Tender is the Flesh

He detests being this efficient. But he doesn’t stop answering, resolving problems, trying to find the best option for the plant.

What he would like to do is tell her that “later” means later and that when she insults her employees, she just comes across as a disloyal boss.

She gives him the same speech every time, tells him how difficult it is even in this day and age to be a woman and have a career, says that people continue to hold prejudices against her, that only recently have they started greeting her and not her assistant who’s a man, because they think he’s the one who’s head of the laboratory, it was her choice not to have a family, and socially she has to pay for it, because people continue to think that women have to fulfil some biological plan, when her great accomplishment in life has been to press ahead, to never give in; being a man is so much easier, she says, this is her family—the laboratory—but no one understands, not really, she’s revolutionizing medicine, she tells him, and people continue to care whether her shoes are feminine, or that her roots are showing because she didn’t have time to go to the hairdresser, or that she’s gained weight.

He knows that at first they called her “Doctor Mengele” behind her back, but then experimenting on humans was naturalized and she went on to win prizes.

Naming children after their parents is stripping them of an identity, reminding them who they belong to.

because she doesn’t think for herself. That’s why she can’t back up her point of view for very long.

She’s gorgeous, he thinks, but her beauty is useless. She won’t taste any better because she’s beautiful.

No one who’s in their right mind would be happy to do this job.

Because hatred gives one strength to go on; it maintains the fragile structure, it weaves the threads together so that emptiness doesn’t take over everything.

He respects Manzanillo for it. He thinks it’ll be cause for concern when the man stops looking at him this way, when the hatred doesn’t keep him going any longer.