Guts
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Greg was an old man with strange light pink lips that looked like chicken breasts wrapped taut in plastic wrap. One of Greg’s many responsibilities as admin manager was to look after the shared refrigerator in the office kitchen. He reminded us weekly that the office was his great kingdom of light; open-plan, spotless, and uncomfortably bright.
Early at lunch, I was hiding behind the office kitchen corner. Watching Greg. He’d found another plate of sardines staring back at him in the fridge. My colleagues thought the plate of sardines renewed itself like a cornucopia. It gained its own mythology within the office. Greg gave the fish a good whiff. He furrowed his brow, chicken breast lips quaking with fury.
I darted away from the corner— anxiety nibbling at my abdomen. I knew what he was thinking: What if the sardines contaminated the rest of the fridge? What if the colleagues get food poisoning? And what if the colleagues died? Cold Case: Office Fridge Hygiene Oversight Leaves Workers Dead. Greg’s face would be cemented on the news forever.
*
Outside, the sky was murky. Still forecasted for light winter rain. And inside one of the office toilets stalls I am down on my knees, quietly sharpening a small knife to gut my last sardine. Quietly. Softly, so as not to alert Greg’s vigilance.
I’m Joey. The man hiding within the myth. Hiding within the shadows of Greg’s kingdom of light. Unlike the office, it is dim and claustrophobic in the toilet stall. There is a poster on the door. One flush. One planet. Choose wisely. And I am one of two canto-Chinese workers at the office but the only one who struggled with pimples. I went to USYD and did a master's on Confucianism and critical food studies– naive enough to believe my research could somehow transform the Australian food system, but fickle enough to grow tired of it. I started work at an HR consultancy firm instead. The money was okay.
I found myself to be blessed by a new hobby though. A new reason to be alive.
During one of my lunch breaks, I encountered a muscular Spanish guy on TikTok. He was wearing an unbuttoned shirt and sitting on a stone bench under summer sun. On his lap was a plate of sardines draped with a local olive oil as luminous as pearl. As Spanish guy’s hair waved against the sea winds, he softly lowered the slippery sardine onto his tongue. He held it above his head like a ripped version of Dionysus and his grapes and watched as the olive oil cascaded down his throat. He dropped the fish down his well-oiled throat and coughed it back up. Laughing and munching loudly, as the viscous olive oil covered his lips and dripped on his chest. He looked so carefree.
Every lunchtime since then, I’d stop making my calls and go to Sydney Fish Market to get some Australian sardines for my family to eat. On weekends, the battleship-sized market is cheek-to-cheek full of Sydney’s sweatiest snatching up on a good fish deal. But on workdays, there is more breathing room to appreciate the light whiff of brine and all the different kinds of fairies and monsters housed in blue plastic boxes. From piles of shiny little fishlings that once skipped towards the sun, to ghouls which once haunted the deep sea alone. Like Earth orbiting around the sun, I visited the market each lunchtime with gravitic focus. Sardines were my calling from above. Caught off NSW, they are healthy and cheap. Especially in winter.
I finished sharpening my knife and took a breath in. The smell of lavender and light urine in the toilet stall was not enough to put me off. I thought of Spain instead. With the sardine nestled in my palm, I guided the knife from anus, belly, and neck, knowing that the fish was quality; not just from its shiny little scales, and its light-coating of slime, but instantly from its fresh sea fragrance and its stiffness; its rigor mortis. I caught myself smiling. This was not a rotting sardine at my local fish shop out west, but an extraordinary sardine recently caught from the sea. Quality sardines like these ones can’t be found out west because they spoil too fast. I thought happily of home, imagining pouring warm olive oil over the fillets and my family eating together. I like my Mum’s and my Sister’s comments. Very nice. So umami. Healthy for the skin.
