I'll Have My Rapist With A
Side of Cranberry Sauce

by Angie Lovell

I ate a turkey sandwich for lunch. I blame the weight training for this craving that pulled me from my mostly-vegan path. It could not be helped. My body spoke and I listened. At a recent Los Angeles barbecue my body demanded I eat pigs and cows, but I refused. If you've never had your face and hands licked by a cow I can understand your ability to chew them up and digest their flesh, but I have had many cow friends. In junior high my brother, Adam, raised a pig named Lulubelle and we sobbed like preteens at an N'Sync concert when she was sent to the slaughterhouse. I do not advocate eating animals, but this turkey sandwich does not depress me and this is why: I was raped by a turkey.

It was a gloomy day in 1988. My best friend, Carey-dum, was feeding the cows as I played with the ducks and chickens on her family's farm. I loved Carey's home because I love animals. They had everything: Goats, pigs, horses, and even rabbits! They also had a turkey.

It started raining. I was in the pasture shooing the chickens back to their coop when I saw Carey run and jump the fence. At first I thought she ran from the rain. Then I heard it.

"Gobble, gobble!"

Carey's face spoke terror at me from over the fence. I began to run.

"Gobble, gobble!"

Carey climbed to the top of the fence, shouting, "Run, Angie, run!"

Making an escape in cow manure is more difficult than running in soft sand. And this manure was getting wet.

"Gobble, gobble!"

I never looked behind me, I just kept running. I had seen the turkey before. He was enormous. The size of a Saint Bernard, with beady eyes, a five foot wingspan, and that disgusting, melted-wax skin hanging from his face. Carey's dad had warned us with a backwoods Southern accent as he tipped his trucker hat, "You stupid girls stay away from that there turkey! He will cut yer eyes out and eat yer heart!"

Usually the turkey remained hidden in shadows, but my pharmones mixed with August rain must have stirred something "animalistic" in him. So I ran. If you have ever seen a turkey clumsily attempt flight you would laugh. You would laugh unless that turkey's flight is to jump on your back, knock you face down in cow shit, and then bone your twelve year old ass.

Experts could call this date rape since I did know the turkey and we often hung out in the same circles. But the turkey did nothing to coerce or entice me. It simply attacked. Now I was suffocating in manure as my jeans were torn to shreds by a horny, clutching, feathered rapist. Though I never felt that turkey's erection (who could afford such therapy?) I knew what was happening from the way it latched onto my ass and hips, repeatedly throwing its lice-ridden body against my backside. I was being humped. Just as I came to the conclusion the turkey would not be satisfied until I was dead or pregnant, Carey knocked it off my back with a baseball bat. The sound a turkey makes when interrupted by a baseball bat before it can ejaculate on a twelve year old girl is definitely one of the greatest sounds ever. Especially if you are that twelve year old girl.

"Gobble, gobble, WHARP!"

Carey hit my violator hard. Thelma to my Louise, she grabbed my arms and yanked me to my feet. We ran for the fence, but I looked back and saw him, lying in cow shit, rattled by sex and violence. That turkey was aroused. I think he wanted to be hit.

Carey's mom sympathized. She had grown up on farms. Who knows what horrors she had endured. But Carey's father shook his head, picking his teeth and adding insult to injury with, "You stupid little sluts. I told you that turkey was dangerous."

Like Jodi Foster in The Accused, I was being called "slut." It is a man's world. It is a turkey's world.

Weeks later Carey's family sold that turkey to a large family for Thanksgiving dinner. At the time I felt ambivalence. It did not sadden me like the Indians who would buy and eat their sweet little goats, or when Carey's dad killed and roasted my favorite pig, causing me to vomit in their lavendar bathroom. No, my attacker's demise is only touched upon when I see movies like Kill Bill. Perhaps my crew of family and friends would like to watch Kill Bill II while we enjoy our Thanksgiving dinner? That would be delicious.

© 2004 Angie Lovell, All Rights Reserved.