The Carrot and the Girl

FICTION By Jenny Bitner

The carrot had been searching for enlightenment in his past eighty lives and does not know why he has come back as a carrot. In this lifetime the carrot is obsessed with the minutiae of everyday life. After lifetimes of inward focus — lifetimes as a Buddhist monk with all of the flowers and all of the bells (the carrot had made his ego so small that it floated away like the mote at the side of his eye) — there was still something that kept him coming back. Why did he not come back as a weasel or an eagle? So much easier to know what to do. Instead he came back as a carrot with the sex drive of a pubescent boy, although he is still a virgin.

This life is only a test. A footnote really for further lives, the real life when he will be a monk again and become enlightened. Still there must be some human thing he needs to figure out. The carrot is obsessed with cataloguing all of life. He makes notes on what kind of breakfast cereal he eats, reading the back for further information on the history of the company. As he leaves the house, he takes photos of the entrance, of his walk, of his job at a grocery store. He has chosen a simple life so he has time to document it. Documenting his life takes up to six hours a day. He tries to videotape as much as possible.

His journal entry for today reads:

"Woke up, had an erection. My first thought upon awakening was where am I? My second thought was that perhaps I should have sex as a way to understand the world. There are some that say that certain understanding is passed in the sex act. My third thought was of my dream from last night. I remembered a face that was big and flat like a pancake and the words spy child."

Such tedious cataloging by the carrot would go on for hours.

Sept. 29 "Have been exploring feminism today. Read some of Simone de Beauvoir as a way to understand the oppression of women. Also have a curiosity in feminine products. Bought o.b. tampons, which are designed by a woman for women, also looked closely at FDS feminine spray and a disposable douche at the Walgreens. The o.b. has a good design and seems like it might come in handy for something."

At night he writes extensive journal entries of everything that happened to him that day.

The carrot and the girl meet at a party. The girl, caught in the act of leaving, realizes that she wants to stay. She is drawn back into the room by the presence of the carrot. To have a suitor is particularly important for a girl.

The carrot makes her feel wanted. He makes her feel special.

Awkward moments start to happen to young people as they move into sexuality. They are not able to negotiate this new realm without some strangeness. Cars are helpful. The girl is in her first year of community college. She is still a virgin. She lives with her parents.

Parking in a car gives the body a metaphor. The body becomes the car. The carrot borrows his father's car and parks with the girl. The girl expects certain sexual things to happen. The carrot does not. There is mixed expectation and some disappointment.

The girl feels that perhaps in a car she can release herself to some of her sexual desires that it is so hard to give in to in her bedroom, which still has a Little Mermaid poster on the wall.

Sexuality came to the carrot like a rude awakening — an awkward moment of self-awareness. Realizing in the middle of the crudité plate that you have outward yearnings. After lifetimes of meditation, this kind of activity felt very base to the carrot.

The girl has a journal too. She writes almost exclusively about her interactions with her friends, her family, and the carrot. She writes about her desire to leave her family and her dissatisfaction with most of the people at Open Meadow Community College, who are shallow and provincial. Some day she hopes to escape the town where she is from. At night, in the confines of her childhood room (feeling like an old shoe box filled with all of what she might have been in the past, but hates to admit to) she opens her environmentally sound journal made from hemp paper and writes about the carrot.

"The carrot came over last night. We talked about everything. He brought his audio diary with him. We played clips from moments of his life that were particularly meaningful. The carrot is so odd with me. Sometimes I feel like he is trying to interview me about life. He doesn't seem to understand little things that everyone else takes for granted. Still, I like it. He's so sweet."

The carrot is trying to realize the lucidity of his common existence. He is focusing on his father's hands. As a boy, the carrot took thousands of photos of his father's hands. His father let him do it since he saved his Christmas and birthday money for film and developing. He has a particularly good shot of his father's hands outside the house at 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in December 1980. There is that something extra there.

He has five thousand photos of his father's hands. He showed them to her one night. She liked the photos. She liked that the carrot loved his father's hands.

