Curtis Sittenfeld: Breeze Point

species extinction, climate change. It just goes on and on and it's depressing. Right, We felt we needed to change it up here at the Chronicles of Now. We needed some good news. So on this episode we're going full panda. It seems was the Private season when the coronavirus shut down the zoo, the pandaly. If there's one good thing to come of this, it's not in our absence. Some timid pandas finally got it on, and boy did they get it on. No visitors were there, but the camera

was rolling and the media ate it up. These pandas are having sex. I'm watching them, and I might be the happiest I've been since the pandema. Now this is a family podcast, and we would never shamelessly goat at panda sex like The New York Times did in this video. When those pandas did it, I felt this strange surge of pride. Oh no. We commissioned one of the country's finest writers of fiction to give the panda take on the story. Curtis Sittenfeld is the best selling author of

six novels. Her latest is Rotten, a novel that reimagines Hillary Clinton's life. As she did in that book, she took some artistic liberties for her pandas story. The zoo in the story is sort of fictitious, and I changed the panda's names to respect their privacy. In a world gone haywire, sometimes pandas are the only way to make sense of it all. The incident the day that bifurcated my existence into before and after happened back in twenty sixteen.

By then, I'd been at Breeze Point Zoo for nine years. Though time is elastic in a life such as mine. That first time I saw him, I didn't know his name or even his speeches. I pieced this information together afterward by eavesdropping on my handlers, who have long assumed

that I don't understand cantonese. All I knew that day when I awakened from a morning nap atop of a massive rock, was that perched on a log hardly more than a meter away, regarding me unabashedly, was a small creature with reddish fur, pointy ears, inquisitive brown eyes, white whiskers, and a long striped tail. How enchanting he was, how life has build, how glossy his coat, and in his gaze,

what depths, what perspicacity. The internal jolt I experienced made me abruptly understand that I was sleeping my life away, both literally and figuratively. I'd been napping on my stomach with my glossy black fore legs flung in front of me, and I rolled on to my side to display my heft, all one hundred twenty kilograms of it, to its most flattering effect. I routinely twenty kilograms of bamboo a day up until this very moment. That consumption had been my

raison d'etre. He approached tentatively at first, then with greater confidence, he passed my head and walked regally around me to sniff my hind quarters. To nudge my back, the contact with electrifying returning to my head. He made eye contact with me from close range, then cocked his ears to the right, indicating I should follow. What ensued was truly magical, the most intoxicating interlude of my life, and I am still unable to say whether it lasted minutes or hours.

My enclosure featured an air SAT's bamboo forest and cave, multiple ponds, and wooden climbing structures, and my new friend and I frolicked through it. All. I did not know then that my friend was a red panda, that his name was Zusian, or that he'd escaped his enclosure from mine. All I knew was that it was delightful to lumber

and climb with him in the sun. I was impervious to the humans pointing and hooting from above, their strange rubbery faces contorting with pleasure, and yet it was the delight they took in the sight of Zusian and me, the commotion of their delight that eventually drew the attention of the zoo handlers, who, when they realized what had happened, entered my enclosure. There were six of them in blue medical gowns. And rubber boots and restrained me while removing Zeeshan.

I still remember the sight of him as one of the handlers carried him away, the yearning in his mournful expression and proud tale. I have not seen him since, and it has been agony. I soon learned that he'd been living, and as far as I know, still does in an enclosure adjacent to mine. Also that his species in general and he in particular, are known for being

escape artists. It is this fact that has kept me these last four years in a constant state of alertness and hope that he's plotting another escape, that one day, if even for just another moment of bliss, we'll be together again. It's not that I dislike Da Pung, my enclosure mate. Indeed, I feel a sincere, if moderate affection for him. But really, who could be attracted to someone when you see them defecating up to fifty times a day.

I've heard our handlers attribute our aversion to mating to the low libido endemic among giant pandas, But this explanation underestimates our individual idiosyncrasies. All of which is to say that the handlers are erroneous in their assumptions about why once the zoo was closed to visitors earlier this spring, Da Pung and I engage in our first ever how might I say this voluntary coupling, Jiang Jian and Dapong have made a breakthrough, the handlers told one another and

journalists worldwide. All they needed was a little privacy. They rewarded us with apples and carrots. But it wasn't privacy that motivated me. It was boredom. I mean, seriously, COVID just didn't shut down your world. For the last four years, I've spent my waking hours being mildly amused by the human visitors to our zoo, and my sleeping hours dreaming

of a reunion with Zushan. Then the human visitors vanished, and many weeks into the new quiet, in a moment of profound enui, and I decided I might as well give a union with Da Hung a whirl. But even in the act itself, with dab Hung fumbling behind me, pressing his body against mine, the small bump of his panda hood trying to find the appropriate cavity, it was Zeeshan I thought of. As for dab Hung, I'm not

