by Lucy Ellmann
The bifurcated penis, behind rather than in front of the testicles, seemed to Ferdinard to correspond in some way to the idiosyncracies of the marsupial female’s urogenital tract, in which the cloacal opening splits into two vaginae halfway up. This was linked to his ongoing study of the developing EMBRYO from its earliest stages: he had found out that within the limits of the embryo and for a short distance beyond, the mesoderm splits into two layers, the somatic mesoderm being applied to the ectoderm and the splanchnic mesoderm to the endoderm.
Ferdinand was splicing through his eighth female urogenital system of the day in search of embryos, and holding two little opossum uteri in his hand, when he finally realised what he was DOING: he was experimenting on DOT. Inside these sagging corpses, he had actually been seeking DOT’s interior decor and furnishings. She had inspired all of his research, in fact Dot and Dot alone had made Ferdinand the world-renowned scientist he was! (He did not stop to consider WHY Dot’s genitalia resembled an opossum’s, nor to blame her for not having a pouch.)
With a jolt, he realised he LOVED her and that everything he had done for the last three years had been WRONG. He shouldn’t have listened to Yetta, he should have stayed with Dot — ALWAYS! They could have lived quietly together in some suburb, no one would know. It was ABSURD that he had given Dot up. For WHAT? Yetta? SCIENCE? There is no point in Science! It’s all guff, he knew that now.
Seized by a sudden sense of his own futility, stupidity, and unquenchable BEREFTITUDE, Ferdinand turned his scalpel on himself and DIED, much to the bewilderment of his docile possum audience. A great scientific mind lost to humanity.
But what good would it have done if he’d lived? A few more short articles on marsupials, starting with a summary, an introduction, and a discussion of methods and theories, followed by findings and an abrupt conclusion, would have appeared in the Aust. J. Zool., or the Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S. W. or the J. Mammal or the Am. anat. Mem. or the C.S.I.R.O. Wildl. Res. or, if he was lucky, maybe the Univ. Calif. Publs. Zool.
BIG DEAL.
Dots on the Body
Blusher was being applied to the APPLES of Dot’s cheeks in preparation for some stupid FASHION SHOOT, when Yetta phoned her. At first it was hard to make any sense out of Yetta’s babbled tirade, zooming by electronic means to Dot in Dallas. But the gist was that it was all Dot’s FAULT.
‘Such a LOSS TO HUMANITY … a great scientific mind … could have SAVED LIVES … lost, LOST, all because of YOU and your … You DESTROYED him …’
Dot dropped the phone, sank to the floor and burst into tears. This meant the poor make-up artist (a legendary GENIUS) would have to start from SCRATCH when Dot calmed down! Foundation, mascara, eye-liner, lipstick, lip-liner, blusher — the LOT. And it was ALL DOT’S FAULT.
Red Dot. On floor. Kleenex brought. The noise. The NOSE. Assumptions made. Boyfriend. Dumped? AWWWW.
But Dot had no BOYFRIENDS. She had only Ferdinand. She had wanted no other, and had been WAITING for him all this time. It was YETTA’s fault he’d died, Yetta’s fault they’d been separated. For THREE YEARS Dot had longed for him, longed for their life together to resume — a simple perfect thing.
Now we’ll never be together. I’ll never kiss him again, never sleep beside him. How could he do it? Didn’t he know we would be together again some day?
Dot returned to Cincinnati for yet another funeral organised by Yetta. The woman PRESIDED OVER DEATH. But Dot’s plan to KILL her collapsed when she saw how decrepit Yetta was now, her skin scaly as an alligator’s. She just wandered around the house, watering dead plants and looking for things she said she’d lost. She’d lost her MARBLES, Dot thought.
Rich from all her modelling work and the prospect of selling the house, Dot found Yetta a sheltered apartment in a building full of evil grandmas, kindly drunks, and paranoid busy-bodies who were always calling the POLICE (unfortunately the drunks tended to die off first). There was also a facility upstairs for the TOTALLY gaga (which Dot felt Yetta would soon need), and it was near a Mall! Refusing to believe Dot possessed either nobility or MONEY, Yetta was convinced the place was some suspicious kind of BARGAIN, but she agreed to go.
