margaret hayertz

Minimal Contact Hug

Allie glares at me from inside the lion’s enclosure. “Just tell me when Justin and Hannah are going to break up.”

“The lion’s not a fortune teller.” I fiddle with the elbow of a lawn chair that leans folded against the house. The sun has just dipped below the roof, and things are starting to take on that over-saturated glow in the first moments of twilight. “The lion is supposed to reveal you to yourself.”

In the lockout, a smaller cage within the enclosure, the lion’s cheeks twitch and then his mouth opens in a yawn. He unfurls his tongue and bares his yellow stalactites. The lawn chair pinches the flesh of my thumb and my hand darts back to my side. I ask Allie, “Why don’t you ask what your relationship needs are?”

“I know what my relationship needs are. For Justin and Hannah to break up.” She shoves her bangs off her face, revealing her small, fearful eyes. On the hug platform, Allie’s palms press into the sides of her thighs, her arms like elevator doors closing on her.

“The lion’s not going to tell you about them. He’s going to tell you about you.” 

“Then I don’t want to know.”

I sigh. Allie is stuck here getting this Lion Hug because Lucky wants her to, “needs” Allie and I to bond if we’re all going to keep living together. Lucky and Allie are just roommates, but Allie is obsessed with doing things for Lucky—cooking, scheduling hair appointments, taking their dogs to the vet—as if Lucky’s life is Allie’s job, which is a weird way to live. Not to mention that Lucky is my girlfriend, not Allie’s. Even though Allie predates me in Lucky’s life by three years, and they are such close friends that they own two dogs together.“We can just tell Lucky I hugged the lion,” she says.

“No, we can’t! Will you please just give it a try?” I walk over to the enclosure and rest a hand on the crank that opens the lockout. The lion sits up and gazes intensely at Allie, which makes me want to back away, but I don’t.

Allie gives me a look. “Kara, you haven’t even picked up the lion’s poop. It stinks.”

“I’ve had things to do. I’m still getting used to having a lion.” Lucky gave me this lion a week ago, and I’m still not sure why. It’s kind of an insult that she thinks I’m one of  those woo woos intoxicated with the latest trend of hugging domesticated lions.

But then again, I did fall in love with my friend Loria’s lion at a party a couple weeks ago, and it’s pretty romantic that Lucky noticed and acted on it at a price tag of $10,000.

I suck on the tip of my thumb where the chair pinched it. Love is need, Kara, Lucky chastised me when I let loose my frustration about Allie always dragging her thick, grimy cloud of sadness around the house and never giving Lucky and I any alone time. Love is need and if you don’t understand that, maybe we shouldn’t be together. I press down so that the crank gives a little but not enough to raise the door of the cage. The lion, longer than I am tall, paces as best he can in the cramped container—practically spinning in circles. According to Melody Waldo’s How to Hug a Lion videos on YouTube, lions pace when they’re excited for a hug. Allie eyes him with worry and disgust.

“Yes!” Lucky cheers from inside the house. She cheers like a little girl, like a banner unfurled in the breeze, unguarded and gleeful, the way she calls to her dogs at the beach when they are wild with surf and joy. Lucky has been giddily preparing to watch the India-Pakistan cricket match all week, buying two bags of salt and pepper kettle chips and preparing to stay up for the whole match, which could go until two or three a.m. “The only time I ever prayed was the last time we played Pakistan,” she’s fond of saying. “I had to ask my dad who to pray to, because I never cared which god is which. He was like, Lakshmi, you idiot! You’re named for her!” She cracks up, giggles spilling down her chin. “That was the one and only time my namesake has ever heard me pray to her!”

Lucky’s enthusiasm, how fine she’s doing, how un-upset about our faltering connection, makes my stomach squirm. Did Lucky give me this lion because she thought it was what I wanted? Or was it to spin me away from her? That is, to give me a way to support myself when she leaves me, so she can dump me guiltlessly?

“Fine,” I say because Allie is stepping off the hugging platform. “Let’s see what happens if we ask the lion when Justin and Hannah are going to break up.” I step closer to the cage, to Allie, to the lion with his apricot eyes and meaty breath. The Pine-Sol smell of him is faint, buried under the stench of poop I haven’t picked up, some of which has dried white in the sun.

Okay, lion? My eyes plead with him to behave. I’m doing this for Lucky. So is Allie.

Allie looks at me like I’m dense and gets back onto the red vinyl platform. A wall of red vinyl also extends up behind her. The wall has little ledges for the lion to put his paws in order to hug her without knocking her over.

Allie fake smiles at me and I return the act, then sigh. Instead of becoming a Lion Hug Therapist, I’d rather Lucky just take care of me with all that stupid money, so I can be a poet. But Lucky and I are falling apart, so I have to try harder to accept what she’s given me. “I’m a creature of habit,” Lucky always says happily on Saturdays when she settles onto the couch in front of the TV with the dogs after returning from the dog beach at Chrissy Field. I need to become one of Lucky’s habits—our fucking, our late-night whispering—so that we stick together long enough for her to realize how much we love each other.

The lion is antsy, turning from me, to Allie, butting his forehead affectionately against the bars of the tiny lockout cage with a clang like a basketball hitting a backboard.

“Lion,” I say, wondering if I’ll keep him and name him or find a way to give him back. “When will Justin and Hannah break up, and what does Allie need to know about her relationship to herself—”

“That’s all. Just the first part.”

The lion barks like a sea lion and presses his steamy nose between the bars.

“Ready?” I stand as helplessly as a photographer. There are no chains or men to pull the lion off Allie if the lion attacks. I scrutinize my thumb where the lawn chair pinched it. A glob of purplish red pulses under the skin’s surface. I know I’m dangerously stupid, believing in the magic docility of this genetically modified lion. But violence can’t happen—me being responsible for Allie’s death, going to jail, my life no longer belonging to me. I couldn’t handle it, so it can’t happen. I gently turn the crank to open the lockout.

Allie’s nervous eyes ask the lion, What do you think of me?

He gallops toward her, nuzzles her hip, then pads to the corner of the enclosure. He immediately turns and comes back to her like a swimmer making a flip turn. Allie crosses her arms in an X over her breasts, her face impassive, as he nuzzles her elbow. He returns to the opposite wall of the enclosure, then paces back again, grazing her other hip with his cheek on his way to the other wall.

This is not a typical hug, as far as I can tell, but I trust the lion’s instinct to move as he does. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone offer Allie sensual affection, and my shoulders relax as I watch. Even Allie’s dogs seem to ignore her when they love on her: Rosie licks with the franticness of someone drowning and Easter Bunny pushes Allie where he wants and then flops down on her, pinning her as much as appreciating her. The lion, however, closes his eyes with pleasure every time his cheek rubs Allie’s hip. He must be warming up for the hug. His whiskers smooth back as he glides along her exercise pants, then they spring back up. His mane caresses her like seaweed.

But Allie flinches each time the lion rubs past. She’s looking increasingly determined, like when both her dogs pull on their leashes and, to keep them from pulling her toward a squirrel or skunk, she jams her elbows into her sides and breathes through tightened lips. I cross my arms, annoyed that she’s not appreciating this process.

The lion lies down in Sphinx pose, facing Allie. Allie, jaw clenched, sidesteps his direct gaze then sighs, eyes on the sky. The lion cocks his head. On the edge of the hugging platform, Allie shifts her weight, chewing her cheek.

Shit! He didn’t hug her! I feel the same jittery panic as during the afternoon rush at the aquarium gift shop where I work, when a tourist presents me with a T-shirt or glitter wand, the last in stock, without a tag. I hate not knowing what to do! I hate being revealed as incompetent. I dry my palms on my thighs. Lucky’s going to tell me I failed. She won’t blame Allie for being too superficial to elicit a message from the lion. What do I do without a hug to interpret? Maybe nuzzling Allie actually was an Archetypal Hug Position?

I tell Allie, “I’ll just look up the lion’s message for you, and we’ll have an answer about Justin. Okay?”

She smiles condescendingly, steps off the hug platform, and speed walks to the door of the cage.

“No! Get back on the platform! Allie!” I run to the gate.

“Why?” She reaches for the latch, and my hand clamps down on hers. Her fingers are sweaty and also sticky, probably from one of those lollipops she loves. I want to let go—the intimacy grosses me out. Allie and I have never touched before.

“I can’t open the gate if the lion’s not in the lockout,” I say sternly, sounding like an adult.

“I don’t like it in here. Just let me out!”

I squeeze her hand against the metal, hating her more than ever. Cheating at puppy class was one thing, but breaking the rules here? “Do you want him to escape? And—eat your dogs?”

With a wounded, resentful glare, Allie says matter-of-factly, “Lucky said he lost his kill instinct.”

“Yeah, probably, but…” Our hands are overheating. Either hers or mine is pulsing. The lion is licking his forearm. “If you’re not on the platform he could accidentally crush you if he hugs you full-on. Go back. Get back on the platform, okay?”

“Put him in that little cage thing so I can get out.” Her hand squirms.

 “The lockout. We’re not finished, though.” I’m not going to let Allie do this lion hug as superficially as she does everything else. Even though I have no idea what I’m doing. My stomach lurches at the thought of Lucky scolding me for keeping Allie in the enclosure when she wanted to leave. “After I interpret the hug, you hug him again, to integrate.”

“I don’t know what that means. I don’t like it in here. How about this? How about the lion hugs you?” She yanks her hand out from under mine.

“Just give it five more minutes. Please.”

She smiles sweetly. “Do you think the lion wants a treat?” 

“No.”

“Oh my God, Kara. I get why Lucky says you’re controlling.” She trods back to the hug platform. Bile rises in my throat and I swallow it back down.

My laptop, open to the magenta homepage of HugMeanings.com, sits atop a rusty little table. Okay, internet. Let’s see if we can find any meaning in this non-hug. The Archetypal Hug Positions, AHPs, are organized by categories: Bear Hugs, Left Side Hugs, Right Side Hugs, and so on. I click Minimal Contact Hugs.

Allie pulls her phone out of her back pocket and checks the time. She pauses in thought, then starts typing away, side-eying the lion. I hear Lucky’s phone ping through the open upstairs window.

My laptop wobbles on the uneven surface as I scroll through GIFs: a white lion rolling over on his back, a lioness rubbing her face on a woman’s Puma sneakers. A breeze flutters the leaves on the rose bushes. I shiver and zip up my hoodie. I feel cheated that the Bay Area never has warm evenings, but I guess the cool air drifting in off the Bay is beautiful in its own way, kind of misty and fresh. Scanning for the lion’s gesture of nuzzling Allie’s elbow, I wonder if it could really be true that lions naturally give messages through their hugs.

I also wonder what my lion’s training was like at the Lion Love ranch, how he learned to respond to emergency commands like “off” and “down” and to be still while a Lion Hug Therapist steps in to translate a hug.

Dishes clatter in the neighbor’s kitchen, and a familiar scent drifts into our yard. I must be imagining it, but I swear I smell the sopapillas and pebre, the fried pumpkin dough and salsa that Taylor and I used to make on weekends.

The lion sighs.

“Kara, hurry up. I have to run errands for my mom.”

I feel stupid attempting Lion Hug Therapy but also compelled.

“There’s an archetype for what you’re going through,” I explain to Allie as I keep searching, reciting Melody Waldo’s words from her How to Hug a Lion vlog. “Your experience is ancient.”

Allie scoffs the way she does when someone cuts her off in traffic. Her eyes flicker, and she sort of flicks her shoulder as if shrugging off an affront.

I hold my breath, scanning through GIFs, hoping to find the AHP that lets us in on the meaning of Allie’s life, though I fear there is no deeper meaning, that I’ve lost touch with reality and that Allie will continue to see me as pathetic.

A siren boils on College Avenue. The scents of the whole neighborhood’s blossoms turn up their volume, mixing with the lion’s grimy, high-pitched pheromones. The lion won’t maul her, will he?

I found it!

Boundary Massage:

Grazing the side of the Seeker’s body while pacing back and forth.

AHP meaning:

Shielding. Looking for attention in the wrong places.

Breath undulates through me. The message feels cosmic, larger than the three of us. How did the lion know?

My computer screen glows. It’s a tacky purple portal into… a deeper layer of reality.

Allie is inching backwards, away from the lion, but also away from the door of the enclosure. The lion is nodding off, his eyes half-closed. My heart thrums. For the sake of truth and being right and finding out what LHT can do, I want to relay the lion’s message, but how am I supposed to convey such a delicate point to Allie? It’s not polite to say outright, “You’re looking for attention in the wrong places.” Words can break people. Like when Lucky opened the door on me when I was journaling, and I snapped, “Why are you interrupting me?” She’s been skirting me ever since.

“You’re taking on too much,” I say gently, as a starting place. Allie’s phone rumbles. She reads something on it and laughs meanly.

“The lion barely grazed your side because that’s the amount of affection you want,” I insist.

“The lion’s staring at me like I’m fat. He thinks I’m bacon.” She laughs humorlessly, panic flashing across her face.

But the lion is gazing at Allie lovingly, accepting her. The kindness in his eyes is nourishing and honest, the way a parent is supposed to regard their child, and I relax in spite of myself.

Allie tilts her head and looks at him as if he has given her a new idea. I wonder if she has just now noticed his compassion. Or maybe she’s suddenly realized she plays the martyr role too often. The lion hauls himself up and gives her side another brush with his snout, cheek, and mane, and she doesn’t clench against him; she just stands there, beside the hugging platform, with her hands halfway curled, looking down at the dirt as if at a loss for what to do.

“You want to be loved without being seen.” The words fly out of me. I don’t know where they came from, and I can’t believe I’ve said something so direct, so nearly accusatory. The intensity of managing this lion hug is too much; I want to turn it all off like a faucet: the lion, Allie, and Lucky’s demand that Allie and I become friends.

She scoffs, “Everyone does, Kara.”

A little gasp slips into my lungs, and I smile up at the magnolia tree across the yard. A new star twinkles above it in the lavender sky. I completely expected to be wrong. To accidentally break the tentative equilibrium in our household by inappropriately naming what I saw. But this time, because of the lion, I was spot-on. My arms tingle with awe. I’ve never felt so competent, so profoundly validated.

Allie stares at the ground as the lion continues to graze her side. The other day, she bought almost $300 of groceries for Justin and delivered them to his house, even after he blocked her on Facebook. Now, enduring this Lion Hug for Lucky’s sake, Allie watches the ground, dutifully tucking away her fear and waiting for this to be over. I see her in a new light, loading all those groceries into two big blue coolers. No longer feeling disgusted at her lack of self-respect, my heart goes out to her, for her desperate need to be loved.

I, too, am waiting for the person I love to break up with someone. Allie. Like one person reflected in two panes of a dressing room mirror, Allie and I move in tandem, paralleling each other’s choreography. She pleads with Justin by buying him ten bags of groceries; I plead with Lucky by taking my pants off and licking her every curve. The outcomes Allie and I hope for are simultaneous: If Hannah and Justin break up, Allie will move on to him and, in Allie’s absence, Lucky will move on to me.

“So are Justin and Hannah going to break up or not?”

We hear the front door open, then Rosie barking. The lion’s ears swivel, but his loving eyes are concentrated on Allie.

Lucky’s voice says, “Hush, Rosie.”

“Kara,” Allie says, a little panicked, “What if the lion gets out?”

“He can’t.”

“Why not?”

“He doesn’t have opposable thumbs,” I say, and the recent feeling of Allie’s thumb under mine makes me shiver with disgust at both of us.

We stare at each other nervously, newly self-conscious about our assignment to bond, while Lucky’s sing-song voice tells the dogs, “Easter Bunny, go potty! Good girl, Rosie!” Before the lion, Lucky could just let the dogs out in the fenced backyard, but since the dogs are afraid of the lion (especially the Ridgeback, bred to hunt lions), she has to leash them and take them out front.

I listen for Lucky to say something to the dogs that somehow gives a clue as to whether she has forgiven me for my outburst about Allie. Now that I’m guiding a lion hug for Allie, am I absolved? Does Allie have to be happy with the hug?

“Easter Bunny, I’m serious. Go potty. Now! The next over is starting!”

Allie and I share an eye roll and the smile we give each other when Lucky is being Lucky.

The lion releases a moan, a gravely whale song. Allie gives him a look like, Don’t you dare.

“Could you please stand in the center of the hug platform?” I ask, but she doesn’t budge.

Let’s just go back inside, I open my mouth to say, but what comes out, in a surprisingly gentle voice, is, “Why are you attracted to Justin?”

The lion walks past her again, rubbing the length of his head, mane, and body against her hip, and this time she reaches out and pets him. Watching the lion’s back glide under her fingers, she says, “Justin grew up raising his siblings, too. And working a lot because his parents had mental problems. I can relate.” She shivers and quickly retracts her hand as if stung.

“You deserve to be loved by someone you can relate to. Whether or not it’s Justin, you can totally find a partner who understands you.” I don’t know if what I’m saying will come true or not, but it wants to be said.

The lion flops down on the far side of the yard with his paws in the air, wiggling to scratch his back against the earth.

Allie’s eyes dart between me and the lion. “That’s what the lion says?” 

I nod.

She bites her lip and looks at me askance but with a shade of newfound respect, as if my association with the lion confers on me wisdom and spiritual credibility. She steps back onto the hugging platform where she’s supposed to stand.

The lion, still on his back, excitedly twists his head toward us, as if to say, “Look how much fun we’re having!”

I’m suddenly grateful to him for casting Allie and I in the glow of significance. I put my palm on the fence and he leaps over to nuzzle his massive forehead against my lifeline. Warm bristles massaging my hand, the hairs of his mane tickling my forearm.

“Thank you, Kara. I actually feel relieved.” Allie’s arms are soft at her sides. Her bangs are sweaty and her eyes shine with anxiety, but I take her word for it. She says, “Can I leave now?”

My jaw is clenched against emotion so all I can do is nod.

Lucky’s plan to shift my attention off of her and onto the lion: it’s working.

author photo by Nye Lyn Tho