The Appointment

by Katharina Volckmer

  Bodies—and I don’t just mean human bodies, Dr. Seligman—remain very strange to me. I think I just never had an eye for them. I never knew how much soup would fit into a Tupperware container, and I could never tell how tall someone was or what size of jumper would be right. Instead I always perceived people’s sizes based on their personality, the space they needed to express themselves. You are bound to have a much better sense for these kinds of proportions, and you must see people very differently, but I, for instance, can never imagine my father as a very big man. In my mind, his overall insignificance has attached itself to his physical reality, and the result is a tiny man who struggles to reach the buttons of his washing machine. A man raised by men who didn’t teach each other how to grow. Or Jason, in my head his feet are dangling from his chair, and maybe that’s part of the problem, that I can never see bodies for what they actually are. And this includes my own, because I always felt so bad about it, because it was so at odds with the world, I always thought that it was huge, like an irregularity you suddenly discover with your tongue. I always thought that my proportions were outrageous. And plus all the stupid rules that apply to women’s bodies, how a naked female chest is naked whilst a naked male chest is not naked, how I would have to wear a bikini top whilst all the other boys could be topless, how I had to accept that part of my body as sexual, as something that had to be hidden. It all made it so hard for me, and I always felt like I was supposed to see something else instead of what I was actually seeing, like there was a secret choreography that everybody had been taught apart from me. And so I just stumbled along, trying to find that mysterious rhythm that united people in their desires. You see, I feel bad for saying such things about my father when I haven’t even told you what I used to think about my mother, that I could never help but think of one of those birds with ridiculous plumage when I saw her, especially when I sat behind her in the car; the word wiedehopf—hoopoe in English, I think—would obsessively come to mind as I watched her hair castle wobble up and down on those country lanes. But I never felt bad about it. Do you think we are taught to have so much respect for our fathers because we can never be sure that they are actually our fathers? I know that now there’s scientific proof, but these things take centuries to leave our minds, like rabbits who can die from fear when you lift them up because they are still scared of eagles even if they see you and eagles have long been made extinct. But then we are most passionate when we worship the things that don’t exist, like race, or money, or God, or, quite simply, our fathers.

  God, of course, was a man too. A father who could see everything, from whom you couldn’t even hide in the toilet, and who was always angry. He probably had a penis the size of a cigarette. The kind of man who shoots lions and overtakes women in the swimming pool. It’s of course much easier to be religious when you are a man, and yet I could never understand why a single woman ever went to church, or any of the other temples, Dr. Seligman, because no religion I have ever come across had anything nice to say about women. I could never understand why my mother believed in Jesus and had a secret altar with all sorts of glittering memorabilia tucked away in the corner of her bedroom. Why would she worship where they teach nothing but shame and fear, where they came up with all that crap about holy mothers and whores, where they were scared of vaginas. Because that’s really what it is all about, isn’t it? Apart from trying to find a way not to die, to carry on living somewhere in the clouds with all the people you never liked in the first place, it is a way of trying to keep the difference between people with and without cocks alive. And they talk of penis envy, but look at the lengths people have gone to cripple and defeat vaginas, to tell women that pleasure is not for them, that there is such a thing as being good. I mean, how many women have covered pages and pages of books with writing about cocks and the way men are supposed to dress and think and dream? How they are supposed to be some sort of fuckable mother figure with clean fingernails and plenty of tissues in their handbag. I never understood how God, who couldn’t give birth, is supposed to be the source of all life—how a man could be our creator. Unless, of course, it was what we would call arschgeburt in German, something that your ass gave birth to. Maybe that’s what this world is, Dr. Seligman: something that came out of a holy man’s ass, the leftovers of broken stars and an imploding universe.

