{"id":109027,"date":"2017-03-22T17:02:42","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T21:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=109027"},"modified":"2017-03-22T17:02:42","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T21:02:42","slug":"tony-tulathimutte-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/22\/tony-tulathimutte-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Tulathimutte, Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>

Tony Tulathimutte. Photo by Lydia White.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tony Tulathimutte is a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop. He has written for The New York Times<\/em>, The New Yorker<\/em>, VICE<\/em>, N+1<\/em>, The Atlantic<\/em>, and elsewhere. His work has received an O. Henry Award and a MacDowell Fellowship. Private Citizens<\/em> was published by William Morrow in 2016, and was named a best book of the year by The New Yorker<\/em>, The Guardian<\/em>, The Atlantic<\/em>, and Buzzfeed<\/em>, among others. He lives in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

An excerpt from\u00a0<\/em>Private Citizens:<\/em><\/p>\n

Roopa stood at the stove in a capital R, a hand bracing her tailbone and one leg stretched back, with her waxy black hair tressing down like a stripe of brushed pitch, ending in a horizontal slash at midwaist. Her face was babyish and marsupial-thin. She wasn\u2019t ravishing, but she wasn\u2019t unattractive, but men definitely treated her as if she were ravishing. She wore a blue apron over a brown dress with the sleeves ripped off. Cast-iron pans and stew pots were stationed over all four burners.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, you should\u2019ve told me you were home, I would\u2019ve made more,\u201d Roopa said. \u201cIt\u2019s potato hash with fennel and rosemary and Niman Ranch bacon and tempeh. And TVP.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s okay, thanks,\u201d Cory said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found ch\u00e8vre too. The Trader Joe\u2019s ones are ginormous. And they throw it out fully wrapped. Think how many landfill acres are taken up just by airtight cheese. Sure you don\u2019t want any?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, no, I\u2019m good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReally? You sure?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks, I\u2019m fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cory opened the refrigerator. It was a maddening presence\u2014always on, drawing an eighth of their electricity, just to store food. It carried a permanent stench of chilled compost and was crammed with communal groceries; Cory spent an eternity rearranging items to get to her week-old bok choy stir-fry leftovers. It was greasy, awfully<\/em> greasy. She could do radishes and hummus for fiber, soy milk for protein, liquid amino for more protein. She took out the hummus and the soy milk and put the hummus back in and borrowed a nectarine from Jinnie\u2019s shelf, and then took the hummus out again, jogging it in her hands to ponder its mass, its lipids and carbs, though she already knew all the numbers to the tenth decimal. Also she\u2019d heard this particular hummus had done something bad to Palestine. Her hunger stabbed her; she tossed the hummus back in the fridge and took out her Tupperware of stir-fry. She just wouldn\u2019t eat the whole thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s your dinner?\u201d Roopa said, in that sympathetic\/annoyed tone you used with confused foreign tourists. \u201cWhere\u2019s the flavor? Aren\u2019t you at least going to heat it up and plate it?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roopa turned to the stove and mounded a plate with a few hundred thousand calories of glistening tempeh. The odor made Cory\u2019s saliva salty. \u201cTry this. It\u2019s yummy and it\u2019s totally sanitary. Nom nom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks, Roop, but I gotta eat this\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore it goes bad? That\u2019s so depressing<\/em>. It probably doesn\u2019t even have any nutrients after all that refrigeration. Try my food. I know it seems gross to eat \u2018garbage,\u2019 but people have to get over that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cory laid her things on the kitchen counter. When she had first moved to the city, the plan had been to recruit kindred progressives into the warehouse, maybe becoming one of those Bay Area cultural polestars. She first met Roopa at Socialize\u2019s garden harvest potluck three months ago, and, spotting a potential girlfriend or roommate or both, Cory had approached Roopa and smoked her out. As Cory wondered how to broach Roopa\u2019s sexual and political alignments, Roopa was already headed straight for those topics: two years at Oberlin as a sexual health advisor who practiced what she preached, a year in South America for her anthropology thesis (\u201cRecuperating Presence: The Immediacy of Indigene Consciousness\u201d\u2014in lieu of Eurocentric written documents, she\u2019d produced photo-graphs and small beaded weavings). Then she\u2019d dropped out for culinary school in Boston, dropping out again to couch-surf California.<\/p>\n

