Embodied Effigies, Issue Three

Embodied Effigies Spring/Summer 2013

Embodied Effigies Issue Three: Spring/Summer 2013

Embodied Effigies, a creative nonfiction literary magazine, publishes truth in all forms. The magazine proudly gathers work from around the world, thanks to the curiosity, interest, and sharing of our contributors.

Information regarding future issues, submission guidelines, and featured writing of Embodied Effigies can be found at: http://effigiesmag.com Please email us with any questions or comments at: embodied.effigies@gmail.com

Copyright Š 2013 Embodied Effigies, John Carter, and Catherine Roberts.

All rights revert to author after publication.

The views and opinions expressed by authors featured in Embodied Effigies do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the editors.

Publication of Embodied Effigies is made possible by the out-of-pocket, not-our-day-job workings of John Carter and Catherine Roberts.

Cover Art, Half-Title, Masthead, and Verso Images provided by vintageprintable, a public domain image service.

We would also like to extend our unending thanks to everyone who made this issue possible: our contributors, our advisors, our families, our friends—Thank you.

Embodied Effigies Masthead Managing Co-Editors John Carter Catherine Roberts

John Carter is a 2013 graduate of Ball

State University, where he earned his B.A. in English: Creative Writing. Native to the cornfields of East-Central Indiana, his work focuses on matters of family, farming, and the issues of Place that surround them. His most recent chapbook, At the Edge of the Fence, was completed in 2013, and his work can also be found in Volumes One and Two of The Ball State Writers’ Community Chapbook Series. A more extensive list of his writing blood, sweat, and tears can be found on his website-- jekcarter.com

Catherine Roberts holds a BA in Eng-

lish: Creative Writing from Ball State University and is currently pursuing her MFA degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Ashland University. She works part-time in her hometown’s library and balances family, school, and writing during the rest of the day. Her work has appeared in The Prompt.

Her current projects include continuing work with form and experimentation as well as a renewed focus on language and detail.

Table of Contents

How to Wash a Body

001

Amber Hollinger

Stained Glass Windows

005

Kelsey D. Garmendia

Dear Editor:

023

Nicole St. Pierre

Dancing With the Onion God: Seven Sorts of Salvation

027

Exact Change Speeds Trips

037

Hidden

041

Six Seconds of Sexy

047

19,599

055

837-足6142

065

Dragon Fruit Skyy Vodka

067

Dance of the Skeleton Woman

069

David Brennan

Ginger Graziano

Erin Olds

Laura McCullough

Debra Fox

John Richmond

J. Davis

Amber Hollinger

Fortune Teller No. 35: A Master or Saltimbanque?

071

The Lake

083

The Suzy Chronicles: Part I

089

The Visitation

101

The Dog

109

Following Tracks

117

Not-足Dad

119

Bittersweet

123

Icelandic Pebbles

127

The Away Wedding

133

These Clean Scars

135

Candase Wenbin Tang

Morgan Bazilian

Louis Reyna

Iris Dorbian

Brad Garber

Tina Vivian

Brandy Bauer

Danielle Palumbo

Katya Kulik

Jennifer Leeney Adrian

Catori Sarmiento

How to Wash a Body Amber Hollinger

I am gentle with her breasts. And with the rest of her.

By now, I know her body very well. She and I have performed this ritual many times: this bathing, this cleansing.

Yes, I know her body now. I have been thinking that perhaps I know her body even better than I know my own. For I often take more time and care with her flesh than I do with my own. With me it seems to be all quickness and efficiency: basic top-to-bottom methodics of cleaning, drying, and dressing, fingertips rarely even offering an unnecessary touch or tickle. With her, there’s always time to take my time, and these practices seem so much more artful, exercises in mindful intent. I see this because, with her, I have to pay attention.

When she is in my hands, I am aware of every skin-on-skin instant, every step of the process, every body part and the skin covering it, every word or change in temperament. I watch the action of the cloth in my hands, for instance, as I take it over each curve and crevice.

Sometimes, there in the cream colored bathroom, she looks into my eyes and through me. And on days when her eyes narrow and her gaze hardens, I know her mind is changing her. On these days, I take her hand in mine and I say: “It’s ok. I’m Amber, you know me. I help you shower and dress.” Usually this pacifies her, and she softens again. Other times, the voices keep her wary or give rise to protestation.

But I do not want to get ahead of myself. There is a logical series, a deliberate sequence I follow when ‘getting her cleaned-up,’ as we call it.

This is how I wash her body. To begin, I prepare the space. I open a nearby window to welcome the spring breeze and allow air flow. This becomes especially important if she needs to use the toilet. I turn on all the lights; we want full illumination. She and I both need to be able to see exactly where we are during this course of events.