  Since you are asking, Dr. Seligman. There was actually one other thing that K told me about his childhood. He told me that he had often dreamt of hanging himself in his parents’ garden. He had even picked a particular tree, and he had always known that it would have to be done in the fading light of a winter’s day, never in full darkness, with a few gentle snowflakes resting on his arms and shoulders—bright and shiny against his dark coat, like the diamonds in Empress Sisi’s hair. He didn’t tell me why he felt that way, and it doesn’t matter; there isn’t always a reason why we feel a certain way. It’s not always linked to some trauma, to what other people have done to us, because sometimes we are the agents of our own sadness. That’s what he told me, and he wasn’t crying when he did so; we weren’t in a hotel room, Dr. Seligman, but on the floor of his studio, and he had taken a large brush and started to cover my entire body in purple. His chest hair dark with sweat. He had never done this before, and he was smiling whilst he did it, and even whilst he was telling me about this childhood image. I asked him why he had never tried to paint it, to render it in a place outside himself, but he just made a funny noise instead of a laugh and carried on painting my skin, his strokes so much more firm and confident than mine, like he had an actual reason for turning me purple. The image doesn’t scare me, he said after a while, Dr. Seligman. And I only paint the things that scare me, like dogs and rats, confined spaces or heights. All you see on the canvases around you are my fears, my little Strudel—that’s what he used to call me—but that image from my parents’ garden, the tree I know so well, and all those different shades of green and grey and brown and my little body hanging against the beautiful backdrop of the last light of the day, and possibly some snow on the ground, the last warmth from my little body visible in the cold winter air—that image doesn’t scare me. That image is my only source of comfort, it’s the only thing that I’ve always believed in, the only freedom I possess. It’s what allows me to get out of bed in the morning after thinking just an hour before that today I wouldn’t be able to. I find sleep at night in the knowledge that this image will always be there. That this tree is still growing branches strong enough to take a life.

  It’s almost like things began to shift, Dr. Seligman, when I realised what was really going on. And maybe this all had to happen so that I would finally understand that I had to come and see you, that the only true comfort we can find in life is to be free from our own lies. That it was my duty to end this masquerade. I knew then that I would never be able to unsee things again, that I wasn’t just thinking outside the box but that I had set the box on fire many years ago and refused to look at the lighter in my hand. I can’t describe what it’s like, Dr. Seligman, when you first realise what it means to look at a man free from the constraints of your own body, when you learn to see with your own eyes, when you realise that your vagina isn’t real and that everything you thought you knew about desire isn’t true. I don’t know how flexible you are, Dr. Seligman, and what things you might have tried, but I was never able to find my way back to those other rules and aesthetics; I could never look at K the way a woman would have looked at him. The way my mother would have looked at him. And yet I tried, because with him things were different, because he sometimes allowed himself to be desired in those other ways, and because I liked to believe that he knew. That he played those games to please that other part of me, and that for as long as he would allow me to paint his skin with his beautiful colours, I would forget all about my own lies. That there were enough colours in his studio to reconcile me to my life as a woman. I really believe, Dr. Seligman, that I am not intrinsically bad, I am just rendered bad by my circumstances
, by the fact that you cannot transcend your physical reality in your mind, that you cannot fuck faith alone, no matter how hard you try. That’s why all religion is doomed to fail you in the end, because when you wake up at night and the only man you ever thought you could love is sleeping next to you, your bodies covered in all that you had to give to each other, the way lovers are supposed to look, and yet it all feels wrong, it all feels like you are lying and cheating, like a mermaid who is sinking her lover’s ship—then you know that no disciple ever understood what it means to be in love.

  Do you believe in hell, Dr. Seligman? Or do Jews only go to heaven? I don’t believe in either, but it still scares me sometimes, and whoever came up with the idea of eternal suffering really must have had a sick mind. Someone with a messy soul and too many rats in their bedroom; why else would you go around telling people that the pain they had to endure during their lives was not enough? To take that last consolation away from them. And I sometimes have those nightmares, Dr. Seligman, where I can’t stop bleeding, it’s very painful, a vein in my elbow has been opened and the blood keeps coming, but I don’t die, and there’s no way to stop the bleeding or the pain, and because I’m always so tired I never wake up. In the morning it often takes me a long time before those spectres go away. But I really like the idea of you in heaven; you certainly deserve to sit on a fluffy cloud for performing this miracle, for finally letting me escape my tree. Isn’t it funny how we fear something we don’t believe in? I used to feel like that about love, the idea of being tied to someone in that way used to scare me. I was always like a wild creature trying to outrun the lasso above its head, terrified of the possible comforts of captivity. I never wanted anyone to know what was really going on inside my trousers, and that’s also why I had to threaten my colleague with that stapler, to signal that I wasn’t ready for my cage, that I would stomp on all the flowers and biscuits he would ever dare to present to me. That one moment of excess after one of those drinks things doesn’t mean that anything has changed, that anything can be claimed or that tenderness was allowed back onto the open field of our everyday. But of course a rejected man is like a boar in rut, and nothing is further from his mind than justice, he wouldn’t even spare the trees, and I only picked up the stapler after he started talking about romance—a man’s most dangerous weapon—and I suddenly saw wallpaper and brightly lit rooms and children, and I was so shocked that he had the audacity to see nothing but a woman in me that I told him that I would staple him to death. I am not usually that violent, Dr. Seligman, and I am sure you know how difficult it would be to actually do that. It would take a very long time, and I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as very dedicated. I never last very long.