convinced he felt any more enthusiasm than I did. I know that over the years, our handlers have tried to encourage him with legs strengthening exercises, with exposure to the excretions from my scent glands, and even with spicy videos of others of our kind. But I suspect in the end it was less that such incentives proved effective than that he was trying to please our handlers. Passion alas

cannot simply be summoned. Meanwhile, the fact that so much about Zeshen was and is forbidden and impossible our respective sizes, our enclosures, our differing species, has never decreased my longing to know what it's like to yearn for four years for a red panda who is mere meters from you, beneath the same sky, breathing the same air from the South China Sea. Did you know? Are you tiny, wiley heartbreaker? I think as I chew bamboo, are you coming back

to me? And if so, when hurry? Please Zeshian, because I miss you terribly. That was breeze point by Curtis Sitt and felt the narrator was the one and only Rachel dratch Hi. Curtis Hi Ashley. So I get the feeling that you didn't stop with the news reports of panda's having pandemic sex. I'm feeling like you went a little bit deeper. You did some serious research into panda sex. Am I correct? Well, I assume you mean that as a great compliment. I do, and I do well, Okay,

so this is what I did. I mean, of course, of course I didn't research into panda sex as any self respecting fiction writer would. I started by buying a National Geographic book for kids about pandas, which I often find books meant for kids to be a useful starting place for research in fiction because it sort of tells you the general information you need but doesn't overwhelm you, and it's not like you lose like five years of

your life doing research. And then, of course I also went into all the nooks and crannies of the Internet, and I've learned quite a bit. So is it true that giant pandas have low libido? It's true the giant pandas have low libidas. And actually, and I'm saying this like factually, not disrespectfully, Supposedly, the male panda does have an unusually small penis and weak hind legs, which make the physical act of sex challenging. Wow, that that part I did not find in a children's book, but I

did find it online. I mean, useful information in case, in case you ever have like a panda libido emergency, you know, in your future, I think you'll you'll be well equipped a hand. You never know. The world is a big and surprising place, speaking of with everything going on in the world, why this story, Why panda sex? Why now? I always longed for an interviewer to say to me, why panda sex? Why now? No? Well, so, okay, So I'm not sure how great a level of detail

I should get into. But I actually originally thought that I wanted to write a story based on a different headline, based on a headline about sort of the chat challenges of dating during a pandemic, and especially like what if you had just started seeing someone and then then maybe gone on like one or two dates and then everything

shuts down. And so I actually started working and worked for a few days on that story, and I just felt like, you know, it was kind of tonally off, or I don't maybe it's because I'm about to turn forty five, and it was from the perspective of like a millennial, and I really really felt my age, like I kind of like almost like like it was like trying to be a cool mom and like use the

current lingo. And so then I just kind of thought, like, you know, maybe I'm just not going to do this project, Like, of course I love the Chronicles of Now and like, I think it's such a sort of interesting premise and have enjoyed the other stories. But I was like, you know, maybe I'll just wait six months or something. And then Tyler Cabot, the founder, showed me his list of headlines

he had gathered. And of course, because headlines from the recent past are all so overwhelmingly sad and heartbreaking and frustrating in so many different ways, I mean, across lots of topics, and so this headline about you know, these two pandas have made it for the first time voluntarily

after all these years together. It was the one headline that made me literally laugh out loud, and I thought like, oh, there's no question, like that's that's definitely the one I want to write about it, like ding ding ding, yes, And I mean I also I do have a soft spot for just like writing about like crushes and romance and yes, sex, I mean, I try to write about sex in like a intentional way where it serves the plot.

But so in some ways I also saw this as a really festive opportunity to make fun of myself and and to make fun of myself and the people who make fun of me for writing sex scenes in fiction. Your latest novel is Rodham, a novel about Hillary Clinton, and there are sex scenes in that book with Bill, and I'm wondering which was more interesting and challenging to imagine Hillary is having sex with Bill or panda sex. They were each challenging yet rewarding in their own way.

It's the best possible answer for that question. You end with a note about forbidden love across species, sizes, enclosures. What can we humans learn from the female panda's love affair. Well, I think I think that one thing that maybe I don't know if this is like unsettling or reason for hope, is that you know, she she sort of lives her life in her enclosure. And my research did reveal to me that giant panda spent the majority of their time

eating bamboo and napping and kind of pooping. I think to a lesser but still significant degree of pooping and knit like. But actually that I think the appearance of the red Panda is maybe like a lesson that all of our lives can take surprising twists when we don't expect it. M M, come on, Curtis, yes, bring that back around. You can read my full uncensored interview with Curtis Settenfeld on our website Chronicles dot fm, where you can also read her story and other short fiction torn

from today's headlines. Our sound designer and composer is Bart Warshaw, our producer is Curtis Fox, and our associate producer is Emily Roston. Tyler Cabott is the executive producer and founder of Chronicles of Now for Pushkin Industries. Our executive producer is Ali Tom Mullock. Special thanks to Jacob Weisberg, Carly Migliore, Heather Fame, and Eric Sandler for the Chronicles of Now podcast. I'm Ashley Ford. Thanks for listening.