The Floating Cradle

One

It's a growing trend in the cities and coastal suburbs. In those circles, counting a tantum among one's friends comes with certain status; they've become like any other token minority, except the tanta have never been enslaved or oppressed or treated like second-class shit, so they don't really seem to care. But it's not the friendship I have a problem with.

Nobody knows who was first to cross that line, but they must've known it was inevitable the moment tantic foot—ugh, those feet—touched down on Swiss soil. There was a woman on Maury who married a boa constrictor, after all. I will admit, reptiles aside, that the leap from friend to more-than-friend is often smaller than you imagine. And what's that leap, you may ask, compared to an interstellar voyage?

Nothing, except a few billion years of evolution.

All I know is this: the numbers don't lie. Even in metropolitan areas, interspecies marriages make up a fraction of a percent. And yet coasters go on cultivating the impression that they'd have no qualms about dating a tantum, while most know inside that they never would.

It's the sort of thing they approve of seeing in cereal commercials and endorse with Facebook likes. In public they're all "Love is Universal," like that bumper sticker with the black-and-white rainbow arcing in the corner. But in private, maybe after a few evening cocktails, they'll lean in toward their spouse or roommate and utter none too quietly, "Live and let live, but I can't imagine being attracted to one of them, you know? Like, it gives me the creeps."

I don't mean to say the coasters are all two-faced or phony or hollowly self-righteous—I've hardly met any, so who am I to generalize—but I don't think they deserve any moral kudos for pretending they're better than the rest of us. We all remember that street reporter who forgot his mic was still hot after interviewing an interspec couple on live TV, right? "Who could love a thing like that, eh?" he muttered to the gaffer. "There's gotta be some weird fetish fuckery going on." The network fired and condemned him with respectable indignation, but like, c'mon guys. We know.

I won't deny my ilk have produced some pretty cringey soundbites too, though. The incessant quoting of Bible verses gets old real fast; radio sermons crackling with words like "fornication" and "bestiality" do us fly-overs no favors either. I mean God damn, why is it always some yokel built like a tower of biscuits and gravy that makes it on the news, spouting nonsense like, "Ah just don't think it's nat-ur-el, human be'ens and ay-lee-uns, for all we know they could be a tem-tay-shin o' the devil, and they don't even got Gee-zus."

Contrary to popular opinion, there are plenty of us in the center of the country who don't talk like we took a tumble down the grain silo as babies (not that there's anything wrong with a bit of twang). As for the God-fearing, they don't all subsist on a diet of fire with a side of brimstone (only about two thirds). But whatever. Maybe these stereotypes make it easier for everyone to sleep at night, now that the stars hang that much lower.