by Jen George
I sleep for two hundred and forty hours, as prescribed, in the Sleeping Room. I’m unsure if I’m dreaming or if the Sleeping Room is in fact a place altogether different from the hospital. Either way, I am somewhere else, out of my body cast, but still unable to walk. In this place, the artist/doctor and I are married. He is my husband. I am his wife, but I am rather small. The symbols he painted on my cast are now tattoos over my face and body. He picks me up from our bed, which is in a room atop a large hotel in the mountains, and he carries me about the hotel like a child, showing me what things are. “That is a table,” he says. “Over there is a wall clock at which we look to tell time so that we may perform appropriate activities at their designated hour. There is a painted marble bust. There is a bust of your breasts; there is one in each room of the hotel. We eat breakfast at 7 A.M. I go horseback riding at 10 A.M.” He points out the window at white horses on green grass surrounded by a white fence. Outside the fence, there is a forest of Mediterranean cypress trees. “You are too little to come horseback riding,” he says. “After lunch I do sculptures,” he tells me. He runs his fingers through my hair. “Your name is Smyrna,” he says. “Your name is Lyssa. Your name is Little Fool.” I watch the wall clock in the hotel for hours as the husband goes about his actions. I make love with the husband in the mornings before breakfast and after his rides. He looks so elegant when dressed in his riding clothes. When we make love he keeps his long hair in a braid with a red ribbon tied in a bow at the bottom. He keeps on his riding cap and his blazer. He has his pants pulled down to the knee, just to his riding boots. Before he comes his mouth opens wide and he whips me with his crop on my rear end.
I have a nanny who watches the white horses through the window with me. Sometimes the horses jump the fence and run into the Mediterranean cypress forest. We can see them go for some time because of their whiteness against the dark greens and blacks of the forest. The psychiatrist’s voice recordings come through the hotel’s loudspeaker system, somewhat muffled. My nanny carries me on her back from room to room to comb my hair as the messages play through the hotel. “Doing things,” the psychiatrist says. “Personal satisfaction through autonomy.” “Places reached on your own two feet.” “Food for self-sufficiency and fertility.” “We can have children together.” “This is your psychiatrist speaking.” “Suicide is for people who make bad decisions.” “What I like cooked for me is as follows: roast beef, creamed corn, mac and cheese, potatoes au gratin, and spirit-infused desserts (rum cake, tiramisu, trifle).”
There are other guests at the hotel in the evenings. They sit in the dining hall and eat wild meats my husband has hunted in the forest. I sit at the children’s/wives’ table alone, as there are no other little wives and there are no children and I eat small cakes prepared by the hotel pastry chef. I recognize some of the guests: friends maybe, or people from the hospital. “Where have you been?” they ask me, their mouths full of meat, their faces lit by the deep orange and yellow flames from the candles and oil lamps. My nanny asks them, “Where have you been?” They’d all like to know where each other has been. No one knows. They cannot believe their eyes at seeing each other after long absences, during which time they forgot one another’s existence. They did not expect to see each other at dinner in this hotel. My husband gives toasts, he tells people to enjoy the grounds and the beautiful wall clock and the busts of his wife’s breasts in each room. This night he unveils a new sculpture that will live in the dining hall. “Penis with Legs,” he says. I recognize the penis as my husband’s own. The hotel guests clap. “Such talent,” they say. “An appropriate name for that very sculpture.” My nanny kisses me on the ear. “Where have you been?” she whispers.
The psychiatrist comes in over the loud speakers. “You will get a job; a person needs to keep busy.” “Help Wanted: Seeking pleasant, pretty, ‘open’ type to make coffee, listen to problems and musings of (all male) staff in engine building warehouse. Ordering lunch (sexy phone voice a must), flirtatious with all staff, most flirtatious/sexual/sexually available with boss. Hours 9-5 plus after work bar trips to laugh at jokes of/go home with boss. Must not have boyfriend. Candidates with cute roommates A+.”
Following the Sleeping Room, my newest diagnosis from the rotation staff is midterm pregnancy with a high risk of fetal abnormality (all kinds). “Congratulations,” the genetic counselor tells me. I get many congratulations from the hospital staff. “You’re so skinny,” a nurse says. “Children are a blessing,” a woman in a wheelchair says. At my weekly appointment, my psychiatrist calls me a tease and punches his desk after reading my chart. “I should kill you,” he says. A genetic counselor orders an amniocentesis to determine the nature of the fetal abnormalities. In the Procedures room, nurses in training saw through the cast covering my stomach in order to expose the area so that they may perform the procedure. A needle is plunged through my concave stomach in search of the amniotic sac. I cannot see the screen showing the interior of my uterus, but I can feel the needle searching. Following the procedure, the genetic counselor goes on vacation to Mexico for two weeks, after which he informs me that the amniocentesis found that my pregnancy was a ghost pregnancy. “Turns out the chances of you being pregnant were 1 in 100,000,” he says. “I have never been good at math.” He hands me tissues though I am not crying. “The Gulf is beautiful this time of year,” he says. “There are enormous floating oil slicks covering large swaths of the bright blue water’s surface from Mexico to Bermuda, which make for fantastical psychedelic rainbow patterns.” In my room I paint another son in the likeness of the artist/doctor over the newly plastered stomach of my cast.
