CHEEKY

Pinch my cheek. The one on my face. Let's say the left one. Pinch it hard and pull it harder. Now you can see into the side of my mouth. The inside of my cheek resembles an archway or a wet tunnel. The teeth on the side of my mouth line up nicer than the front ones. They curve backwards, twist upward into the back gums of my mouth, wind into the entryway of my throat. Take a knife or something like one. Just something clean and sharp. Still firmly pinching my cheek, slice a clean line, close to, parallel to, my teeth. If done correctly, you will have cleanly removed the majority of my left cheek. Prepare a bowl of flour (mixed with salt and pepper) and a bowl of beat eggs. Heat a generously oiled pan to medium high. Dredge the cheek twice over. For added texture you can do an additional dredging into bread crumbs but, considering the fatty softness of the cheek, this may not be appealing to you. Once dredged, place in pan and fry on each side for approximately 5-8 minutes or until evenly browned on each side. Serve cheek with raw vegetables and grains.

Feed me some of my cheek. Feel free to ease it into the cut up side of the mouth where the cheek once was. If my teeth have experienced pain induced lockjaw, be sure to use a thin wedge to pry my mouth open. Once pried, you may have to manually simulate chewing by taking hold of my chin and upper lip and then pulling the mouth open and shut. Doing so, notice when the cheek has been satisfactorily chewed and then massage my throat until swallowing occurs.

Feed yourself some of the cheek. Note the gummy resistance and the balanced textures that the different sides of the cheek offer. On the one hand, you have my skin nicely crisped and on the other you have my pink inner flesh, tender and buttery to both the knife and the tongue. I will supervise your ingestion of the cheek. There should be a substantial amount of blood flowing out of my mouth, disregard this, such bleeding is to be expected when severing the cheek. I may have occasion to wince during your meal. This could be due to a number of factors. The consumption of my own cheek may have made me nauseous. In this case, make sure to provide enough space between each other, as in the off chance that I vomit, you will not be splattered upon. It may be due to the severity of my injury. In such a case, a firm pat upon the back will not only encourage me to endure such trauma but may also inspire me to accept the permanence of my deformity, the sham that is regeneration, the justice behind the losing of my cheek, the acceptance of your own mouth's enjoyment in consuming parts of my own, etc.

Little effort or emphasis should be needed to make me understand the uselessness of my own pain or the unimportance of living without my formerly attached cheek. In fact, treat your meal as an opportunity to import upon me the meaning of this new lot in life. To do so you must initiate a nonverbal stance. This stance should convey your own delight with this meal of cheek, the very nourishment you are receiving from my severed me. Establish brutal, unwavering eye contact. Slowly chew a large piece of the cheek. Be sure to maintain a visual correspondence with me. If I appear overcome with the absence of my cheek (ie fainting) then you should simply prod the wounded side of my mouth with either a fork or knife; doing so will certainly jolt me to attention. Having renewed my attention, proceed to visually reinforce what you are eating. Slide chewed up portions of my cheek out of your mouth, as though you were sticking your own tongue out to tease. Lean towards my eyes and noisily chomp down on the cheek, be sure to not swallow right away. Instead, play with the cheek, smack your lips, roll it around in your mouth. If I seem both cognizant and distressed then you are succeeding in your nonverbal correspondence with me. Move to the other senses for further reinforcement. Place your mouth on my nose in the fashion of a suction cup. Breathe into my nose. There is no need to confirm that I am smelling the freshly seared cheek, as long as my eyes are open then I am certainly smelling it. Now the ears. Place your mouth beside either of my ears, perhaps the left as it is closer to the removal site and will aid me in connecting the stimulus with the recent cheek extraction. Chew noisily, mingling the blood of the cheek with your saliva to add a liquid like squelch to every chew. Chew voraciously, getting closer and closer to my ear. If so compelled, feel free to swab my inner ear with either your tongue or a portion of my cheek. Staining my ear with cheek juice or even just your spittle will create a nice streak that once dried will help trigger my memories of this very meal.

By now you will have finished the majority of the meal. Look to me to confirm if I am properly dazed yet mildly aware. Sop up the remaining bits of cheek with your accompanying grains. Pat me once more upon the back. Jolt my mouth hole once more in a sharp and conclusive fashion. Burp. Get up from the table and walk to the nearest bathroom in order to take a nice, rounded shit.

