Anyway, my mother often sent me to wake my father as he lay in bed on Sunday mornings, and I knew that underneath the blanket I would pull away, he was usually naked. People often think that the German approach to nudity is very avant-garde, that it’s a sign of our liberation, but thinking of my father’s nudity now, it doesn’t strike me as a symbol of freedom, Dr. Seligman; if anything, I think it’s a way of showing that you have nothing to hide. That your body is healthy and that you have not grown a third nipple or a lazy foot, that you have not accidentally fucked a Jew and polluted the entire race. That you are scared of mysteries. There was nothing particularly inspiring about this nudity, and yet, looking at his penis in the silence of my parents’ bedroom, I had a very strange thought. And it’s not like I could see much—it was mostly hair and testicles, a perfect example of modesty—and still I suddenly thought that maybe it was possible to buy one in a shop. That somewhere between Barbie dolls and Play-Doh containers would be a section where I could find my own cock; that’s how simple I thought it was. I didn’t think there was more to it, I just liked the idea of getting rid of my schamlippen. You probably know this, Dr. Seligman, how in German labia are called lips of shame; and even today I cannot pronounce the word without feeling embarrassed, and I would never have summoned the courage to look for a pair of those in a shop. But I did check the blue and pink aisles at the local toy shop for a cock whenever I got the chance, and of course I searched in vain. Not even male teddy bears or robots were allowed genitalia, and there is not much to be said about the funny little mound between Ken’s legs. I doubt that even the shop assistant was allowed to bring his own cock to work, and so there was nothing for me there. I later forgot about this thought and didn’t rebel when they put me into dresses and forced me to grow out my horrible curly hair, and I only once managed to cut off my eyelashes. It never occurred to me that this was my first attempt to express my true feelings, that there was more to it than childhood weirdness. I hear that things are changing now, Dr. Seligman, and that even small children are encouraged to go shopping for the genitalia of their choice, but back then a girl was a happy shape growing around a vagina with everyone hoping that it would turn out fresh and tight. The rest didn’t matter.
I also wouldn’t have known quite what to say about K. I usually find it hard to describe people, and we didn’t talk much about those things that are meant to define us, like jobs and haircuts. And anyway, I had been fired for threatening my colleague with a stapler, and K was a painter whose wife paid the bills. There wasn’t that much to say, really, and I never actually told him how I lost my job. I never even worked out where K was actually from. He spoke with one of those accents that are foreign, but don’t give a clue about where this foreignness might come from, and unlike me, he didn’t suffer from a compulsion to talk about his heimat. It was actually quite the opposite with him, and I understood quite quickly that he didn’t like to talk about his origins, or roots, or however you want to call it. And anyway, it has become such a useless question to ask—where are you from? I think that people should be allowed to decide for themselves, and they might feel different at different times; they might wake up every morning and decide that they are from a different place. It’s not for us to decide. But that’s not what K did. I think he just removed that question from his mind, and when we were together, Dr. Seligman, it was as if all the maps had been taken off the wall and we could stop being all the things you have to be as a functioning human being. Suddenly, there were no continents, no surnames, no parents, no jobs, no children, and, as far as it was possible, no bodies. Without agreeing to do so, we made it a thing not to call anything by its name, not to talk of cocks and vaginas and not to make love the way we had both been taught. Making love is such a stupid phrase anyway; how can you make an emotional state? And why is it never referred to as making hate or boredom or despair? And yet sometimes, especially after K had allowed me to play with some of the colours in his studio and to paint on his body, when he watched me move those red and pink shades across his skin, he sometimes looked so relieved, Dr. Seligman, as if something had been restored to him that he had lost a long time ago. And I always longed for the moment when he would just take a little too much purple and smear it across my face, very slowly, and never any other colour. And then he would start laughing, for it’s not only that he could cry like a child, he could also laugh like one. And there was something so irresistible about the freedom he took in the face of the world. It was like he couldn’t remember the last time something had actually mattered to him, like he would paint over anything that stood in his way and bury it under his very own shade of purple. Like I too could disappear under those acrylic floods.