In Cory\u2019s stoned brain, Roopa had seemed ideal, and they moved her in ASAP. But it turned out they weren\u2019t equally political, just equally pedantic. At first Cory had been thrilled that Roopa attended Socialize events, but Roopa would keep offering unsolicited advice (\u201cI still think marriage equality isn\u2019t the issue. We need to abolish marriage<\/em>\u201d). In turn, Roopa brought Cory to her anarchist \u201csalons\u201d\u2014usually potlucks or homebrewed pickle tastings at other collectives, where discussions played on conspiratorial themes: 9\/11 was an inside job, canned tomatoes caused Parkinson\u2019s, etc. An urban primitive with pepperoni-size ear gauges wondered aloud if heterosexual intercourse was \u201cinherently degrading.\u201d Cory got through it only by pretending she was conducting an anthropological study of failed radicalism. Roopa understood Cory\u2019s lack of enthusiasm as liberal wimpiness, which she liked taking potshots at, like now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think,\u201d Cory said, \u201cwe can divest from industrial monoculture instead of relying on its waste. You know how they say benefit is complicity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real waste would be to let food spoil for an empty gesture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCouldn\u2019t we put community pressure on supermarkets to reduce waste in the first place?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is\u201d\u2014Roopa sucked a crumb that had fallen on her apron\u2014\u201cthat the waste is there now, and it supports indigent communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, you\u2019re right about that. Is it really okay for people like us to take free food we don\u2019t need?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s plenty for everyone. Also, I\u2019m not exactly well-off.\u201d Roopa laughed. \u201cI\u2019d starve if I didn\u2019t hit the Dumpsters. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m exploiting food stamps. I\u2019m part of the working poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Somehow Roopa got by, part-time and under the table, freelancing as a food photographer and botanical illustrator. Cory didn\u2019t want to have to explain the distinction between poor and broke. Spurning the nine-to-five was fine, but Cory suspected Roopa\u2019s work ethic was rooted in a determination to feel good about feeling good. Still, it was baffling how Roopa could afford San Francisco on freelance wages. Cory did<\/em> take food stamps.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you just get off on guilt,\u201d Roopa said, closing her eyes and making cumming noises as she forked up a mouthful of hash and worked it around in her mouth without chewing.<\/p>\n

Cory\u2019s eyelids glitched. \u201cI wasn\u2019t saying Dumpster-diving is immoral. I was only thinking maybe it\u2019d be best not to create a social institution dependent on corporate excess.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re redeeming the waste. It\u2019s putting ideals into action on the most basic level.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSpending half a day making dinner, that\u2019s \u2018action\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the role food should<\/em> play in people\u2019s lives. Food is culture, just like songs and paintings. I\u2019ve had meals that made me cry. Some people are visual, others are tactile, and actually I\u2019m a synesthete so I\u2019m kinda both, but I also get so much meaning in through my mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

But so painfully little out from<\/em> her mouth\u00a0\u2026\u201cWell, air is important too. Should we spend hours every day working on breathing?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDoy. Ever heard of yoga? I\u2019m only sort of kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cory wouldn\u2019t win. Roopa was rigid, the way free spirits often were, about the romance of naturopathy and well-being as morality. Photographing meals, food blogging, recreational fasting\u2014all that time committed to sweeping the steps of her temple. It was at least as disordered as what Cory had. There was this spin, this indulgent spin<\/em> to Roopa\u2019s charity: when she did relief in Chile, she returned with a copper-goddess tan; if she volunteered for a bake sale, it was because she enjoyed baking. Her diet was another slick win-win rationalization of glut. Good intentions notwithstanding, that was the lemon-meringue heart of her frankly dipshit worldview: that merely observing selective austerities\u2014abstaining from work, from money\u2014was activism, when really it was shallow passivism<\/em>\u00a0\u2026<\/p>\n

Roopa turned off the burners and unlaced her apron. She never looked tired. \u201cHonestly,\u201d Roopa said, \u201cpeople who shop in supermarkets should be forced to spend a day in a cage, like factory chickens. And those of us who didn\u2019t go to Stanford don\u2019t have the option to buy bougie farmer\u2019s market greens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like Cory was so rich! As if she lorded her diploma around! She hated that no matter what she did, her achievements redounded to a massively endowed, for-profit corporation\u2014Stanford, Inc. But complaining about this would make her seem even more stuck-up. \u201cYeah, okay, Roopa? First of all, you went to Oberlin. Second, I\u2019m just as broke as you, and my degree means nothing in the nonprofit world\u2014well, I know privilege is invisible, but \u2026\u201d Cory pressed a thumb to her temple, where an \u00e9clat of migraine was about to light up a deep furrow of her brain. \u201cLook, we both hate consumer waste. I prefer a policy approach, and you\u2014well, you tell me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Roopa leaned in and seized Cory\u2019s hand. Cory hated rhetorical touching. \u201cAll politics are spiritual issues first,\u201d Roopa said.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read more work from the 2017 Whiting Award winners<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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