There's Something Afoot with this Whole Living

I've been reading about Roberto Clemente and Bruce Lee this morning. Two people whose bodies shaped their careers, their celebrity. But then they died. They vanished in their thirties. Bruce-32, Roberto-38. They died roughly a year apart. You could say that they were imported celebrities. They earned paychecks thanks to Americans. Roberto, an exceptional baseball player in most every dimension of the game. Bruce, the ultimate hybrid of martial arts master and film star. As I pull up their wikipedia and indulge in their chronicles, I look at the faces first. In their most famous photographs, both have an angled stare. Take a look:

Bruce's comes from a deadly stance, a pounce in waiting, that confident form revealed in his shirtless, muscle-bound body. He snickers, feints with his hands in eagerness, bounces on his feet. Roberto looks like a leader. His brow somewhat furrowed, reaching towards something unrealized, there's contemplation and doubt here, I feel like this kind of image is the template for the OBAMA HOPE posters that managed to subtly weave a narrative of racial accomplishment and progression in the striking firmness of a minority claiming their rightful place as leaders/shapers of a new reality. Roberto's proportions are beautiful, the flare of his nose, the curving of his lips, his balanced eyebrows and ears. Bruce's face doesn't want to be beautiful. The puffiness of his face suggests more muscles lurking underneath, as if his cheeks were as equally prepared to parry a blow as his forearms. His pursed lips are deadly, prepared; they've sized you up and a judgment has been cast, he knows how to mete it out and his closed lips to do not need to speak the finality of what he is about to do to you. I can't imagine having to bear to look at this face alone, to solely receive the fullness of it.

Roberto was dedicated to supporting the hardships of his people, Puerto Rican or otherwise. His people remain those who face hardships with action, with dedication. He died aboard a plane headed to bring supplies to people ravaged by an earthquake. He felt the need to go personally due to reports of misuse of goods that had previously been sent. He wanted to insure that those in need were able to get some support in their actual hands. Roberto's "charity" was no stunt, his involvement in the lives of others was an established choice throughout his professional career.

Bruce appears to have been more intensely involved in his own regiment, as well as his family. The intense regard he had for his body was proven in his mindset, he openly shared his philosophy of personal refinement, which required a life of dedication in diet, exercise, mentality, and action. He seems to have taken the mastery, the completeness of his existence as his most sacred rite. While it is certainly valid to call this into question considering his steady stream of television and film work, I believe the magnetism, the widespread identification with Lee came from something fundamental in the way he had shaped himself, the body and attitude he possessed. It inspired a certain kind of control/concentration, perhaps utterly masculine, but nonetheless, an energy was undeniably present in Lee. His bleak death, tied to the swelling of the brain, seems like an affront, or perhaps a vindication, to the physical specimen he truly was.

Athletic performance, especially the male-centric sports and combat side of it, seems to possess this insatiable taunting aspect, at least personally speaking. These people defy what you believe you are capable of with near disdain. While grief clearly surrounds the young young young deaths of both Roberto/Bruce, is there also a tinge of smugness? I would doubt with Roberto, considering the hero of good deeds he has been rightfully shaped as, but you know, the central element to both of these men was their bodily capabilities first and foremost. If they didn't have what it takes they would have been footnotes. Audiences have selective attention, you only get it if they understand you to deserve it. And that understanding is automatic, it's the sublime recognition of the gulf between you, the anonymous witness, and the celebrated performer. Everyone can experience degrees of success, but that fervent following, that establishment that some people can just become, through the forcefulness of their abilities, is something intoxicating. Humanity is most of all a social monstrosity: a constant barrage of communication, negotiation, sharing, performance, perspective after perspective. Those who receive near universal acclaim for some aspect of their being reveal a distillation of some feature of that very humanity, or so we think, and then, with its unruly jaws, that same quality of life, of breathing potential at all times, clamps down hard, obliterates what we once stood in awe of and it laughs, builds something new, and offers those alive something else to fawn over, get inspired by, and then maybe maybe grants you, the living, a chance to do you in front of someone else alive.