The Wilds (25 page)

Only half the people attending the Wild Foraging Workshop the next morning are wearing their cave costumes. I myself am wearing spandex fitness gear. Jeff, a chatty journalist from New York who sports his standard-issue loincloth with a Magma T-shirt, keeps assuring everybody that he’s not an exhibitionist.

“Yes, I look ridiculous,” he says, scratching the pale skin of his left thigh, which looks rash-prone, “but I feel obligated to indulge in the full Paleo experience.”

Chewing dandelion root and jonesing for coffee, we drift down a forest trail as Whezug, ex-botany professor and author of
Forest Feast
, lectures us on the evils of caffeinated stimulants. A scrawny sexagenarian with the mangy ponytail of a decrepit hesher, Whezug sports a leather loincloth that looks like something
from a fetish shop. Although he’s not literally lashing us with a bullwhip, he might as well be. As we stumble through the forest with empty stomachs, our brains mutinying from caffeine withdrawal, Whezug drones on about nuts, herbs, roots, and berries, forcing us to scramble up embankments, climb trees, crouch and dig with our bare hands to wrest a few bitter morsels from Mother Earth.

Whezug pauses beside a sunbaked boulder and draws our attention to a withered newt, which he peels from the rock surface and eats, tearing strands of jerked reptile with his teeth.

A woman shrieks. Jeff chuckles and jots a note on his iPhone.

“Paleolithic humans took advantage of whatever protein they could get.” Whezug smirks.

To further illustrate this concept he squats, overturns a rock, scoops up a handful of termites, and pops them into his mouth. And so begins his lecture on wild protein. Whezug teaches us how to locate and catch grasshoppers. He distinguishes between edible and nonedible slugs. We watch the old man shimmy up a tree to raid a woodlark nest. Watch him pick maggots from the carcass of a lynx. Watch him grab a baby squirrel that has fallen from its nest, sniff the dead animal, and pronounce it “fresh.” I turn away, fighting back a retch as Whezug gnaws off the
head, recalling that urban legend about Ozzy Osborne biting off a bat’s head midconcert.

“Oh my God,” says a guy in garish cycling apparel.

“Paleolithic man ate plenty of carrion,” says Whezug. “Which enhanced his intestinal flora and quickened his metabolism into a state-of-the-art fat burner. Would anybody like a bite?”

Silence. Most of us study our feet.

“All right,” Whezug sniggers. “I was going to talk about edible scat next, but we’ll save that for another day. How about some fungi fun?”

As Whezug enters deeper forest in quest of mushrooms, I lag behind with Jeff the journalist and a tax attorney from Atlanta.

“Mental illness, anyone?” Jeff’s smile is squirrel-like but cute: a parting of beard, a revelation of yellow front teeth.

“This is not exactly what I signed up for,” says the tax attorney, a tall lean woman in yoga garb.

“I’m still feeling queasy from that Ozzy stunt,” I say.

“Exactly!” says Jeff. “I thought of Ozzy too. Bet you Whezug’s into weed and metal. Bet you he still tokes up. Bet you he listens to Metallica, if the loincloth is any indication.”

“Or worse, Cinderella.”

“I was going to say Poison, but it doesn’t get worse than Cinderella.” Jeff flashes his squirrel smile—conspiratorial,
contagious. I feel like we could stand there all morning, chatting about hair-metal bands, but Whezug summons us into the forest.

At the mixed-grill meet and greet, Zugnord struts around with two cave babes—a brunette, a blond—both wearing fur bikinis. He shakes our hands, offers us words of encouragement, and then retreats to his ceremonial throne, an egg-chair of burnished stone, where he sulks like a sultan as his women feed him protein-rich hors d’oeuvres. A
djembe
troupe starts pounding skins. Spitted meats roast, sending fragrant smoke tendrils into the air.

I spot Jeff, hunched over an appetizer tray, wolfing down trout-and-beet crudités. He waves his wineskin at me.

Tonight Jeff’s sporting his loincloth with flip-flops and a
Rock in Opposition
tee. I try not to look at his man-parts, neatly packaged in their deerskin pouch. I’m wearing my fur cavewoman top with a sarong and sandals, a necklace of faux tiger teeth. I glance down at my belly and adjust my sarong.

“How are you feeling?” asks Jeff.

“Better.”

“I can’t believe you ate that mushroom.”

“It was just a bolete. Besides, Whezug must know what he’s doing. They wouldn’t risk the lawsuits.”

“Don’t count on it,” says Jeff.

According to Jeff, Pleisto-Scene Island has been sued for intestinal sepsis, E. coli infection, hypertensive heart disease, and a slew of personal injuries, including club-fight-induced memory loss, Jacuzzi overstimulation, and broken bones acquired during the recently discontinued saber-toothed-tiger hunt.

“And Zugnord has settled countless sexual misconduct suits. Seems he has a penchant for pagan sex rites.”

“Are you serious?”

The swell of drums drowns our conversation. When the racket ceases, Zugnord stands, raises his wineskin, and blesses the
fruits of the hunt
.

Jeff and I refill our own wineskins. As the orientation video explained, Pleisto-Scene Island serves only Stone Age
vin de primeur
, the juice of naturally fermented wild grapes. I take a grateful tug, pleased to taste some bite in the booze.

We sit down at one of the stone picnic tables and dig into our arugula and berries. Our tablemates include the tax attorney we met earlier, a periodontist, and a belly dancer. Laughing, we take mock-fierce tugs from our wineskins. By the time we finish our salads, we’re all
using our cave names, sprinkling our conversation with sarcastic primal grunts.

