Patricia Tatum spent half a century completely unaware that she wanted to be a writer when she grew up.  Having the attention span of a cantaloupe, she has numerous partially finished stories, a rare few completed and polished, and no plans to write a novel.

Anatomy of a Slug (January 20, 2010. Issue 13.)

“Tell me again why we came here.”

“So I can think. So we can talk.”

“You can’t think at home? We have to fight our way through some wild forest for you to think?”

“This isn’t exactly the wilderness, Richard. It’s a park. There’s a subdivision right up over that ridge. And this is a jogging path; it’s not like we have to machete our way out of here. If we keep walking, we’ll end up in the parking lot where we started.” Don’t be such a jerk, I want to say.

“Okay, whatever. So I’m the wussy city boy. You’re the one who gets paid to hang out in the woods all day playing with bugs. You’re the only girl I know that even likes bugs.”

“I’m not “playing” with bugs. It’s research. It’s my job. Besides, slugs are mollusks, not bugs.”

“Fine, sure. Are you done thinking yet? Can we just get out of here?” He looks down at his clean, white trainers which are rapidly collecting muck, and disgust makes his face ugly. Then he looks at me and the ugly is still there.

Now I know how a slug feels. Slugs are universally viewed as disgusting; slimy little creatures that are reluctantly accepted as an unexplainable, unavoidable nuisance. What, people ask me, is a slug’s purpose in life? Other than grossing everyone out, ruining the party, wasting everyone’s time? The minute a slug shows up, all anyone can think is, What is it doing here? and When is it going to leave? Leave a slimy, snotty trail if you must, but just leave.

I pretend not to see his look; I’m not ready to let go, so I keep walking. Richard walks beside me like a reluctant three year old. Don’t know why I’m surprised. He’s mumbling to himself and kicking at clumps of wet leaves in the pathway.

“I don’t know why you still want to talk about it,” he says. “It’s not like we haven’t been talking about it for ages. Why do you want to beat a dead horse?”

“I saw a dead horse once.” I keep walking, eyes straight ahead. “When I was a kid. It was in a neighbor’s field. It was on its back and the legs were sticking straight up in the air, all stiff like. It was big and round and bloated, and there were flies all over it; thousands of flies eating away at it. Even from the road I could hear the buzzing. It was really gross, but I had to see it up close. Up close I could see maggots crawling all over it, and its eyes were all milky looking and bulging. I guess I wouldn’t want to beat that dead horse. It’d probably explode.”

“Jesus Christ, Samantha! Why can’t you respond to a question like a normal person?” He sounds like he’s going to puke. I keep walking.

“The thing is,” I say, “is that I don’t get it.”

“If you had been paying attention, you would have “got” it weeks ago. Actually, months ago. And it won’t matter how many times we talk about it, you don’t get it because you don’t want to get it. But just in case I wasn’t clear the last fifty or sixty times I said it…I don’t want to be in this relationship any longer. I want you to move out of my house. What is there not to get?”

I keep walking.

I spend a lot of time in the woods even when I’m not working. I am more comfortable with the company of slugs and bugs than with people. I guess I thought if I brought Richard out into my comfort zone, the conversation would end differently – that I would magically say all the right things and dazzle him with my confident self. Instead, I’m the same spineless wimp that I thought I left behind at the house. Richard’s house. The one I have to leave. I tell him I don’t have anywhere to go. He doesn’t answer.

I wonder where a slug thinks it’s going when it leaves where it has been. Slugs are snails without shells. A snail’s shell is its home, which would make slugs homeless. They might hang around somewhere as long as they’re allowed, but that doesn’t make it home.

“I guess I could go stay at my sister’s if I had to. Just until I can find a place.” I was the one who hesitated about living together in the first place, then caved too easily. I hate moving. I hate the uncertainty of it all.

We walk without talking. Richard speeds up so that he can get a step ahead of me. I imagine tripping him; I see him splat in the muddy mess of rotten leaves in the path. Perfect hair messed up, perfect complexion plastered with detritus, perfect off-white, hand made, virgin wool Fair Isle sweater (dry clean only) soiled beyond redemption. Add a nice pile of dog shit and the dream is complete. I’m lost in the beauty of the moment when he suddenly backpedals with a girly shriek, knocking me out of my dream.

I catch him before he hits the ground, stand him back up and walk around him to see what caused his terrified recoil. I know I can’t be lucky enough to find he has stepped in the dream dog shit, but I’m still hopeful. “Sheesh, Richard! It’s only a banana slug!” It’s a beauty – at least six inches long, bright yellow, its dark head and tentacles waving in the air independent of each other, trying to identify the behemoths that almost trampled it. I kneel down to get a closer look. I can hear Richard behind me making more disgusting sounds.