I bring several towels—one for her body, one for the floor, and one Embodied Effigies | 1

Hollinger

for her to sit upon—and wash cloths from the hall closet, lavenders and greens and charcoals. I choose one of ten cozy sweat suits from her dresser.

I often pick cobalt or pink but she prefers green or light grey.

I bring her to the bathroom. Some days she travels willingly from her favorite couch to the shower, and on other days she requires some cajoling. Always she takes the commute gradually. We go along in slow motion, as her petite frame moves in small shuffle steps.

“Just hold on a minute, I’m coming,” she declares. I am accustomed to her words being few and far between and sounding like proclamations.

I help her out of her clothes, one piece at a time, one fold and tuck and tug at a time. She has been on the earth for nearly a century, she is a daughter, a mother, a grandmother and a great-grandmother, and she does not twist into or out of such robes as easily as she once did. So, soft, simple angles and verbal communication are vital here, in order to ensure painlessness.

“I’m going to lift this shirt now, okay? First up in front, now in back. I’m going to grab this sleeve. Okay, go ahead and pull your arm back.

That’s good. You got it! Now over the head. Good.”

Etc. She is now nude, vulnerable in front of a stranger. With one gloved hand holding her hand and one hand on her back, I help her into the shower. Bathing has become yet another activity she can no longer complete unassisted. The years have bent her posture, and although she is relatively strong and healthy for a woman in her late nineties, her joints can be as unreliable as her memory—which sometimes convinces her that her fragile physique is also rather frail and helpless.

I have learned these things about her. I have learned that, more often than not, she does not recognize her surroundings. So I talk her through our daily practices, hoping my words will remind her where we are in space and time. I am careful to ensure she feels as safe and as comfortable with me as possible. I want her to know I am here for her. I want her to feel as secure in a comprehensible reality as possible: that this is all truly happening and not a figment of her imagination or confused brain chemistry.

“Go ahead and sit down,” I say. She rests her bottom on the shower seat. “Let’s get a good temperature: not too hot, not too cold.” Inevitably, these first, naked moments pass like hours, as the water adjusts to pleasant warmth. “Ok,” I tell her, “I’m going to rinse you off, alright?” I run the water 2 | Embodied Effigies

How to Wash a Body

over her body and give her a moistened washcloth. “You want to wash your face, while I wash your body?” She nods and wipes her face or she stares at me with wide eyes, and I attempt to calm her. “It’s ok. We will get you cleaned up and out of here in no time.”

I smooth the soft washcloth over her body: her neck, her arms, her back, her chest, her belly and legs. I keep my movements as delicate as possible but I make sure to leave her skin clean. She stands and I carefully wash her bottom.

There was a time when she knew how to do this, how to wash herself. Perhaps there was a time she used to enjoy her body in the shower in the very ways I used to enjoy my body, before I stopped taking the time to take my time while washing—humming, singing, swaying hips, stretching muscles, caressing every part of the flesh. There was a time she remembered how to care for her own body. Some things are forgotten in time and some things are lost forever.

Sometimes we make up our minds to forget certain things, certain places, certain people or to lose them forever. And sometimes our minds decide not to give us a choice in the matter.

I know she likes it when I wash her hair and when I dry her. So I try to make these moments the most beautiful. I take as much time as she will allow us, before she gets cold or lost again. I massage her scalp and hair, slowly, firmly. Gently, I rinse her body from head to toe and help her out of the shower. Gently, I dry her body. I smooth the soft towel over her skin: her neck, her arms, her back, her chest, her belly and legs. I keep my movements as delicate as possible.

I wonder if, one day, a stranger will wash and dry my grandmother’s body this way—or my mother’s body or my own. May she or he be kind. May they be gentle. May we all be so, with any body.

Embodied Effigies | 3

Stained Glass Windows Kelsey D. Garmendia

Show and Tell My memories of my early years come and go in flashes. The small collection I have seems to rotate on a carousel in distinct patterns.

SLIDE We are outside of a Shoprite on the outskirts of my hometown. My mother goes in to the store to pick up something, but being two or three, I do not understand.

I scream my head off once she disappears from sight. Either because my father feels bad or he wants me to shut the hell up, he allows me to play with the headlights.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> The square-tile flooring and plain white walls of the hospital surround the room where my mother is. Inside the claustrophobic cubical, a bluish hue from the lights turns my mother’s complexion a dark green.

My father picks me up, instructing me to kiss my mother. My lips meet her skin; her lips are cold.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> I stare down at the outdated brown shag carpet of the funeral home. Across the room, someone calls my name. A woman sitting in an ancient armchair Embodied Effigies | 5

Garmendia

with honey colored hair and red lips waves her hand at me.

I stumble across the room and find a weaved basket filled with butterscotch candies. I peel the gold wrapper off and pop the brown candy into my mouth.