That’s also what worries me about Mr. Shimada’s sex machines, Dr. Seligman. Someone will have programmed them before they are sent off, and even though they are not real, artificial intelligence, not the kind of machines we see in films, I still believe that most sex requires some form of consciousness, don’t you think? Surely most people would give their robot a name, and that’s why I am worried that it will have been programmed to love me despite the fact that I will be the one taking advantage. Do you know what I mean? The idea just makes me feel uncomfortable; raised as a woman, I have not been taught how to accept sexual favours, and so I have been wondering whether my robot could have different settings, maybe my robot could be allowed to express his aversion toward me and my strange sexual needs. Eventually we could fall out, and like a cat he could trade me in for a different owner, which, of course, I would do nothing to prevent, just like I let people skip queues or make jokes about me when I try to order something in a café. Someone even once told me that I had a childish face, as if they had seen me make my drink bubble by blowing into a straw. Some days it feels like I am wearing a big red nose that only I can’t see, and that not even my sex robot—let’s call him Martin, Dr. Seligman—that not even Martin, who is really just a talking dildo, would take me seriously. That nothing will ever make your reality go away. That there will always be days when all your scars awaken and you can still hear all the words and laughter that seemed to follow you around. When you can feel all those old aches and bruises, the crushed tissue and blood that’s no longer yours. When life seems like nothing but a collection of moments when you lost control, nothing but a row of blind spots in your dignity, and all you can do about it is to fuck a heap of nonrecyclable material with an artificial voice. I guess it would be better for the planet if we stuck to humans—to bear in mind the ecological balance of our actions.
You probably think that I’m a coward, Dr. Seligman, for not using the proper word to describe Martin, because it’s one of those words that has the potential to be so offensive that everyone will think your grandmother had a fling with the devil and soon you will start growing a clubfoot and a spiky cock the size of a house. I am scared of those words; I know what language is capable of, that language never lies, but since we are alone and your velvety walls will shield us from anyone’s hearing range, I might as well own up to the fact that buying Martin would be a form of exploitation, of sexual slavery. Because it all begins with that mind-set, and I cannot prove that it is not in our nature to subject others to our power and our will, to break their bodies and their souls, and that we are constantly trying to paint a picture of human nature that doesn’t exist. That there are no friendly urges. And even though Martin will have been programmed to smile when I enter him, this smile will have no actual foundation in a real situation; it will not be based on any human behaviour. And I am worried that it will pervert my mind, Dr. Seligman, that, given my heritage, it will trigger the monster inside me and gradually I will start thinking that Martin is real and that I can treat real people like him. That I will forget what a human being is and try to fuck people against their will, or worse. But then, with this new slavery and all those new devices and gadgets that are constantly at our disposal like delirious lapdogs, there’s an irony that previous forms of slavery were lackin
g. Unlike with the more traditional forms of slavery, where people are reduced to their bodies with the overall aim of making them extinct in the process or torturing them to death and destroying all proof that they ever existed, the kind of slavery that made us all so rich, these new electronic slaves are burying us alive. Have you noticed, Dr. Seligman—or maybe you are lucky enough to be too old for this kind of modernity—how all these new slaves are designed to keep us in the house? How they deprive us of all human contact by bringing us our food and our shopping and our orgasms whilst drowning what’s left of our brains in endless TV programmes? How they will fuck and feed us until we forget how to spell our own name? Until we forget that we are not the picture we see of ourselves on a screen? Until what’s left of our useless bit of personality is isolated by comfort and silence.