Nov. 13 (hemp diary) "Does he want to have sex with me? I can't tell. He's so different from other guys. Last night he asked me if I know who I really am. If I keep thinking about who I am, do I reach a point of nothingness? I'm not sure. I tried it, and at some point it did seem like I was in this weird state of not even knowing who I am. But that got kind of scary, like if I don't even know who I am, what do I know?"

The carrot quizzes the girl about her life. He wants to understand adolescence, sexuality — all of it. It is so foreign to him. They meet in the basement of the girl's house and watch television. The carrot likes to ask her questions about her life.

"What was your adolescence like?" the carrot asks.

The girl blushes a little. "It was nasty and normal," she says, belying the raw feelings still close to the surface. She too has read feminist philosophy. "I wanted boys to like me, and they wanted to touch a girl's body. I let them touch my body so they would like me."

"Did you discuss this with them?"

"No ... no. We didn't talk about it. Do you think I should have?"

"No, perhaps not. Sometimes silence is good."

"How did they touch your body?"

"You know," she says

"I'm not sure I do." The carrot replies.

"Well, they wanted to put their hand on my breast and also sometimes to put their fingers inside of me." The girl is surprised she is so blunt with the carrot. Somehow she is not afraid to tell him these things.

"How was that?"

"Awkward, sometimes I liked it. Sometimes I felt disgusted by them. I didn't like it when they were pulling out their penises and stuff. I was afraid it would go too fast."

"What if I touched you that way?"

"Well if you open your eyes while you do it. If you are interested in touching me and not some kind of anatomical study, then it might be good. I guess I'd like to feel the texture of you inside of me. That's a good thing. I don't know. It's weird to be talking about all this stuff with you."

"Don't worry," the carrot said. "I'm not ready to touch you. I'm still doing research."

The carrot makes a note in the small notebook he carries with him everywhere. Later tonight he will type the note into his computer and file it under 2002/Sexuality/Janine/Notes/November19. Janine is the only woman he has talked to so openly about these things. Most of his notes come from television shows, women's magazines, and talk radio.

He has a whole file from Oprah.

Carrot's Notes: Sept. 18 Woman on Oprah discussing feeling of being trapped within her relationship and fact that men still do not do fair share of housework, even though she has a college education. Other women corroborated her story and one woman talked about their "dirty trick." They said to "let the house get so dirty that it will embarrass even him. Especially when his mother comes over."

That was her answer to getting him to do housework. The carrot enjoyed housework. He liked all simple activities. The carrot washed his own dishes. He liked the feeling of the warm water.

The girl goes over to visit the carrot and he is watching pornography. He watches it in a way unlike other men. He is trying to understand something inside of it. He is trying to see what is attractive about this, what part of the soul wants this. He doesn't judge it. A woman is unconvincingly licking a man's penis, he is rubbing his penis on her tits, he is squirting his cum on her tits. The carrot is taking notes.

"What are you writing down?" she asks.

"The order of things."

"Yes, it's sort of interesting to notice that."

"Here there is touching then licking, then rubbing, then touching, then fucking. In the last one there was touching self, touching other, licking, rubbing, fucking."

"Yes," the girl says, "I guess it gets kind of repetitive."

"Do you think they understand anything?" the carrot asks.

"Like what?"

"You know, the purpose of life, the path to enlightenment, the clue to serenity in life?"

"No," the girl said. "I don't think so."

"Oh," the carrot said. "I thought I understood so much, but this life is very perplexing. I was sure that I would be born on a very high spiritual plane in this life, but it doesn't really seem that way."

"How do you know?" asked the girl.

"All I can think about is what you look like naked," said the carrot.

"Maybe that's ok," said the girl, and bent over and kissed the carrot with care.

The carrot was making notes in his head about how the kiss felt. How smooth her lips were, how soft, how good she smelled. He moved his tongue inside her mouth, and it felt soft and smooth and he wanted more, and then he stopped making mental notes. *