  My legs are starting to feel quite tired; it’s been such a long time since I spread them like this for anyone, Dr. Seligman, but I think that this new friendship of ours is remarkable in so many ways, and I never thought I could talk like this to someone I know. K and I always agreed that the only real conversations you can have in life are those with strangers at night. During the day, there is no anonymity, and if you just start talking to people, you are a freak, most likely one of those Bible weirdos, but there comes an hour every night when Jesus’s disciples are safely tucked away and the differences don’t matter anymore. For me this has always been the only real intimacy; those were the only people I could share things with. The people I met at the bus stop at night, the people sitting on empty benches, or the sad women selling sweets and cosmetics outside the toilets of clubs and bars. Those were the only real people I ever met in this city, where everyone is wrapped in impenetrable layers of fear and ambition and all our attempts at communication end in loneliness. With people that seem so empty that they must have sucked up all the air that was left, crippling our lungs with their meaningless existence. But with strangers it’s different; you can be sad in front of them. Do you have that as well, Dr. Seligman? I can never be sad in front of people I know; there is a mechanism that always allows me to function, and you have to believe me when I say that I usually act out of a profound sense of sadness and despair. If we were to wait until the soft darkness of the early morning, somewhere between three and four, you would be able to see it shining through, Dr. Seligman—the face that is buried underneath all the jokes. And K always loved the idea that there were a few strangers in this city who knew it all, who knew why he sometimes cried like a child and which drawer in his life this alphabet of fear came from. That without revealing our faces and names we carry each other’s secrets and guard them through the night as though they were luminaries, precious pieces that bind us together, make us recognise each other as human, in those fleeting moments that have become so rare. And as we come home from our nocturnal walks, Dr. Seligman, those secrets are glowing in our hands, fragile little creatures that we will nurture back to life. I wish K and I could have remained strangers; I wish I could call one of his secrets my own and feel it glowing next to me in the dark.

  I don’t remember now whether I have told you about the Baby Jesus machine. I have the terrible habit of repeating myself; it’s one of my mother’s many bad habits that I can’t escape. I haven’t mentioned it yet? So, there is a church where my grandparents used to live, and in that church there is a machine, like a vending or a gambling machine but made of glass so that you could see exactly how the transaction worked. If you put ten pfennigs into the slot, a little Baby Jesus would come out, ride around in a circle, and give you a blessing. I don’t remember if Baby Jesus waved during his rides, but I remember that he had tracks, and that I always used to think how tired he must have been at the end of his shifts. Absolving all those old and young Nazis, getting paid less than the cheapest whore. And they probably had to oil him once in a while or get a mechanic in when he went on strike or got one of his limbs stuck in an indecent position. When his halo had come undone. You know, Dr. Seligman, how they say that nobody wants to do evil, that we are conditioned by our circumstances and our lack of judgment, our unverstand, so maybe we should forgive this Baby Jesus for blessing all these people, for not setting himself on fire or spitting out his wheels in protest every time these people fingered his little slot. For making it so simple, one quick ride, and all your sins vanished. Knowing the Catholic church, you probably didn’t even have to show up and could just send someone in your stead. It probably didn’t matter as long as you kept Baby Jesus moving. Absolution has always been a question of class, and so I often wondered, walking home with my mother and my grandparents, what it was like for Jesus at night, all alone in the dark church, whether he regretted his cheap love and all that universal forgiveness, whether he sometimes tried to reach over to the candles for the dead and try to wreak havoc. Thinking about it now, I don’t see why he would have cared. His mother never had to fuck anyone to conceive him; as far as we know, he was happy with his cock; and he probably didn’t have to pay rent. What more could you want? But back then I wasn’t allowed to make jokes about him; my mother was unusually fond of the little machine and always made sure she had the right change with her when we went. And I learned to respect this devotion with the same instinct that prevents us from laughing about a helpless animal, long before my grandmother mentioned in passing that the baby in the glass box reminded my mother of that other child they’d had before me, the one that was stillborn, the one they had bought blue wallpaper for and that was buried somewhere nearby. My grandmother had reached that age when it has become unnecessary to comment on things, and I was too young to ask questions, and so we just carried on walking down the hill. The sun not yet ready to end the day.