The artist/doctor wheels me to an unmarked room in the Psychiatry & Other wing at the middle of which sits a car without an engine. It is a replica of his own car, he tells me, down to the scratches on the paint and pens and empty energy drink cans on the floor. He places me in the passenger seat and he sits in the driver’s seat. The lights go down and images are projected onto the wall that make it look like we’re in a bad neighborhood parked next to a dumpster that’s overflowing with trash. A trash scent is pumped through the room. I smile at him. He smiles at me. We are full of politeness. He turns the knobs on the radio, but no music comes. He unzips his pants. I reach over with my recently de-casted hand to rub his penis. I spit on his penis. I smile at the artist/doctor, spit dribbling down my chin. I lean over to give him head. He pulls my hair back. I stick two fingers up his asshole. I take his testicles into my mouth. I look up at him and see that he is jotting down notes in his art notebook and on my chart. I try to do better, flat tongue, good suction, zero teeth. He sighs heavily, as though taking a good shit. I pause. “You are so productive,” I say. “Don’t stop,” he says. I begin again. His pubic hair smells strongly of antibacterial soap. Eyes closed, sighing, he holds his notebook in one hand and grips the steering wheel. The artist/doctor is not the man who was so kind, the one that I loved, but the kind one that I loved is all I can think of in the moment. I pause again. “You are so kind,” I say, not to the artist/doctor but to the man who was so kind, the one I loved. “Shhh,” the artist/doctor says, “shut up.” I begin. When the artist/doctor comes the volume is so great I cannot swallow all of it. I manage to get a good deal of it down before I vomit on the empty coffee cups in the drink holders. The artist/doctor writes me a prescription for a powerful anti-nausea medication typically reserved for terminal cancer patients on intensive chemo.
A group of actresses from the artist/doctor’s film come to my half of the room to talk with me about my character, about accidents and mishaps and the feelings and events surrounding the incidents specifically. The young women wear wigs so that their hair looks like mine. They’re in their early twenties, drink large cups of coffee, and wear black turtlenecks and short navy schoolgirl skirts like I did ten years ago. They want to know everything about my character. “I think she is a complete fool, but brave in her stupidity,” one says. “I think she is a violent suicidal narcissist sex
addict who damages anyone close to her,” says another. “I think she is a little rabbit,” a girl with her wig on lopsided says. “The kind of rabbit I’d like to pet and keep in a cage and take out on the lawn sometimes. The kind of rabbit you’d have to watch closely because a coyote will snatch her up or she’ll have a heart attack if she hears the garbage truck, but at the same time you kind of secretly hope that something like that happens.”
“Once I fell down the stairs in front of a large group of people at a party when I was just out of high school,” I say. They take notes. “I hurt my rear end,” I continue. “Quite badly.” They sip their coffee and study my movements as I speak. “I was embarrassed that I fell,” I go on. “So I asked my friend to drive me home immediately, but she was trying cocaine for the first time and wanted to stay.”
“Did you stay?” an actress asks. “I did,” I say, “though I was very sore. I did a lot of coke and tried to look at the stars for a long period of time in order to avoid social contact, but I became more embarrassed and my injury hurt worse—like it was serious. At one point in the evening I confided my injury to someone who seemed friendly and he responded with a shrug, then walked away. For the rest of the night, I pretended I wasn’t hurt when people would pass me and say hello.” Looking at the actors surrounding my hospital bed, I feel wise for a moment. “I think much of life is pretending you’re not hurt,” I tell them. No one writes this information down. “Like an animal or something,” I say. Their pens rest on their notebooks. “To protect yourself,” I say. They check their wristwatches, the kind I used to wear to be old-fashioned.
The young women ask more questions about other little accidents and mishaps and sit with me for a couple of hours. They’ve all taken extensive notes, though none on the points I consider important. They all seem to care about the project they’re working on. They love showing up to set, which I have yet to see. They talk about their admiration for the artist/doctor’s work. They talk about the curve to his penis when it’s hard, their favorite sex positions with him. They talk about their daily lives, about their artists’ world, about how they found a warehouse building near the Fulton Mall and take up the entire top floor. They talk about who’s having a show where and doing what and dating who. They have so many plans.
The nurse who sometimes watches me pretend to sleep sits by my bed. “There will never be any progress,” she says. She takes the brittles and toffees hammer to the crack in the wall. Mice run around the room.
I receive with my breakfast a flier for a local play, Sickness Unto Death & the Proliferation of Garbage, that features several of the hospital staff, including the hospital religious counselor and the expert I saw on the television program Questions. A local laundromat owner is quoted on the flier saying, “Anticipation amongst the locals is reaching fever-pitch. We’re all hoping to have some nagging questions answered and see some of the self-proclaimed talent in the community deliver—we’ll be the judge of their so-called gifts.” The play will be staged inside the hospital chapel.