A waitress in a fur bikini appears, lugging a grilled suckling pig on a wooden trencher. The pig, garnished with charred carrots and turnips, glistens in the torchlight. When my tablemates lift their phones to snap pics, I remember how Tim, my fiancé, swore he’d obsessively check Flickr for glimpses of my transformation. But I won’t post a single thing. He’ll peer into cyberspace and find a black void.

“The pig has been stuffed with its own minced vital organs, a caveman power food,” says our waitress.

“Uh, plates?” says Jeff.

“Try to enjoy the carnal experience of communal eating.” The waitress, a college girl who channels Raquel Welch from
One Million Years B.C
., winks. “Of tearing off hunks of flesh with your bare hands.” The waitress licks her lips and leaves us alone with our dead piglet.

“Well, this is awkward,” says the periodontist. “How do we begin?”

“I guess we literally dig in,” says the tax attorney.

She reaches out, claws at the pork with her manicured talons, and pops a strand into her mouth.

“Oh, it’s
very
tender,” she murmurs, licking her fingers.

We go at it, at first politely, avoiding each other’s paws as we pick meat from the carcass. But then, ten minutes
in, something about the flickering torches, the throbbing percussion, the wine that tastes of summer forests, something about the rich, fatty taste of the shoat helps us relax. Soon we are tipsy, laughing. Soon we are ripping off hunks of meat and stuffing them into our maws. Soon we are talking with our mouths open, sharing anecdotes, heedless of the grease dripping down our chins.

I am Vogmar, daughter of the Blackboar Clan, supping under the moon. Jeff is Bogwag, son of the Shaggy Bear People, tittering and mock-growling. The periodontist howls like a wolf, showing off his transplanted gums. The tax attorney sloughs her sequined cocktail dress hesitantly, revealing the cavewoman garb beneath.

“Didn’t have the guts to wear this out, but now I’m drunk.”

Everybody laughs.

“You go, girl,” says the belly dancer, who is already sporting her standard-issue fur bikini. They high-five. We all hoot and roar. I am Vogmar, daughter of the Blackboar Clan, tossing bones into the shadows. I am Vogmar, huntress and medicine woman, studying the messages of the stars. I am Vogmar, slurping wild wine and feeling uncomfortable as Sexgoth, the belly dancer, begins to undulate under the moon and Bogwag of the Shaggy Bear People growls his approval. I am Vogmar, feeling pudgy and bloated despite the fact that I have not
consumed a single carb since my arrival. I try to think of something clever to say to Bogwag, but he’s chatting up the nearly naked tax attorney.

“I’m here to vanquish this paunch,” she says, pointing at the barely perceptible mound of her belly.

“What paunch?” says Bogwag, who actually pokes her stomach with his finger.

“Bless your heart,” says the tax attorney, flashing a mouthful of perfect, predatory teeth.

The
djembe
troupe, clearly drunk, is trying to play the drum solo from “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

“Groovy,” says Bogwag, smiling at the tax attorney. He bobs his shaggy head to the beat.

The night deepens. The moon spills its primordial silver. Whispered rumors flit around the table: moon worship, pagan sex cults, animal sacrifices, and roving bands of actors impersonating cannibalistic Neanderthals. The belly dancer claims she’s already spotted the Neanderthals, staring intensely at her from a patch of jungle beyond the swimming pool.

“For real?” says the tax attorney, sounding like an adolescent. She stands up, slinks over to the bonfire, and Bogwag trots after her.

I hear my phone buzzing persistently in my purse. It’s my fiancé, but I don’t pick up. I picture him hunched in his office, bathed in sickly computer light. Perhaps
my absence has prodded him out of his chair for a walk around the block. Perhaps he has emerged from what I call his “hibernation,” which started a year ago when he began doing search-engine optimization work at home. I picture him standing stunned on our weedy lawn, blinking at the sun like a prairie vole. One tipsy evening last spring, I’d joked that he was agoraphobic. He kept running toward the edge of our yard, pretending to strike an invisible force field, falling on his butt and laughing. Finally, snarling, he broke through. He turned toward me like a hero in a dystopian film, arm extended. Holding hands, we ran off to a neighborhood bar to get wasted. But under a trellis entwined with Confederate jasmine and strings of Christmas lights, he kept looking at his phone.

“What, exactly, do you keep checking?” I tried to smile.

“The usual.” He made a point of turning his phone off, tucking it away. “E-mails from clients. Various accounts.”

Clouds floated across the pocked face of the moon. My fiance’s hand crept across the table like a tarantula toward his phone. He did not turn it on, but he could not refrain from touching it.

Imagining him at home now, compulsively checking his phone for a sign of life from me, I’m tempted to text
him. But I don’t. I scroll through pics on my iPhone, flashing backward through time into our courtship phase, his image multiplying into a swarm of smiling, impish men—and there he is on our first date, eyes alight, lips whispering wry comments about the ridiculous paintings of naked game-show hosts at the art show we’d attended. Comparing Pat Sajak to a “startled marsupial,” he made me laugh, softening me up for our first kiss, his lips full and feminine and tasting mysteriously of figs.

The next morning at the Primitive Technology Workshop, Jeff is sitting by himself. The tax attorney is also there, at another table, chatting up some handsome triathlon type in clownish fitness apparel.