With my bare pinky, I scooped out the guts from the opening of the sardine and lowered them into my lunchbox. I caught the fish’s clear crystal eyes and felt my heart waver a bit until I affirmed to myself, I was a vegetarian for 2 years. I paid my dues. It was a tough 2 years of moral sadomasochism. Plus sardines are sustainably fished. Google said so.
As I fingered the loose strands of blood clot near the fish’s anal cavity, my overgrown nails became sticky with blood. I put everything into the lunchbox and walked to the office kitchen hiding my hands behind my back. Greg likes to take a bus to Newtown for Pad Thai during lunch. I made sure of this. I am safe.
In the office kitchen, a group of colleagues were loudly bantering around the kitchen table. Too busy giggling to have noticed me walk over to the sink. I see all eyes on Andy. Andy was the other Chinese in the office, the crypto-obsessed charismatic one. He had a crew cut and wore suits.
“Yoo but did you hear about the five rich guys imploding in a submarine?” asked Andy.
The colleagues leaned in, trying to hold in their laughs.
Andy scrunched up his face, and crunched down into the ground, slowly contorting his suited-up body as if descending into the deep dark sea. And then pop! Andy exploded from the pressure, followed by a roar of laughter and claps.
I smiled absently as I dug at the dried blood underneath my nails. Eavesdropping on the dramatic conversation, I contemplated how dumb those guys in the deep down were. How they deserved to implode because I could’ve used the 200k they spent on submarine tickets on something like not imploding or on something that filled me with joy.
I thought back to the TikTok videos that took me to Spain. And imagined wearing a pair of thongs, strolling down to the beach through uneven cobblestones. Shirtless Spanish guy waited near the water’s edge. His tan body smelled hot like sun. Spanish guy showed me how to sprinkle bits of salt into holes made in the wet sand. And then, all at once, delicious razor clams popped out from the sand like jack-in-the-boxes.
By the time I finished cleaning up, colleagues had moved on to topics such as the Barbie movie, the lady poisoning her family with mushrooms, and mass shootings far away in cursed America. In all these moments over office lunch, too many things happened, yet nothing good kept happening at all.
I stopped daydreaming. From my lunchbox I fished out my last sardine, and the small knife to clean.
At that moment, Greg rushed into the office kitchen like a meteor. Heated.
“Joey, gimme that,” he demanded, “gimme it now.”
“What? What about your Pad Thai?.”
“What - do we have a problem? Gimme it.”
Greg shot out his hand. And I held the knife and fish closer to heart.
“No, I’m good. Okay.”
“Come on. You’re not a fucking child.”
“What the hell? I said, I’m good. Go. Go away.”
Greg clenched down on his jaws and lunged.
I pulled back and sliced my own finger through to the bone. I fell on my bottom. In an instance, I was forced bare. Cornered in the office kitchen by Greg and a group of colleagues.
Greg grabbed at the fine grey hairs on his bald head.
“Fuck sakes Joey, could’ve done this at home. You’re sitting in blood. Your own blood!”
I felt a shot of searing pain. As my colleagues shuffled around to check out the scene, I gingerly touched my mangled finger. I felt my blood, soul, and world swirling at my fingertip. Dripping onto the fish, and down onto the office kitchen tiles.
“You did this,” I said.
“No,” Greg said, stopping firmly and pointing a finger down at me, “you did this”.
As I looked up at him, I felt my skin getting hot. So hot I couldn’t breathe.
Like an atomic missile, I shot up – head-butting deep into Greg’s big chicken breast lips. The old man fell onto his hands, wheezing on the ground. His fat lips exploded onto themselves like crushed overripe plum.
A thick piece of his lip wobbled off.
And fell splat on the ground.
Everyone’s screech made space dizzy.
“I'm taking you to court!” Greg yelled messily with eyes tense with veins. He grabbed his bloody chunk of lip off the floor with his fist and shook it in front of my face. “You’re going to be all over the news mate!”
