I couldn't make it to Pamplona for the Running of the Bulls, so I'm here in Pittsburgh for the Running of the Pigs.

I'm down in the arena as they let them loose. 800-pounders, bloated and crazed from the fattening hormones in their feed, chase people up and down the playing field... Humans shriek and pigs squeal.

My uncle Otto's leaning on a gate, calmly watching the chaos. I stagger over and sit on the wooden wall by him. I mutter "This all feels familiar, but I've never been here before."

Otto says "Pigskin."

It takes me a minute. I'm not a sports fan. "Football?"

But he's right. Huge, hormone-fattened beasts, madly chasing each other...

THE NEXT DAY

I stumble on a book titled "When Things Bite Back," on why techno-fixes so often backfire. It says football injuries actually increased after helmets improved! Players feel safer, so they butt opponents more with their heads--and break their silly necks.

I've also been reading Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person." She's not talking about emotional sensitivity per se, but a genetic minority, biochemically different. My minority group. I do see the majority of American men as (both politically and physically) pigs. Really, really big pigs. So... inflated. My dream implies it's not just training but a physical difference--genetic as Aron says, or from hormones in the meat I won't eat--who knows?

But whatever the cause, these creatures who like to bash into each other are like a different species to me. The butch species. Aron documents how sensitivity is valued in most older cultures, but not this one. America loves butch, America breeds butch, America is butch.

Oink.

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