The tables had turned. Now DOT was alone, sort of widowed, and in charge of the old homestead. Dot LOVED that house. There were remnants of family life that even Yetta had not managed to WRECK. Like, hundreds of napkins printed with DOLLAR SIGNS ($), which Dot’s father had picked up cheap somewhere. Dot fingered them, remembering her mother’s refusal to use them, they were so ugly. (Her father’s surprise!) There were tablecloths too that brought it all back: Sunday breakfasts on spring days with the kitchen door open, a little breeze coming in, the dangling stained-glass ornaments knocking against the window-pane.
Dot deliberated over the silver, which her mother had occasionally polished before company came. Long-forgotten, never-used kitchen accessories like lobster bibs and crab-claw crackers. The many and varied (much used) corn-cob holders, and jars, so many JARS, that her mother had once filled with jam or spaghetti sauce or star-shaped cookies — important SUPPLIES. Now all empty.
In the attic: toys, snowsuits, skates, schoolwork, rugs, cushion covers, Mexican bowls, Dot’s Little Pillow (she SNATCHED that up), and George Washington as a Baby. He had aged badly: his white flannel face was peppered with what looked like BLACKHEADS or maybe SCABIES. Dot didn’t dare investigate his NETHER REGIONS. She just dumped him and his bassinet straight into a trash bag. POOR infant president.
She wept in Ferdinand’s room, lay on his bed thinking of their couplings, clutching his pillow. She thought of the life they’d had together, the Saturday mornings, the picnics, his patient explanations of James Bond movies, their Hallowe’en costumes, trips to the Mall, duets (Dot at the piano, Ferdinand with a series of wind instruments), the apple orchard and the corrugated-iron shed. The ROUTE they’d negotiated together through life, their SURVIVAL (until now). She thought of the life they could have had as adults, if he hadn’t abandoned her. In this same house or, if the neighbours objected, somewhere similar. Who would it have hurt?
Dot could not BEAR this loss. She lay there hoping he would return. She WAILED. She longed so much for him to return that Ferdinand was forced to obey!
Still lying there later that night, Dot heard a noise and felt him join her. All the old pleasure — she was in his arms! She touched his cheek, the cold cheek of a ghost. He tried to take her from behind.
But, for the first time, Ferdinand’s body seemed ALIEN. INTRUSIVE, her hand on his thigh. UNWELCOME, his fingers in her. Everything HURT. It occurred to her that Ferdinand might have BLACK DOTS on him like George Washington as a Baby, and SHE DIDN’T WANT TO SEE THEM.
But in the morning he was gone (he couldn’t preserve a corporeal form for long) and Dot wondered if it had all been a DREAM: she vaguely remembered him asking for his passport.
Dot held a garage sale on the front lawn. She sold the silver, the plastic pitcher for Kool-Aid, the tablecloths, the bowls, the rag rugs, the board games, the revolving steam-train lamp, everything her parents had planned and done and LIKED. It seemed traitorous to sell it but she did.
Neighbours Dot didn’t even know came and commiserated, before making off with handy items. In a mixture of emotions that confused EVERYBODY (kindness, nostalgia, ENVY), they gathered there on the front lawn, gossiped, drank lemonade and bought things — for no suburban home’s complete without a bit of what’s next door.
The day of the house sale arrived. Lots of people turned up wanting to buy it. One pair had evidently rehearsed their two daughters to make a speech and sing a song. Wearing identical sailor suits and tap-shoes, the girls sang (to the tune of ‘Frère Jacques’):
We so love your
Pretty how-owse
With the woods
All around.
We would love it always!
It’s got pretty flowers
In the front
And the back.
It’s so quiet,
A
nd so peaceful.
It’s so sweet!
It’s so great!
We would love it always!
Won’t you sell it to us?
Pretty please,
Pretty please.
A bowing and scraping tap-dance followed the song. Then the girls talked IN UNISON about how they loved to think of Dot as a little girl in that house because THEY were little girls and they thought they would be as happy as Dot in that house. Dot wanted to kill them.
Another couple saw it merely as a vacant lot. They were going to BULLDOZE the place and put up an inland LIGHTHOUSE, complete with sauna, jacuzzi, tumbleweed and shells.
YETTA turned up, offering to REINSTALL herself so that ungrateful Dot wouldn’t have to sell the house. Dot stuffed her right back in her taxi, defusing her tirade with a $20 bill.
In the end the house was sold to a couple with a baby, who didn’t sing, dance or bulldoze (at least in front of DOT). On a last visit to the cemetery, orphaned, widowed Dot decided to change her name to Dot de Lany, in memory of her mother. Dot was feeling indiscriminately guilty towards EVERYBODY, even the chipmunks and possums behind the old, sold house.
