A Character with OCD in the Worst Possible Situation

Monastery | Chalkboard | Elephant | Coast | Turmeric | Poppy | Defeat | Chessboard | Inhumane | Search

If there’s a “No” on the chalkboard, I’m cleaning the paddock and helping in the panda enclosure. But “Y” means I search for the black gloves. The long ones that go up to my shoulders.

“Y” means I take an extra turmeric capsule, because it calms my stomach.

Today is a “Y.”

PETA will tell you it’s inhumane. They’ll tell you it’s sexual abuse – or even rape – and say it needs to stop if we expect to defeat the patriarchy.

We’re talking about the African elephant, by the way. Critically endangered. So I get them pregnant.

The artificial way, you sicko.

Poppy is ovulating, but that feces needs to come out before the balloon catheter and endoscope go in. Black rubber pulled to my shoulders, I slide my right arm as deep as possible, face buried in her leaking folds, and grab a handful of shit and drag it out. She’s sedated, but still. If PETA was watching this, they’d snip my nuts and send me to a monastery.

After a second pull, crap is already piled to the top of my boots and everyone keeps their distance.

Oh, and African elephants? They don’t live on the coast, no matter what that moron from Reddit said.

Ear pressed against Poppy’s backside, I unearth another armful that slops against my chest.

In goes the arm again. And again.

Each time, my hand reveals smaller and smaller piles of dung. From a large stack to a short stack to so little you wouldn’t even ask for a to-go box.

Nicola, the zookeeper, taps me on the shoulder – the left one – and whispers That should be good, Harvey.

But she’s not clean enough inside. And if she’s not clean enough, this baby elephant will never happen.

At home, I have a chessboard where all the pieces are elephants. Different ones, like Bornean and Asian and forest and savanna. The queen looks like Poppy.

I go in again, because I know there’s more. My hand circles the greasy insides of her rectum and Poppy starts to get restless.

But I go in again, because she has to be clean, and behind me Nicola sighs.