I looked at everyone’s horrified gasping faces, Andy recording on his phone, and then back at again at the chunk of lip being waved around my face. Side to side, side to side. The realisation that I could no longer go back from this moment grinded down my body and soul. I felt coarsened to the bare twigs of my existence.
I ran out as if the universe was collapsing.
*
‘Mummy, lei sik fan m aa?’ my Sister asked.
‘I just got home. No. And I’m full.’
‘What did you eat?
Mum dropped her work bags and patted her big belly.
‘Fried chicken’
My Sister walked to her, shaking her head and poking Mum’s belly.
‘Fry chick-chick chicken? Again and again? The one on the way back home?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Don’t eat too much fried stuff –hao yeet hay ge!’ She pointed at me and then at Mum. ‘That’s why you're both covered in adult acne. Ug-ga-ly!’
‘It’s probably stress.’
‘Ugly people do ugly things. You have to eat more of this.’
She pulled Mum by the hand to a half-eaten plate of sardines on our wooden dining table. Mum sighs.
‘Sardines again? This is the third time this week.’
‘This one is better than last time, super fresh.’
I sat down with them and felt the sticky film on the table, wet from dynasties of spitting out bones together at dinner.
Mum sighs and puts a fillet in her mouth.
‘Wa hou sik aa!’
My Sister instantly lit up and sung a song about fish. And Mum joined in. Laaa laaa laaa.
*
Light winter rain began to patter against the bus stop shelter.
And I was sheltering underneath. I felt cold. Wondering where to go.
Home was first on my mind. But just the idea of having to explain to my Mum and my Sister what happened made my heart hurt; I needed some time to gather myself before returning. Hospital? The finger cut was deep and seared. I wrapped my finger with the ends of my shirt to catch the blood. But it wasn’t life or death. The last thing I wanted was to be trapped for hours with people slowly dying and nurses asking too many questions. I needed to go to Sydney Fish Market. No matter what. Because I didn’t know what else to do. Because I was scared of what would happen next.
I hid my finger as I got on the empty bus. The driver kept driving even though I didn’t tap.
As I travelled closer to sea, I thought back to those five guys down in the submarine, wondering if they felt the same way I felt now–alone. Alone, because I was going to be office gossip. If they don’t fire me, I’d have to quit. After a good while, I’d imagine no one would actually care about me as a person. Just like the chunks of meat and old gossip rotting away down in the deep.
While staring out at the bright sunset, I felt colder from my finger, arm, groin, toes.
The sunset turned the sea, out in the distance, orange. Like the sea and the winter rain, the bus window reflected the sun. It was hard to make out, but I saw shadows of people out and about. I saw into different lives; someone waiting at the traffic lights, a barista making coffee, a lady reading a book on a bench and wondered if they, too, felt as captivated by the sunset as I was. I wondered if this was what Spain felt like.
As I got off the bus stop to Sydney Fish Market, I laughed to myself. And did not know why.
But the cold sea-winds seemed to carry the same euphoria I was feeling. I felt the wind rushing up against my body. And out in the distance of the market, Spanish guy yelled out hola as he waved his hand to come over. I slowly wobbled in his direction as the seagulls swirled above my head, above the rain. Around and around like a baby mobile.
I imagined, again, my smiling family. Sitting around the table, around the sardines. Waa hau san sin aa. They each take a bite. Hei zei hai hou sin ah. As the image dissolved into the cold sea winds, I fell face-first onto the road.
Thank you to my mum for dancing and my sister, Sophie Xiao Yue Zhou, for creating the 3D animations.
Paws for Life, Electronic Floppy Fish. Photos: Pet Circle
Chef Mandala, Archaeology of Seafood — Sardine. Photo: https://chefsmandala.com/archaeology-seafood-sardine/
Sydney Fish Market TikTok account, ‘These high-quality Sardines are representative of the lengths Aussie fishes go to deliver the absolute freshest product to Market. #Sardines’. Video: https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSFamXDCH/