The Bull and the Red Cape

I am sitting at a bull fight, the capricious audience priming themselves with liquids and heart-rendering snacks for the portentous event about to unfold. The bullfighter involved in a ritualistic dressing, of glittering posturing, tight like a ballerina’s cut, the unyielding material saying: “I am the flesh of this here toreador, I will refuse to rip unless a horn goes through his skin, I will not tear but I can be cut, and made dead, but this glitter of gold and this shimmering is all the skin of his heroic bravery.”

The audience is aroused by his entry into the ring, there he is, prepared to risk it all without just cause, there he is willing to make a pastime of a deadly act; there he is, the man.

Meanwhile the bull fails to imagine the nature and stature of the act, he shits when he has to shit; unlike the bullfighter that will wait until an opportune time for a toilet seat, the bull knows nothing about life, he knows something of spectacle, he is used to mowing the ground with his hooves, to make all aware, the breath and scope of his bullheadedness; a bull is a sure thing, he is the bull, it would be foolish for a toreador to kill a chicken or a dog, it would not be logical, it is more logical to challenge a bull and kill him. There is blood and guts in that, bull does not know about the sentiments of blood and guts, nor is he sane enough to understand that a good performance might induce the corruptible audience to order a halt to his execution, yet bull knows how to defend himself through pump and charge. He charges!

Bull is surrounded by would-be bullfighters, getting as close to bull as much as is allowed by generic excitements, here bothering bull with innocuous prickings so that he acquires a certain madness before he the spectacle of stadium.

The audience waits, the ladies, all cruelty aside, sit with the mystique urged by bloodletting, such nastiness, only men could be so ingenuously cruel, and yet such a beautiful thing to watch, the grace of the bullfighter, he is an art form, painting his bull with his spiraling dance of death. One could marry such a serious aesthetic brut, for underneath the pomp, the act, the stage, the glitter, underneath the ferocity and savageness, is what brings it all about, something that cannot be touched but for the simulations that it inspires above, a bullfighter is an epic poem.

The men in the audience feel empowered by the barbarian’s manifestations, he is a men like us, their wives next to them, observe well you ladies, he is a man and we are men too, capable of foolish things too, not only the domain of woman, but our foolish things are beyond tears and supplications, we act, we act!

The applauses leap from all, the hails of OLEs rank about all other importance, the master suite of trashing sand and sweat multiplies in glory, our bull tires, the spikes have worn him thin, his own blood on his graciously darkened back acts as a sun plurality, the heat can not translate into his nostrils with sufficient ease to escape, hence it back washes into bull’s lungs, he pores and explodes his soul, and is left to continue this twisted double end dance with a cursing partner.

There is after all, only the bull, only the blunt black leathered bull, the matador has a court of assistance, an audience that is not full of bulls but humans; and they seem to want human to win; other bulls have been banned from the ring because of their tendency to stampede so bull is alone on this; some spiked charmed boys added the spindles on his back, a giant horseman came up to bull, with mattress cover on the side so as to poke him with an iron torn; bullfighter stood and watched this, and raised his arms in glory, the fantastic triumph of team unity. The bull tried to unsatisfactorily shake off his discomfort, the discomfort only grew beyond pain and gain.

The red cape dress, flaunted in front of bull, he could go under, he could get the precious bullfighter behind it, the red dress, clinging bull with desire, “here I am says the matador, take me, only I fool you,” the bull aware of nothing beyond what he blindly sees, the lovely red dress, the tempting bullfighter, the promising glitter, and so he bleeds to get at it, any other god would have just stopped charging on, but not our black bull, the mystique is to precious to surrender even if impossible to obtain, and then, it seems to bull that when he is most exhausted he has her, I mean the bullfighter, and he does one last charge towards what seems an opening so huge that he will be able to stab her, I mean the bullfighter, clear with his horns deep within her; but suddenly from the glorious red dress is unleashed a fine blade three times longer and more stern than any bull horn. Horns sunk into the ground bull finally feels her within.

RC