeing a movie, or after a night of partying.  Jacob took to hiding quietly under her bed until she slid into the covers. Then he would crawl out from under the bed to grab her and kiss her in the sheets like a burglar; he burgled her. It was a terrifying prank that made her angry, but that they would later laugh about. Olivia often wondered how he could fit his large body through the small window above her desk. Jacob was 6'2" and weighted 160 lbs.

Jacob teased her about the things that troubled her. Granted, Olivia was troubled by specific and perhaps peculiar things. One example was her concern for the plight of chickens. She would sometimes, over dinner or while having a drink, talk of her worry over chickens and how they are mistreated. Eating chicken evoked feelings of guilt in Olivia; but what does one eat if not chicken? It was rather silly, she guessed, but it troubled her nonetheless. Once, she burst into tears in the car while they drove down the highway behind a chicken truck. She couldn't bear the sight of their feathers floating off the truck from their cramped and frenzied quarters; no doubt en route to having their necks wrung. Or to being forced into cages with too many others for the short time before meeting their horrific ends. She would go on about the subject when it gripped her and Jacob would look at her pityingly, curiously, and sometimes try to console her through stifled laughter. Olivia fretted out loud over the plight of chickens whenever they ate chicken, or if she happened to see a chicken. Even if it was a caricature of a chicken on a sign over a fast food chicken joint. Olivia flatly refused to enter Kentucky Friend Chicken because she had heard that, of all the chicken exploiters and abusers, KFC was the worst.

Although they enjoyed each other immensely, Olivia and Jacob fought quite a lot. Probably because they drank shots of tequila. But also they were young and trying to sort who they were and how they fit into the world from their respective vantage points. Like young lovers will, they threw themselves at one another, via passion or fury, through unspoken pleas for the other to love them. Jacob's best friend, Kunico, would laugh at them and say, "You two fight how you fuck", because surely he had heard their fits of passion through the thin walls of the condo he shared with Jacob. She'd certainly heard Kunico's knockings in the night from his bedroom across the living room. Olivia saw Jacob as a tireless lover, and Olivia loved to be loved.

Even Olivia suspected she bore a peculiar sense of what beauty is. She could find beauty in the simplest things. Wheat blowing on the wind; the crackle of paper; ants in a line bumping noses; a spider's intricate web; the sound of Jacob's chest hair full of soap as she scratched it in the shower. By these types of things, Olivia was enrapt. And by Jacob, she was utterly enrapt. He was the most beautiful man she had ever known. The couple shared a curiosity of life that was as deep as a Great Lake. And together they dived deeper and deeper into their life potential, day after day and week after week. Jacob's curiosity for human emotions was intense. He liked to incite Olivia's emotions, like jealousy, anger, or sadness. She had found it unsettling how Jacob had seemed so attracted to her sadness. So much was he attracted to her sadness that he would say or do things to cause her to feel sad. Like the time when she left her camera at his house and he took naked photos of the women he had slept with in her absence. He told her that her sadness made her as beautiful to him as her laughter did. She thought, back then, about those women in the photos. Did they think Jacob loved them? Could they have considered that soon after they left his bed he would call her to have dinner, or to travel to Mexico for the weekend, to fly to Vegas with him, or drive to Palm Springs? Did they wait for his calls that didn't come? She never knew the women, but only saw photos of them posed naked on his bed, smiling or looking seductive. Jacob would sometimes say hurtful things to her and she would write them down and later show them to him. He would get angry and accuse her of trying to make him feel guilty. Olivia guessed that he was right. That's surely what she was doing; trying to guilt him. Maybe not consciously, but what other reason would she have of showing him what he had said that hurt her? Maybe she wanted him to see how horrible he could be; or maybe she wanted an apology so that she could carry on being the woman of his dreams. Olivia thought she didn't love Jacob, after all; she just loved being in love. Even though she sometimes didn't like his behavior, he was very smart and he made her laugh.

The day finally came when she broke up with him and he was very sad indeed, just as he'd anticipated. Too many things had totaled up to more than she could tolerate from a lover. Too often she cried over the past months, and she was too much jealous. But who wouldn't be? She simply told him it was over and she didn't want to see him again. Then packed up her toiletries in a small bag and left the lingerie he had bought for her in his dresser drawer. She figured he had other women to console him, or soon enough would.

A long time would pass before Olivia dated someone else. One night, shortly after she had stopped seeing him, Jacob left a cryptic note on her door. It was like a riddle that she didn't fully understand until long afterward. For years she kept the interesting note in his lovely handwriting. He had written about they kept each other in the closet as an aversion to the living room. She would happen across the note once in awhile (from a box she kept under the bed), and through multiple readings over time she understood it a little better.

As the years passed, Olivia enjoyed more mature and thoughtful relationships with men. She became more responsible for her feelings, and more careful with theirs. She grew from her experiences with lovers and, looking back, she was grateful for what they taught her - about herself and about love. She would look back on those years when she dated Jacob, and other men, and remember mostly the good times. She didn't dwell on the pain, though she could still feel traces of it in her being. People, she had learned, are just what they are. They could do the worst thoughtless things and the next moment cry because their feelings were hurt. Her memories of being with Jacob often made her smile. They had been two people who tried to love each other but didn't know what love was. So instead they enjoyed each other and, for a season, laughed. Like the day she and Jacob stopped at Church's chicken after an afternoon of making love on the beach. Sitting across from each other on the hard bench seats, feeling famished, they scarfed down their hot fried chicken in total silence. Silence while eating, Olivia knew, was a sign of pure satisfaction. She recalled how his face shone with chicken grease that was smeared over his cheeks and mouth. She could feel the greasy chicken on her own face that day, too. She watched his soft red lips curl over his brilliant white teeth, as he smiled at her and took a big bite of chicken thigh. She beamed back at him and said, "What's so funny?"

"It's good", Jacob said, chomping through his grin. "And being here with you... I feel alive".