The artist/doctor wheels me to the Recreational wing and saws through my body cast at my nipples, crotch, and asshole. The artist/doctor asks me to masturbate for him by pressing my thighs together. Right before I come, he penetrates me, preventing orgasm. “I love you,” I say. “Shhh,” he says. He takes notes in his art notebook as he fucks me. “You have a tightass pussy,” he tells me. I wonder how my pussy differs from the actresses who play me. “When you sleep with the actresses who play me does it feel the same?” I say. “Shhh,” he says. “Do we have the same tightass pussy?” I say. “Yes,” he says, “shut up.” I am relieved we all have the same tightass pussy. It makes me feel a part of something.
My latest diagnosis is extreme lethargy. The following week I receive a diagnosis of hyper-delusional thought patterns. The next week they tell me I have an interest in all the wrong things. I’m diagnosed with a collapsed lung filled with blood. Slow moving septic shock. A body-shaped/sized mucus plug. I’m told if I have even an accidental orgasm, in a dream or anywhere, it’ll most likely be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’m told to limit sexual activity due to active ruptures in the uterus. I am told I should’ve had children younger. I’m told I’d have been an unfit mother. I’m told my life made a clear line to this place, like predetermined destiny. I’m told there is a ghost rod in my ass that remains from situations in which I was uncomfortable as a child.
The man with the cauliflower ear who brought food no longer brings food. I do not feel hunger or weakness and like to think I am entering an enlightened meditative state in which I am sustained by only intravenous drugs.
It is winter. There are several inches of snow on the window ledge. A nurse comes in to tell me everyone in the hospital has gone. “Winter holiday,” she says. The janitor still sweeps the halls and delivers tabloid magazines full of stories about locals stumbling out of bars like Hank’s Local with people who are not their spouses, or at parties celebrating business openings. There is an interview with the painter from the football field discussing his sentence and the ways in which having time to think has changed his work. “More me,” he says.
I await news of the premier for The World as Will and Representation and the Desire for Penetration, which is supposed to screen following the New Year. I realize I do not know if the artist/doctor is highly regarded in artistic circles. Due to my fragile ego, I hope the film is favorably reviewed.
My drip has run dry but I think there is enough in me cumulatively that it does not matter. I should visit the painter to ask him about the usage of time and then plan things: a curtain for the window, a rug beneath my hospital bed, a door that locks for the floor bathroom, mucus plug extraction, a trip to the dentist’s office in the strip mall for some long overdue root canals. But it is winter and I have no shoes.
I have visions of the artist/doctor: the actresses that play me, who are dressed as I was in my early twenties, surround him on set. He gives them notes. When the artist/doctor yells action, the actresses move about, stubbing their toes, dropping glasses, cutting their bangs too short, farting loudly in quiet public places, joining in a massive orgy in which they feel both free and left out. The artist/doctor yells cut, critiques them, tells them to give more or give less, and begins rolling again. He provides them with work. They are forever devoted to him for giving them this purpose.
FUTURES IN CHILD REARING
I’m trying to have a baby. I’d like to name her Ocean, but I fear the implications: the void, vast emptiness, the unknown, big whale shits, giant octopuses, or other possible hentai tentacle situations. I put my finger in the ovulation machine: Transaction Declined, it reads on the screen.
I’d like to name him Meriwether, but there is a hint of whimsy in it that I’ve been told is unattractive. Jupiter is an excellent name. Strong. Large. Fortunate. But I fear she will be gaseous, cloudy, and hurricane-like in nature. I can think of no one in the world named Jupiter whose example can confirm or negate the name’s good or bad qualities. I put my finger in the ovulation machine: Sounds like stupider.
I’d like to have a baby, but I fear I’ll resent all the compliments he’d get. Everyone will tell him, You are so cute. What will people say to me? You are a good mother is an insufficient compliment and overused most of the time. I know many mediocre mothers, and I always tell them, You are a good mother.
You Have Reached Your Destination is a strong name. He will not be lost. He will feel at home in the world. His arrival and presence has always been. I put my finger in the machine: Coordinates not found, rerouting, it says.
An older woman who lives in the apartment above mine tells me that sticking quail eggs in my vagina will stimulate ovulation instantly, that if I use this method I won’t need the machine. I go to the gourmet grocer who informs me the quail eggs are from special emerald quails. I charge five thousand dollars on my credit card for a dozen. At home I stick the twelve green speckled eggs into my vagina. It feels something like hold
ing in an enema. Using a prolonged kegel, I keep the eggs in as long as I can, and go about picking up trash all over the house. As I take out the recycling, the eggs drop from my vagina and splatter a green mucus on the floor of my building’s foyer. The old woman comes down from the stairwell and studies the mucus under an ovulation microscope. “Didn’t work,” she says. Inside, I put my finger in the ovulation machine: You will never be able to pay off your credit card debt, it reads. The following day I find out the old woman owns several hundred shares in the Emerald Quail Corporation.