A Single Solitary Dot
Sex and death are a great COMBO. No longer protected by Ferdinand, nor bound to him, let LOOSE by him in fact, and rather lost without him, Dot resolved on the plane back to Dallas that she would try her two vaginas out on the REAL WORLD. Forget catwalks and cocaine: Dot wanted COITUS. (Quick.)
She had them all! Lagerfeld, Lacroix, Ungaro, Armani, Gucci, Valentino, Dolce, Gabbana, Galliano, Versace and Calvin Klein, every time they passed through town. Dot’s mumbling inquietude proved IRRESISTIBLE TO MEN. Women too! There were few female DESIGNERS around, but plenty of BEAUTY CONTESTANTS. Dot fucked (in order of seniority): Miss Fried Chicken, Miss Twinkie, Miss Xerox (all TEN of them, with decreasing satisfaction), Miss Time-Share, Miss Bare Breasts, Miss Otis Elevators (up, down, but not sideways), Miss Redneck of Tulia, Miss Dallas, Miss Grand Canyon, Miss Texas, Miss NATO, Miss America, and Miss Universe (though SHE didn’t like being in Dot — she only liked Dot being in HER).
What Dot noticed most was how HOT their bodies felt. Everyone seemed much hotter than DOT. She was the WRONG TEMPERATURE. She’d lie next to her lovers scared to TOUCH them, they were so hot. But no one seemed to notice. Nor did they detect the dual vagina problem (the anterior and lateral vaginae merged fairly high up and the septum between them was barely detectable, except that knocking against it added to pleasure). In fact, everybody thought Dot was a DREAMBOAT IN BED!
She was such a dreamboat in bed her agent suggested she try her hand at a little PORN. He knew a place in Mexico and he could set it all up. Dot could scoot down there for a few weeks, start a whole new CAREER for herself by being a dreamboat in bed, and be back in Dallas in time for her next catwalk engagement. It seemed a small enough step, from modelling to having her ass reamed in public, so Dot was happy to go.
When she arrived at the hotel where the filming was taking place, she was sent into a dingy back room. Three big sweaty American guys were sitting around a huge metal desk. They immediately asked her to take off her clothes! But, being in the fashion industry, Dot was used to such treatment. She understood they had to see if HER breasts would fit in THEIR movie.
The hotel was empty, apart from people involved in the movie, and a Photography Club from Minnesota who were just there to WATCH. The trouble was, as soon as filming got under way the Minnesota guys said they wanted to TAKE PART, rather than merely take snapshots of OTHER guys getting laid. The director was reluctant to include them though, as they were untried as actors, and all very FAT.
The days wore on. Dot became used to the routine: it was rape, rape, rape all summer long. She never left the hotel and, alone in her room at night, she began to feel touches of ALIENATION. She ate pomegranates and dreamt of the Underworld. In the morning she’d look out of her little window, like a PRISONER, and see the perfect circles of white sheets drying on top of cacti down below, just big white DOTS to Dot. They seemed like MIRACLES of whiteness.
They were filming a torture scene in which Dot had to hang upside-down from a chandelier and suck cock. But they were having trouble with the male star’s erection, despite all the efforts of the FLUFFERS (peasant girls from the neighbouring hills). Dot hung there, uncomplaining, until she heard one of the Minnesota guys begging the director to be allowed to STEP IN and SAVE THE DAY. The director, undone by the heat and general porn ENNUI, agreed! This enraged Dot, who watched upside-down as they lathered the Minnesota guy with fake tan and the fluffers started on HIM. Any minute now he’d be let loose on Dot. She had nothing against MINNESOTA, but everyone has their LIMIT.
Dot said in a commanding voice, Nobody listened. So she said a little louder,
Nothing.
FURIOUS at the combination of being NAKED and IGNORED, Dot tried to untie HERSELF. She shifted around, squirming, writhing and jerking helplessly, her strong little arms flailing, until the whole chandelier began to swing. The pendulum motion MESMERISED the crew. They couldn’t MOVE. Viewing this as an attempt on Dot’s part to scupper his embryonic porn career, the Minnesota guy made a lunge for the chain holding her hands together, but missed and fell over a low wall into the SWIMMING-POOL with a huge splash. This broke the spell. Someone went to save HIM, and the best boy released Dot.
