CECIL A written creative work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University A 5 In partial fulfillment of 3 (s the requirements for the Degree 2o<5 & * Master of Arts In English: Creative Writing by Joshua Alexander Hamlin Harris San Francisco, California May 2015 Copyright by Joshua Alexander Hamlin Harris 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read CECIL by Joshua Alexander Hamlin Harris, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Arts in English: Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. A/\. Peter Omer, J.D., M.F.A. Professor /j/lu - Toni Mirosevich, M.F.A. Professor CECIL Joshua Alexander Hamlin Harris San Francisco, California 2015 Cecil is a novel that explores the themes of alienation, microbial health, and post­ humanism. I certify that the Annotation is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work. /c* l~2— *W V 1 2 Peter Omer, Thesis Committee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am thankful to: my wife for her unwavering support of my mid-life “Crazy Ivan” and for her enduring love of my new best friend, Cecil; my sons, Leo and Lex, for being inspirational in their own quirky, wonderful, exuberant ways; and Peter Omer for letting me roll during the initial creative process and for many keen insights on completed drafts. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PARTI 2 Chapter 1 I slide my hands into the brine and begin to massage cabbage leaves as early morning sunlight breaks through a small crack in the heavy curtains covering my living room windows. It’s going to be a hot day in B-town, but it’s dark and cool in here. White scum has formed on the water’s surface and gathers on my hairy forearms as I reach deeper into the green bucket. They say the top mold should be discarded, but I know better. This batch has been fermenting for eight days, and I can just begin to feel its power. It’s blooming for me. It’s longing for a place in the folds of my intestines, the ripe core of my precious microbiome. And oh how I long for it. I close my eyes and finger the filigreed edges of the decomposing leaves. So smooth and fine, like perfectly decaying skin - so raw and alive and extraordinary. The microbes celebrate with me in the dark depths of the bucket, feeding on my dead skin cells and offering their all-powerful services in return. After twelve minutes (my trusty water-proof Timex - a sixteenth birthday present - now reads 7:19 a.m.), I pull out a large dripping piece of cabbage, suck it down, and lick the salty-sour water from my hands. Sauerkraut, so simple, so ancient, so awe inspiring .... The tang has intensified since yesterday, but this batch still has a ways to go. Luckily, batch 597 has peaked, and I will have plenty to feed my wondrous gut for the next few days. Without my bacteria-rich sauerkraut, I have no idea where I would be . or rather, who I would be. 3 After checking on an open vat of beet and pear kvass next to the T V. and a large ceramic vessel of yogurt covered with dead and dying flies next to the front door (the optimal spot in the house for quick, sour yogurt), I saunter from the living room into the kitchen - my mother’s kitchen (though she would hardly recognize it now). No matter how hard I try, I can still hear her shrill voice resonating through this old house: “Cecil, get in the bath and don’t forget to scrub your toes!” I didn’t know it then, but she had it out for me. “Cecil, your hands are filthy!” Then she would scrub me raw and cover me in sanitizer. She never knew when to quit. I run my finger along the heavily soiled countertop. “No disinfectant here, Mama,” I whisper as I suck dirt from my fingertip. Then I open the back door. It’s time for my bio-soldiers to come home and share the spoils of their nocturnal adventures with me. Marcus, Cassius, and Denarius spill into the kitchen, their thick nails skittering across the linoleum. I fall to my hands and knees, to be licked and to lick. “What have you found for me, my beauties?” I say, as we exchange bacterial greetings. “I want all of your exquisite, invisible treasures.” Marcus, my affectionate English Mastiff, rubs up against my face. I grab him and roll and scratch and nibble at his coat. Cassius and Denarius, two slobbery bloodhound brothers I saved from the pound, jump in. My dogs, my family, my loyal conduits to new germs and fungi - they help me every day in my mission to create my microbial kingdom, a tiny slice of heaven here on earth. With each lick, each exchange, my bacterial garden flourishes and I grow stronger. I have trained my soldiers well, encouraging in them all forms of garbage exploration and carcass revelry. It did not take much; wild dogs love to hunt at night. 4 One might say my neighbors disapprove of my dogs’ nightly excursions, but what do they know, with their sterile houses, guts, and lives. Mr. Montague, the king of the Antiseptics (that’s what I call the ignorant masses of sanitizer-addled mysophobes) and my neighbor since I was a kid, barks at me every time he sees me. “God damn you Cecil, clean your house,” he shouts. “Clean your dogs. Clean your disgusting body! Your mother would be ashamed!” Sometimes I ignore him. Sometimes I lunge toward him and growl. He thinks I’m feral. But I don’t care; I know he is dying inside, one squirt of Purell at a time. After feeding my dogs, I descend to the repository. A pull-chain light illuminates a large bookcase containing perfect rows of Para-Fix™ stool collection kits, each carefully labelled with the date and the time of preparation, along with my initials. A tag hangs from each vial recounting the exact type and amount of food I consumed prior to the sample and the consistency of the fecal specimen. I smile; I am approaching my thirteen-year anniversary, a real milestone if I do say so myself. In a few years, I will contact the world’s leading microbiologists, and they will come to test and praise me. And thus my reign will begin, and all of my hard work will start to pay off. All is silent down here except for the low, never-ending hum of activity emanating from my pit latrine located just behind the bookcase. I think the cockroaches are the noisiest inhabitants, but one can never be sure. The basement is unfinished and thus was completely off-limits for most of my childhood. It took many days of hard work with a pick axe and shovel to dig the hole for the latrine. When it got really deep, I had to 5 carry each bucket of dirt up a ladder and dump it into the southwest corner of the basement before climbing back down. After I was done digging, I constructed a wooden platform out of a couple of salvaged doors reinforced by scrap wood and placed it on top of the hole. I cut a small opening in the middle of one of the doors for my deposits and covered it with an old Cadillac hubcap. The latrine is almost full now, but somehow the dark pile never quite reaches the top; I wonder which creatures - the aforementioned cockroaches . .. the flies, the rats, or the trillions of bacteria reveling in my accumulated waste - 1 have to thank for that. Symbiosis. It’s a beautiful world. I carefully remove a sterile specimen collection container from a tightly sealed Tupperware bin. There can be no contamination of the stool sample - that would be tragic indeed. I place the collection container into a slot in a bucket specially modified for this purpose. I sit down in front of the bookshelf. Quite the view! At first, it does not want to come out. But then ... as I do every morning . .. I think of Mother’s rotting corpse and relax. ## After finishing my specimen collection and dumping the remainder of my discharge into the latrine, I climb back upstairs. I pull on shorts, a faded blue t-shirt with holes around the neck, and a pair of worn Converse All-Stars. Then I go into the back yard for my workout. Daily exercise is a required element of the Plan. Not a day can be missed. 6 The dogs exit with me to lounge in the shade of the high fence that surrounds my yard and to watch me. This must be great entertainment for them. First, I run fifteen laps clockwise around the yard . .. and then counterclockwise, fifteen more times. The size of my lawn requires a lot of turning, and I have worn a deep track around the edges. My body gleams as a slick sweat breaks over my dirt-streaked skin. Now it’s time to lift weights. Seven years ago, I built a shed next to the towering avocado tree in the back of the yard. It’s actually more of a corrugated steel roof half-assedly propped up on some posts and the fence, but it hasn’t fallen down yet and it protects my gym equipment from the rain.