And when we are actually forced to talk about ourselves, things always get so awkward, because there’s really very little to talk about. Do you also sometimes have to go to some form of work drinks, Dr. Seligman? The kind of thing where it’s not clear whether people smell of piss or coffee, where they make conversation until everybody is so bored that they are ready to roll down a hill in a barrel full of nails? When I still had a job, my only way out of these situations has always been to lie and pretend I came from Berlin and to then stop listening when people would start rattling off their relentlessly predictable anecdotes. It’s what being German in London is mostly about—pretending that you are from Berlin and that you have read Max fucking Sebald. It works every time. But then I don’t really understand the purpose of all this modern way of travelling, Dr. Seligman. Don’t you agree that it’s a tragic delusion to think that anyone has ever learned anything from their three months in Amsterdam or Hanoi? If anything, it usually makes them even more of a twat, because people always think that they have suddenly acquired a fashionable form of otherness that entitles them to the assumption that something worth mentioning happened in their lives. That, as if by some magic trick, they have become different, but different in a good way. I have much more respect for people who go on the same, banal holiday on some Mediterranean beach every year instead of turning their vacation into a statement. I’m sure you make very sensible holiday choices, and I can picture you exchanging your glasses for one of those timeless pairs of shades, Dr. Seligman, taking your wife to dinner like you used to all those years ago. You are not like those people who suddenly grow a beard and travel the globe riding a stuffed cat, going to local bars and eating street food and then come back and explain these other cultures to you. These people just upset me, Dr. Seligman; they are like American films about the Holocaust, they turn everything into a cliché until you feel like you’re being fucked by Ronald McDonald and you wish there was an electric fence somewhere nearby. I don’t even know when everything became so ridiculous that I often struggle to leave the house, because I see no way back to how we could become real people again. You are probably right in thinking that this is something I could have spoken to Jason about, that this could be seen as part of my anger, but I didn’t threaten my colleague because of his holiday in Mexico, and I even accepted the little souvenir of a glittery, multicoloured skull with grace. I even smiled when he told me about those white beaches and all the mezcal he drank and I didn’t point out that in order to get to all those places he had probably passed several mass graves of violently disappeared people, mostly women. I am not that kind of person, and that was even before Jason told me that I have to learn to be happy for others and that by not judging others I could be more generous toward myself, that I could train my mind not to react to those triggers anymore. But I felt that if I did that, there wouldn’t be much left of me, that I would become mellow and gradually disappear, and so I just continued to lie to him.
I understand why you’re asking that, Dr. Seligman, but I’m not always like that, and it is quite possible, that if Jason had been able to appreciate the aesthetic significance of velvet, I wouldn’t have been quite so mean. It was really your love of velvet that convinced me when we first met that you were the right choice, and it goes so well with that aftershave of yours. There is something about this dark red velvet on your walls and chairs that made me think you were a serious person, someone I could respect and trust with this task. I think that a lot of other plastic surgeons have become vulgar with the money they make and the people they treat, but not you, Dr. Seligman; there is not even a hint of glamour about you. And for some reason I cannot lie looking at velvet, maybe because it speaks of power whilst at the same time it’s so delicate, it’s one of those eternal combinations we seek to seduce ourselves with. Jason, on the other hand, was based in one of those contemporary rooms where it’s impossible to tell whether you are sitting in a café, an office, a shop, or someone’s living room, and I am still not quite sure what it was. All that avocado aesthetic made my senses go numb, and as soon as I set foot in that room, I felt compelled to lie to him. It wasn’t a space for honesty. But because even I struggled to fill all those sessions with enough material about the Führer’s cock and how we would occasionally involve his dogs in our little games, I told him about how I sometimes follow strangers. I don’t remember how I came up with the idea, but I guess something fascinated me about how much power you can gain by overstepping those small boundaries. Most people would be terrified if you suddenly stared in through their windows, and that’s not even illegal—just like following them is mostly within the law. I think that most perversions are born out of a sense of insignificance, Dr. Seligman, and telling Jason all about them was like a fun way to try them out, another way of leaving myself behind. And it’s quite easy to follow someone; have you ever tried it? There are so many different lives in this city, you can’t look into any direction without facing someone else’s reality, and sometimes it scares me to think how many other people around me are breathing, sleeping, taking showers, and using up resources right now, how many other ways of doing things there are. I grew up in a small town, so often I can’t quite believe that there are so many of us here. And yet there will be so few people whose lives you will ever get to know, and now that I have chosen to come and see you, I am more scared of loneliness than I ever was before. You have filled those seven frames on your desk with loving faces, you have built your fortress against loneliness, or at least you think you have, but I won’t be able to do that anymore, and it frightens me. What if, like Frankenstein’s monster, I end up perving on other people’s domestic bliss just to be chased away like a dirty pigeon, my limbs rotten from my own disgrace. I’m exaggerating, I know; the family was as unhappy as the monster, and he was lucky to get away and ruin their lives from a distance. K always told me that we don’t have the ability to make each other happy and that we should just accept loneliness as part of the human condition. That there is no way out of our skin and that we are all born with a broken heart. He thought that’s what they meant by original sin.