She felt like a FREED SLAVE. Without pausing to debate with them, she ran up to her room, threw on some clothes, grabbed her money and her passport and rushed outside. For the first time she saw MEXICO: it was colourful! She walked until she reached the nearby town of Tzintzuntzán. Dot mastered the percussive name while she drank tequila at a bar. Then she went outside and wandered towards a beguiling patch of blue water: Lake Pátzcuaro. When she reached the shore she took off her shoes and RAN, ankle-deep in water, a FREED SLAVE. The human sacrifice was OVER. In the sand she found a fossilised FISH, and put it in her pocket.
She lay down near the water, thought longingly of her Little Pillow, and fell asleep. Dot dreamt she was being eaten by Yetta in thin slices, and woke up with a fright. Everything was dark. Maybe Yetta HAD eaten her. Maybe she was dead!
Dot saw stars and heard the sound of tinkling bells. It must be HEAVEN, Dot thought (based on her rudimentary religious training), though she hadn’t expected it to be so DARK.
She wanted to be officially RECEIVED in some way, she wanted ceremony, ritual, a HALO. The ground felt surprisingly solid under her when she stood up. She heard water gurgling and remembered the lake, but she could still see no division between water and land and sky. It was as if the world had turned itself INSIDE OUT. The starry sky and glittery water had merged in a vision of:
INFINITY!!!
Dead or alive, Dot stumbled along the shore, heading for a big group of stars like a GALAXY, that were jumping around oddly. As she got closer she realised that some of them were candle flames, and the candles were on BOATS. What a great IDEA. She hoped SHE’D be given a boat too. (AND a halo.)
Then she bumped into something — a MAN! God maybe? Or a dead relative? Her heart lurched at the thought. She touched him. He felt familiar — it was FERDINAND. He SMELLED like Ferdinand (Ferdinand’s cinnamony smell was one of the few smells Dot knew well). But he was warm this time, not ghostly. She rested her cheek against his chest.
‘Ferdinand.’
‘No, but whoever he is I’m jealous!’
This man was not Ferdinand! He was ENGLISH. (He was John Butser!) Dot had to sit down. John helped her over to a bench, hesitated, then sat down next to her — Dot’s mumbling inquietude was alluring.
They sat watching the boats come and go from the pier, bobbing on the water. Dot was beginning to calm down, when there was a great hullabaloo! A man dressed as a FISH suddenly ran into the water, only to be instantly surrounded by other men with wide round fishing-nets, with which they ceremonially CAUGHT him. People cheered from the shore.
Fingering her fish fossil, Dot looked
at John with his money pouch dangling in his lap. He did not look like Ferdinand, but he did have his SMELL and something of his MANNER. Perhaps this was enough? Overwhelmed by her escape from porno purgatory and by her imaginary encounter with paradise, Dot leaned over and kissed him.
The folds of her cunt were like VELVET as she milked him. She came loudly, clinging to him, and slept all night with her hand in his. Her cunt felt hot against his back, her stomach cooler. John never KNEW how passionate Dot was about him, or why. He just thought she was a DREAMBOAT IN BED. (He was very SCIENTIFIC about such things. Sex was a purely physical activity, in his opinion, best executed by skilled practitioners.)
DOT WAS IN LOVE. She had grown cold and quiet for lack of motherlove and motherland. This is nothing to do with mothers or national BORDERS, it is about having SOMEWHERE ON EARTH where you feel comfortable: A POUCH! She could LIVE in this man, cry in him, be given air and food and warmth by him.
The next morning John took her out for tamales, but they couldn’t eat them, they were too much IN LOVE, so they went back again to his hotel. Later, Dot got a taxi out to her own hotel to collect her stuff. She tiptoed past the torture chamber where they were already filming with and hurried up to her room. In the corridor she met the guy from Minnesota. All animosity gone, Dot smiled at him, and he said, ‘Bitch.’
Back in Tzintzuntzán Dot noticed that the bakery they’d gone to earlier for tamales had a huge painting on the window of a skeleton gobbling bread — it must be the Day of the Dead! This depressed Dot, reminding her of her parents coming home from Mexico laden with weird trinkets and good cheer, a macabre performance and the preamble to miserable days of decay and dismay.
Near the hotel she saw a crowd of small children all weeping silently, with one chubby fist rubbing their eyes, the other hand pointing down at the ground. They turned out to be STATUES, and they were for sale. Dot WANTED one! When she met up with John, she mentioned that she was going to buy one. He begged her not to.
‘Why not?’
‘It would be hard to lug back to England,’ he said.