flowers all night.
With our noses touching, he told me about all the dreams he had for the future of Operation H.E.A.R.T., about the projects he envisioned, and about the offshoots of theOperation he hoped to establish across the nation and, eventually, the world.
“The problems in this country are only a drop in the veritable ocean of animal suffering and injustice that drenches the globe. Look at Africa,” he mused. “Just think of what we could do about the poachers there.”
He asked me my opinion on many matters, for now that I had been in the field, albeit in what had only been categorized as a “low- to medium-risk situation,” but in the field nonetheless, he trusted me to assess the feasibility of the other campaigns we had tentatively planned.
“After we are in Doctor Sorensen’s office,” Simon whispered, referring to the Del Mar veterinarian who catered to the moneyed crowd and made his own fortune declawing Persians and docking the tails of Dobermans, cruel and unnecessary practices, “do you think we will have enough time to pour purple paint all over his surgical instruments before the security company responds to the alarm system?” Purple was the Operation’s signature color.
“Yes, but it depends on how many of us go in …”
“I want to take the crew to Tijuana so we can see how bad those bullfights really are. Who do you think I can count on,” he asked me, “to stay serious and not just disappear for a beer somewhere on Avenida Revolución?”
“Ptarmigan, for sure,” I replied. “Bear, maybe …”
And, on many nights, once he had finished soliciting my take on this idea or that, he asked me, with his hyacinth breath in my ear, “How long will you let me do this for?” and stirred in secret and familiar ways under the sheets, which were subtly scented with the sweat our skins seeped in our sleep, and with the narcotic smell of the jasmine that thrived despite neglect and clung with tenacious tendrils to the window screen.
“As long as you want,” I always answered. And I felt a pleasantkind of cloak falling over my consciousness, softening my awareness of time, blurring the space between us, and stilling, for a few precious moments, the ladybug that so often wandered behind my eyes. I smelled jasmine and heard Simon’s voice saying, again and again, “My girl, my dear girl.”
SOMETIMES, ALMOST AGAINST MY OWN WILL , I gave quick consideration to how paltry—silly, even—Operation H.E.A.R.T.’s actions were, especially in contrast to Simon’s ambitions. We:
smashed the windows of Superior Skins, a fur coat and fine leather goods shop in the Gaslamp Quarter, and destroyed its inventory with seven cans of purple paint;
staged a peaceful protest near the pony ride at the annual Lakeside Fair. (“These poor, put-upon ponies,” Ptarmigan yelled into the camera, “deserve better!”);
removed dozens of live lobsters more than once from the confines of an enormous saltwater tank in a chi-chi seafood restaurant called Laminaria, where Bear-with-a-flower-in-her-hair worked as a hostess, and transported them in the back of my station wagon to the shores of Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, and Mission Beach during high tides;
infiltrated the cognitive research laboratory of our university with the help of a brilliant, wheelchair-bound exchange student from Prague, one Damek Kafka, a.k.a. our very own Ptarmigan in disguise, who surreptitiously slipped lab mice into secret compartments I had sewn into his voluminous sleeves and then released them into the eucalyptus groves;
and left harassing notes taped to the vehicles of employees at a cosmetics testing lab in Escondido, where, I imagined, there were dozens of bunnies smeared in Champagne Charm, Frosted Fuchsia, and Peach Fizz.
Still, despite their relative inconsequentiality, I was thrilledwith these small successes, as were Bear, Ptarmigan, Raven, Orca, Bumble, and Simon. After all, we were each of us just looking for a
With our noses touching, he told me about all the dreams he had for the future of Operation H.E.A.R.T., about the projects he envisioned, and about the offshoots of theOperation he hoped to establish across the nation and, eventually, the world.
“The problems in this country are only a drop in the veritable ocean of animal suffering and injustice that drenches the globe. Look at Africa,” he mused. “Just think of what we could do about the poachers there.”
He asked me my opinion on many matters, for now that I had been in the field, albeit in what had only been categorized as a “low- to medium-risk situation,” but in the field nonetheless, he trusted me to assess the feasibility of the other campaigns we had tentatively planned.
“After we are in Doctor Sorensen’s office,” Simon whispered, referring to the Del Mar veterinarian who catered to the moneyed crowd and made his own fortune declawing Persians and docking the tails of Dobermans, cruel and unnecessary practices, “do you think we will have enough time to pour purple paint all over his surgical instruments before the security company responds to the alarm system?” Purple was the Operation’s signature color.
“Yes, but it depends on how many of us go in …”
“I want to take the crew to Tijuana so we can see how bad those bullfights really are. Who do you think I can count on,” he asked me, “to stay serious and not just disappear for a beer somewhere on Avenida Revolución?”
“Ptarmigan, for sure,” I replied. “Bear, maybe …”
And, on many nights, once he had finished soliciting my take on this idea or that, he asked me, with his hyacinth breath in my ear, “How long will you let me do this for?” and stirred in secret and familiar ways under the sheets, which were subtly scented with the sweat our skins seeped in our sleep, and with the narcotic smell of the jasmine that thrived despite neglect and clung with tenacious tendrils to the window screen.
“As long as you want,” I always answered. And I felt a pleasantkind of cloak falling over my consciousness, softening my awareness of time, blurring the space between us, and stilling, for a few precious moments, the ladybug that so often wandered behind my eyes. I smelled jasmine and heard Simon’s voice saying, again and again, “My girl, my dear girl.”
SOMETIMES, ALMOST AGAINST MY OWN WILL , I gave quick consideration to how paltry—silly, even—Operation H.E.A.R.T.’s actions were, especially in contrast to Simon’s ambitions. We:
smashed the windows of Superior Skins, a fur coat and fine leather goods shop in the Gaslamp Quarter, and destroyed its inventory with seven cans of purple paint;
staged a peaceful protest near the pony ride at the annual Lakeside Fair. (“These poor, put-upon ponies,” Ptarmigan yelled into the camera, “deserve better!”);
removed dozens of live lobsters more than once from the confines of an enormous saltwater tank in a chi-chi seafood restaurant called Laminaria, where Bear-with-a-flower-in-her-hair worked as a hostess, and transported them in the back of my station wagon to the shores of Ocean Beach, Pacific Beach, and Mission Beach during high tides;
infiltrated the cognitive research laboratory of our university with the help of a brilliant, wheelchair-bound exchange student from Prague, one Damek Kafka, a.k.a. our very own Ptarmigan in disguise, who surreptitiously slipped lab mice into secret compartments I had sewn into his voluminous sleeves and then released them into the eucalyptus groves;
and left harassing notes taped to the vehicles of employees at a cosmetics testing lab in Escondido, where, I imagined, there were dozens of bunnies smeared in Champagne Charm, Frosted Fuchsia, and Peach Fizz.
Still, despite their relative inconsequentiality, I was thrilledwith these small successes, as were Bear, Ptarmigan, Raven, Orca, Bumble, and Simon. After all, we were each of us just looking for a
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