I never told Jason about my fear of loneliness, Dr. Seligman; I didn’t want to offer him any inroads for his positivity crap, and so I just told him about Helen, the woman from my commute. I am not usually interested in women; their bodies tend to remind me of my own obligations and fill me with dread. I can never sit next to pregnant women without feeling a mild panic creeping up my throat and my chest suddenly getting very tight. But there was something about Helen that interested me. I gave her that name because I thought it was suitable. She had a little beauty mark and she reminded me of Bambi, her eyes slightly too big for her head and always filled with the kind of fear that men like to protect women from. It’s one of the many embarrassments of my life that I only recently realised that Bambi was supposed to be a boy and that the film is based on a pornographic Austrian novel, which I rather like. Bambi the horny stag. Now I would have to name Helen after something else—definitely not a deer, but back then it seemed suitable. She was petite, her hair was blond and carefully blow-dried to make it look wavy, she was dressed according to the latest fashion, and she was we
aring an engagement ring on one of her slender fingers. I liked the way she touched her lips as she was eating her morning croissant, pretending that she was one of those women who wouldn’t gain weight, and I was wondering how she could bear to be like everyone else. She must have known that armies of other women in London wore the same ring, used the same chemicals to dye their hair, came home to the same stupid men, and dreamt of that wedding in Tuscany. But Helen seemed content, even though her fiancé had most likely proposed to her at a public monument, on a beach, or at their favourite restaurant, run by spiteful foreigners that they patronised by finding their choice of terrible decorations original, and I accused myself of bitterness and jealousy. Why couldn’t I accept that some women derive happiness from their vaginas and their femininity? Why did I always have to think of it as a weakness? And so, I followed my Catholic roots and tried to repent. Prior to that I had only associated being on my knees with a comfortable position for masturbation, but suddenly I wanted to learn to accept what life had in store for me and that I too could be like Helen. I think up to that point Jason was quite happy with my story, with my unexpected desire to become neat and manageable, to get rid of my pubic hair and start resembling a peach. And even when I told him how I imagined Helen’s sex life—especially her husband’s body, his firm cheeks and solid cock—he still seemed relieved that we had moved on from Nazi sex and how hearing Adolf’s voice still gave me uncontrollable erections, years after our imaginary breakup. I had suddenly returned to being an underfucked cat lady who objectified men, which must have seemed like the more acceptable crime. He looked decidedly more uncomfortable when I told him that I had started following Helen, because seeing her in the morning simply wasn’t enough. And when I revealed that I was planning to break into her house—one of those houses with a purple magnolia tree in the front garden—whilst she was holidaying on a Greek island, I saw the first signs of genuine despair on his face. I told him that I meant no harm, but it’s just that once I get to know someone, I always want to masturbate in their bath and steal a little souvenir, an object of their everyday, like a teabag, a pen, or, in some instances, some of the hair I find on their pillows. Are you laughing, Dr. Seligman? Jason surely wasn’t, and I could tell that he thought I had locked Helen up in my basement. It’s possible that he also thought I was Austrian; Germans don’t usually bother with basements—they are happy to torture people on the first floor, they’re not that discreet. They don’t have the reputation of one of those old-fashioned empires to live up to. And Jason also didn’t understand that there is nothing like masturbating in places that mean something to you, and how you will never forget them in your entire life. It’s like they all become your home, and that, apart from killing ourselves, it’s the only true freedom we possess. To give ourselves pleasure when we feel like it. I am sure you agree, Dr. Seligman; I mean, why else would you have velvet on your walls?
The Appointment Page 4