  I used to think that it didn’t matter who your family was, that you could just stick any photo on your wall and be done with it. No stranger would be able to tell that you bought those relatives at a flea market, that they came with the frame and that you were just too lazy to take them out. And when my grandmother told me about my dead sibling, Dr. Seligman, I didn’t care. Or, to be very honest, as we were walking down that h
ill, I was glad that all that remained of him was hidden inside a Baby Jesus machine inside a remote Catholic church run by those obscure Polish monks they had to start hiring at some point. I was glad that I was the only one, and as I grew older I became so jealous of this other sibling I had come to call Emil. Yet another example of hating something that didn’t exist. I couldn’t stop thinking about what life would be like if Emil was there, if he was sitting at the table with us, what he would look like. How beautiful he would be. For no matter how happy I was that Baby Emil was tucked away in that glass box, cared for by those strange monks, I never thought that he would be ugly. I always thought that he would be one of those slender and elegant boys, with the bluest eyes and skin that would turn golden in the sun. A face beautiful beyond all that talk of male and female, a face that the Ancient Greeks would have admired. And for many years I felt like nothing but the afterbirth, like some unhappy heap of cells put together in a hurry to resemble a person. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein’s leftovers. And I have to admit that I spent many moments hating him, that I never mourned for him, and certainly never considered my mother’s feelings, nor my father’s, if there ever was such a thing. I even stopped visiting him; I left him to gather dust in his glass box, waiting for the first specks of rust to attack his wheels, the first crack to shake his transparent foundations. But then, you know, Dr. Seligman, how it’s impossible to walk in a straight line when you are blindfolded, no matter how hard you try, you will end up doing a circle and most likely you will return to where you have started from. When I don’t think of my life as a basketball that bounces off the rim and hits me in the face, I think of it as one of those blindfolded lines, as someone who always tried to walk straight because I couldn’t see and no one bothered to tell me that it was impossible. That for as long as I refused to see, I would keep coming back to myself, my own mess, the catastrophe of my own pathetic existence. It’s so clear to me now as I lie here, that I didn’t spend so many years hating a dead baby in a glass box because I didn’t want to share my food or my parents’ measly affection, my father’s strange attempts to bond with me over fixing things that weren’t broken and my mother’s desire to see her life happening on my face, her endless interference with my body, her fingers arranging my hair when I had long passed that age. I can still feel them on my skull. I would gladly have shared those awkward holidays in family resorts, their overall disappointment in my lack of fame, and the many times they tried to make me embrace physical activities. I am sure you are too old for your mother to have dragged you to a Body Attack class, Dr. Seligman, one of the many reasons you remained so dignified. But I can tell you, my struggle was real, and I was so busy, so desperate to hate my dead brother, Emil, not because I couldn’t share but because I hated myself and I wanted nothing more than to be him. Not to be like him but to be him. And not because I thought that he would have gotten a better deal from my parents but because he was a boy, the boy I always wanted to be, and I was so jealous that he had been given the chance to be born with that correction, that it could be so easy and yet I had to live this miserable life instead of him. And that’s why I decided to take his name, Dr. Seligman, to free him from his box and give him the chance to live some of that life he never got to see. And even though I will never be as beautiful as him, will never move with the grace of the people in between, I think it’s the right thing to do. And once I am done here, I will go to that church and take him home with me. I sincerely hope that he isn’t a religious artefact by now, so that I can free him from his box and his wheels and place him in one of the few sunny spots in my room, next to my flowers and my books, where he will never have to bless anyone ever again or serve as the surrogate for people’s broken dreams. And I really hope that he will then forgive me for having taken so long, for not realising that my other side could be my brother, for not understanding that it takes several minds to be beautiful.