Bearing It

I’m an iconoclast. A believer in living in the moment. I want to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable and determine reality for myself. These guardrails that keep us in line, secure—they’re just chains. It’s an embarrassment to see just how confined we are.

My journey towards radical re-alignment began when I was in my mid-thirties. I was alone, weak, and working in a call center outside of Harlborough, New Jersey. The tedium there can break a person’s will to live—Jenny, a woman I regularly and aggressively flirted with in the office, threw herself off the building in a desperate attempt for freedom from monotony. Seeing her broken, mangled body on the pavement below shook me awake from the conditioning of modern society. Things had to change.

The next day, I went into work shirtless. A little rebellion, something I thought up as I did my morning calisthenics. Just something to break the mold. My boss, a fearful and meek leader, saw my power growing and immediately informed me that the company was opening an investigation into me on several reported incidents of ‘sexual harassment’ prior to Jenny’s death.

The nerve.

I immediately throat-chopped him, sending him to the ground. Then, LaQuanda, a stout, proud African-American woman—someone I would’ve expected to be on my side—screamed, sending the office into a frenzy. It was time to move on.

Two years and many identities later, I found myself working at the Barnum and Bailey circus, performing as an animal trainer. And despite going by different names at every show, they love me. They’d never guess that I’m wanted by New Jersey state police. Instead, carnival-goers shout in awe as I crack a whip and have tigers jump from platform to platform. Lions roar at my command.

This . . . this is real. This is living outside the bounds of the average day-to-day. And while I have found my freedom here, working alongside the most dangerous creatures on earth, I still find the common man to be chained without his recognition. I watch as average people lazily wander about as they enter and exit my tent. Their eyes glaze over, and they clap when expected to do so. This breaks my heart, for in some way, I am responsible for continuing the cycle—being their source of entertainment for the duration of my show and, in part, their master—but for the longest time, I could only help myself. That is, until I came across Beef, the eleven-hundred pound Kodiak Bear who’d just arrived from Lakeland, Florida for training.

His fur, a deep and unrelenting brown, shimmered as he shifted around in his cage. His snout twitched in curiosity for his new surroundings. And though his claws were trimmed, they remained long and intimidating. An utter force of nature. He ignited a flame in me, more so than the other animals, for he possessed an spirited anger whenever someone walked too close. He’d bare his teeth and growl, revealing to onlookers that he was alive. What a powerful message, and one that reverberated through my entire being. And it struck me—this was the beginning of a new machination, a great awakening, something to stir the public into recognizing the velvet handcuffs that bind them. And it just so happened that my next show was tomorrow afternoon.

But for tonight, I decided to approach Beef in my natural form, naked, just man to bear. I had no intention of training him, for how could I impart the rigidity of commands at the expense of his inborn grace and power? It was impossible. The other animals in the show, they were too far gone. Just puppets who’d had their natural instincts stripped from them far before I’d ever entered this tent. But with Beef, my understanding was that he was still wild, still of the primordial earth, one that was rapidly disappearing. What I have before me was an opportunity to bring that back—that sense of reality—to the people who’ve been conditioned to accept things for how they seem, rather than for how they are.

This was it. A final overture to saving my fellow man.

The night passes, and my nerves grow more uneasy. My hands shake, but they do so in anticipation for a great undertaking. Beef stares at me hungrily. I understand his desire, for I too have been encroached upon by modern society in all its ugliness. The time is nigh.

Here, the sun has begun its descent across the afternoon sky. The smell of wet mud and burnt popcorn waft in from the outside, and with it, people. The tent bleachers were filling up, and from behind the curtain, I could peek out and see the faces of those ready to receive an awakening. Beef, watches me, and I nod. This was it.

I step out and introduce myself, bowing and waving my arms around in excitement. The noise is exhilarating. My assistants, two Puerto Rican midgets, push Beef’s cage out into the center of the tent—their short statures, childlike, quiver in response to Beef’s every movement. Their small bodies struggle to move the animal, and with every shift of his weight, they wince. Once positioned, they hurry off, feet slapping the dirt floor, and leave me there, alone with Beef, surrounded by hundreds of unwitting participants. I bow again, and in one motion, release the clasp on Beef’s cage, pulling it wide and removing the boundary between man and beast. The crowd cheers, and Beef, tentative at first, touches his paw to the ground and steps out. He sniffs the air and turns from side to side. He eyes me, and I can feel that primal connection. No training could create this bond. It was native to the human spirit.

I motion my arm towards the crowd, and Beef seems to understand. In a moment, he’s off, bounding towards the front row, and the crowd, yet unable to shed the veneer of circus entertainment, waits a second, and then yells in alarm. Beef clasps a woman and immediately tears her asunder, throwing her body from side to side as though it were nothing at all. People begin running towards the exit, stepping over one another in the process, and in doing so, agitate Beef, drawing him towards the howling mass. This was what I wanted, what I needed. The blinders have now been removed, and people could once again recognize that they were human, and this world was hostile. They’ve been ripped awake! Moved outside of the norm. And this was what it took.

Beef crushes a stroller under his weight, and through the chaos, looks back towards me. We lock eyes, certain that this was justice, and after a moment, he charges me. I spread my arms wide, and he runs into me like a train, bulldozing me into the ground, cracking my spine, and releasing me back into the ether.