My Year of Meats

This chapter is prefaced by Shōnagon’s list of “Things That Give A Pathetic Impression” (169).

Akiko is careful not to let John know she has her period. Ever since he threw her into the TV, she has not felt the need to make herself sick and he has not felt the need to sleep with her. 

Jane starts shooting Dyann and Lara, an interracial lesbian couple living in Massachusetts. She gets some candid shots of them discussing the sperm donor process and playing with their children. Because they are vegetarians, she worries they will not be appropriate for the show. She thinks about how learning to manipulate TV has taught her “absolute” truth doesn’t exist and about how she is haunted by many of the wives she has worked with (176). She regrets filming the vegetarians without explaining the show was meant to sell American meat and also regrets not telling Sloan she’s pregnant. She receives several faxes threatening her job over Dyann and Lara’s episode. 

Akiko starts crying when she watches it. Dyann and Lara make her realize that once she has a child, she will not need John in her life anymore. She starts trying to entice John. She cooks extravagant dinners and buys lingerie and pornography so she can mimic the porn stars’ poses at home. 

Dyann and Lara end up getting excellent ratings. Jane asks John for forgiveness as she has been instructed, and John ends up forgiving her as long as she agrees to shoot only “beef and normal people” (183). Soon after, her and her crew are arrested and jailed for trespassing on some land in Montana without permission. She uses her phone call to admit to Sloan she is pregnant. They decide to abort and split the bill in half. Jane also suggests they “take a break” and Sloan agrees (188). She is hurt that he was so quick to suggest abortion but feels a power over her pregnancy that she did not before.

As Jane nears the end of her first trimester she decides not to abort. She finally reveals she is pregnant to her crew when they go out drinking to celebrate having been bailed out of jail. One of the members, Suzuki, who is quite drunks offers to marry her on the spot. This surprises her and she finds it to be a sweet gesture even though he “slid off the barstool and fell” immediately after (191).

Akiko dresses up and cooks a big dinner for John, ready to tell him she is menstruating again. He starts telling her about how the show has been successful lately despite Jane’s refusal to listen to him. Akiko comments that is seems like John would “like a woman with so much spunk” (195). He asks if Akiko is jealous and when she says no, he says she should be. He calls her a “cold, dead fish” who has no interest in intercourse (195). She defends herself and says she is “not like that anymore” (195). John apologizes and asks her to sit next to him. She tries to seduce him by kissing and biting his fingers, but he hits her when she bites him too hard. As she is lying there bleeding, he turns her over and starts to try to arouse himself. When it doesn’t work, he goes outside to cry. Akiko follows him and assures him it’s her fault. He tells her he will never have this problem again.  

This chapter is prefaced by an excerpt from Shōnagon in which she describes a wife whose anger with her husband “about some trifle” leads her to refuse to sleep next to him (199). She ends up cold and scared, so she tries to climb back in bed, but he suggests she “be standoffish a little longer” (200). 

As Jane is working on her next show, one which she hopes will expose the horrors of the American meat industry, she gets a fax from Sloan wanting to see her. She lets him know she will be in Chicago visiting with the “wife of a meatpacker” (203). She also contacts Dyann and Lara to see if they will expand on their political beliefs concerning meat. They oblige, saying that they believe a decrease in American men’s sperm count coincides perfectly with an increase in factory farming. Jane starts to arrange the show about the meatpacker’s wife knowing it will show the grisly side of American meat production but gets nervous and writes John to tell him she thinks the show will expose too many negatives about the industry. John tells her none of that concerns her and to just do her job. 

Akiko faxes a letter to Jane, telling her who she is and how she wants to attain the same “happy life” Dyann and Lara are leading (214). She says she doesn’t belong with John and asks for Jane’s advice. She also asks Jane to verify a fax she found from Jane to her husband in which Jane claims that meat eating leads to sterility. She grows defensive when the sales associate sending the fax for her tries to make conversation about her use of English in the fax. She ends up embarrassing herself and, in her shame, almost forgets to pay. 

Jane has Sloan pick her up from the airport and he goes with her to visit one of the wives, but Jane finds her dull and the meatpacking facility she runs depressing, so they leave, shower, and head for the shore. Sloan tries to be romantic and caring but this bothers Jane because it makes him seem “soft” (220). After some awkward conversation, Jane “explode(s)” and tells Sloan she feels like he is just being nice to her out of “guilt” and that he had already made it clear he did not want a deep relationship with her (222). Sloan points out that she has been avoiding him more than the other way around, then they have “odd” but enjoyable sex (223). The next morning things feel like they are on an even keel between them. 

Back in Japan, Akiko tries to heed the warnings in Jane’s fax and cooks non meat-based dinners for John. John catches on and gets angry. She tries to lie but he quickly realizes she has read Jane’s fax. He tells her what she read isn’t true and Akiko relaxes a little.

When Jane returns to the office, one of her co-workers approaches her with the faxes Akiko sent, warning her to avoid stirring up their boss’s wife. She explains that John tried to rape her and that because of that incident she knows she needs to help Akiko. Jane then reaches out to Akiko to tell her she should leave her abusive husband and to offer her help. John intercepts the fax, beats Akiko, takes all her personal belongings, including her copies of the faxes she sent to Jane, and leaves. 

John returns later, drunk and angry, so Akiko tries to lay still and ignore him. He punches her to prove she is awake then anally rapes her, leaving her bleeding. When he is passed out, she calls Jane and tells her some of what happened and then warns her that John is headed to Jane’s next destination: Colorado.