“It’s amazing to me,” I tell him without looking up, “that slugs have survived so long without evolving. They’re basically a stomach attached to a foot. So vulnerable…and so despised. People have come up with hundreds, maybe thousands of ways to kill them and all you really have to do is pour salt on them. Sucks the life right out of them.”

He sniffs, dons a protective suit of bravado. “They’re gross and completely worthless. What amazes me is that you actually have people who want to fund your pointless research.”

I decide I’m not going to have this argument. I find a large leaf and carefully slide the slug onto it then set it off the path under a fern. “I guess they are pretty gross. The frogs and snakes and birds like them, though. Pure protein. And the sliminess makes them easier to swallow.”

“I don’t suppose we could get going now.” He sounds pale. I examine the mucus trail the slug left behind; a low-tech fiber optic line broken only in the place where I butted in. I watch the slug start to slowly undulate with muscular contractions; on the move again. I brush my knees off and stand. Richard lets me take the lead this time.

He says he wonders how we got together in the first place. He says, “I guess it’s because you were so different from other women I’ve dated. So much smarter, stronger. Not helpless.” He says it as if he’s realized otherwise.

“Why? Because I’m not afraid to pick up bugs?”

“Yeah, I guess. And because you’re not what you would call high maintenance. You know, one of those girls that demands attention all of the time.”

He’s right. I don’t demand attention. But I want it; I need it. He’s too self-absorbed to notice and I’m too spineless to ask.

“There is a lot of research being done on slug mucus these days,” I say. *They actually excrete two different kinds. Did you know that it contains pheromones? Pretty handy for mating purposes.” I stop to move another wanderer out of harm’s way. “And they’re hermaphrodites, too. So a slug can follow any mucus trail and be guaranteed sexual satisfaction at the other end.”

“Fascinating.” He doesn’t sound fascinated; he sounds impatient. I pick up the pace.

“Yup,” I continue the lecture, “and their sex organs are at the back of the head under the mantle. That’s the part that looks like a foreskin. The anus is also located there. I guess you could say they have shit for brains.” I laugh. Richard doesn’t. I realize I don’t care.

“They actually do double duty when they mate. One slug screws the other and gets screwed by the other. Then they both end up laying eggs. The really interesting part is the apophallation.” I stop talking, keep walking. We go maybe a quarter mile before he has to ask.

“Okay, I give. What’s apophallation?” It’s clear he wants to know but hates asking me. He has said he feels I’m trying to emasculate him with my education and IQ. It never mattered that it wasn’t true; it was one more unraveling thread.

“A slug penis is shaped like a corkscrew. So when you get two of them both trying to do their business, they get tangled up. If they can’t get loose, one or both will chew off the other’s penis. Sometimes they even chew off their own. It’s not a huge loss, really. They can still function sexually with their female parts.” I can feel the empathic pain in the guttural sounds behind me.

I walk slower, more deliberately, wondering if he will let himself catch up. “I suppose that’s the real secret to their survival; understanding the necessity of the sacrifice,” I say more to myself. “If they stay entangled, it’s not only that they both die; the eggs die, too. I guess that means survival of the fittest is sometimes just a case of being a strong woman.”

I can sense him a little closer behind me. I keep walking.

“So, the salt thing,” he says. “That’s really all it takes to kill them?”

“Yeah, Richard, that’s all it takes.”

“Do they feel it? I mean, do they feel pain?”

“I used to wonder that a lot; I guess it’s one of the reasons I wanted to research them.”

“So, do they?” He sounds like he actually cares.

“Slugs aren’t very complex, biologically speaking. They do have a nervous system and pain is a primal nerve stimulus. They move so slowly that their reaction can be easily overlooked. But, yes, they do feel pain.” Richard doesn’t answer; I feel him absorbing this. “Slugs don’t have the ability to vocalize, either. No one hears them scream.” I keep walking. We are both silent as we follow a long, straight stretch in the path.

“I’m sorry I’ve been a jerk.” My heart leaps. “And I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. But I can’t go back, Samantha. I just can’t do it anymore.” My heart sinks.

I think to myself that I’ve done my crying, my yelling, my deal making and my groveling, my denying. Now I kind of wonder why. We are each lost in our separate thoughts as we walk together. When I consider life without Richard, I see something. Survival, maybe.

“Did you know that slugs have two sets of feelers? The lower ones are for smells and the bigger, upper set are light sensors. If a tentacle is amputated, it will grow back.”

We go around a bend and the end of the trail is just ahead. “One of the most popular ways people kill off slugs is the death-by-beer method. Put some beer in the bottom of a shallow pan and the slugs will crawl in and drown. Not a bad way to go, if you ask me.” I notice then that I am smiling. Richard chuckles quietly behind me.

“I guess I’ll think twice the next time someone offers me a beer,” he says. We finish the last stretch and step into the brightness of the parking lot.

“See, Richard,” I say, looking him in the eye. “Right back where we started.”