To this day, the taste of butterscotch reminds me of brown shag carpets and funerals.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> The wood paneled walls surround me. That same ragged shag carpet covers the floor.

My mother’s coffin is in front of me, but I cannot see in. I see my reflection in the golden casing instead.

The strong hands of my dad lift me up above the top of the coffin.

A gold cross is placed around her neck, the corners of her mouth straight, giving her a look of indifference.

I kiss her on the cheek and feel nothing.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> We are outside, and I am in an ugly flower-print dress. It is very stiff and very uncomfortable.

If rain was falling, I do not remember it.

My dad’s hands grab me under my arms and lift me up to pat the top of the gold coffin. I tap the top, not knowing that moment will be the closest I will ever get to my mother again.

At three years old, six feet of separation seems like nothing to me.

6 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> Years pass—I guess.

I am in my playpen, watching the deconstruction of a birthday party.

The tattered streamers hang loosely from the ceiling, and my sisters are standing on old metal stools that our mother bought. I am stuck behind bars to witness my oldest sister scream at the sight of a spider.

“What the hell is it Kimberly,” my dad yells. His feet trudge through the barren beige carpet of our living room; the bars of my playpen shake with each step.

CAROUSEL JAMS Slide projectors never were the most dependable type of technology.

Slides go missing. They fade. Some—completely torn out.

After my mother’s death, my slides have missing spaces; episodic memory.

A term invented by Endel Tulving in the 1970s explains the way my memory works. I can recall only certain frames from my memory while the others remain empty.

Most of my family members fill the holes with some biased story of my life.

I have always known these memories I keep in my slideshow to be true— they happened. My mother died when I was three; the tombstone is placed in New Prospect Cemetery on the left-hand side of the dirt road. My family’s stories however, prove that my memory is just out of focus. I wonder if Tulving could explain the doubt I have towards my memories now.

In the lingering days of the summer of 2009, I tattooed my mother’s favorite flower on my skin, the day she died stained neatly underneath. When the needle was finally lifted, everything seemed real, for once.

The moment my father saw my tattoo, he said, “You’re not going to remember who that was when you’re seventy.”

Embodied Effigies | 7

Garmendia

I accept the fact that as you grow, specific frames from the “good old days” slowly deteriorate. One day, I will forget my fear of hospitals. I will forget why butterscotch intrigues my taste buds. That indifferent look on my mother’s face will be replaced with smiling photographs.

Those days are far in the future. Yet still, I search for something, anything to prove that my carousel was not completely fabricated.

A newspaper article I read from the Harvard University Gazette said longterm memory develops after one year of life. According to the Starch Research Professor of Psychology at Harvard, my memory functions differently than some. I still cannot remember the year after my mother’s death.

It went something like this: Before my mother died, my father worked midnight shifts, using mornings to sleep off the stress and exhaustion from the night before. Now he worked days, leaving my sisters and me in the care of our grandmother.

My life: Filled in like missing pieces to a glass window.

The technical difficulties earlier made those memories non-existent. I try to remember the screaming my grandmother would endure when my father left me with her. But no such story comes to mind. I try and remember my sisters; how they changed, how they did not change, but that same blank slot glares at me from my patchy slideshow.

If my long-term memory was supposed to develop by then, I would have known what my childhood life was like. Most of the time though, I just question whether they were real or if my memories will be told by everyone else.

Sometimes I think about seeing a hypnotist or psychic. Maybe they can understand why I cannot remember.

Tell me my future, show me my past—anything at all really.

8 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

On the Edge of a Needle Around the age of four, my “real” life begins.

PRESCHOOL> A neighbor drives my best friend and me to Hopewell Nursery School. The stone church where my school commences towers over the heather minivan I sit in.

I am never afraid to go in though, everyone I know is in there.

Two things I learn: Clean-up time involves help from everyone.

I am the fastest tricycle rider.

Other snapshots from those years consist of finger-painting my name, digging for “dinosaur fossils,” better known as chicken bones in kitty-litter, and eating green eggs and ham.

Nothing else comes to mind.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL> My father does not walk me to the bus stop that fateful first day of “Big Kid School.” I get a ride from my neighbor to the bus stop and leave for Pine Bush Elementary fifteen minutes later; same routine for the next five years.

What I learned: Kindergarten—How to tie my shoes.

First Grade—Multiplication, sort of.

Embodied Effigies | 9

Garmendia

Second Grade—Cursive, but also that print was easier.

Third Grade—Teachers lost your work.

Fourth Grade—Boys were really cute.

Fifth Grade—Friskey, my cat, died from kidney failure.

I do not remember much, but I do have a separate slide for a particular autumn day.

SLIDE> I am five. Six kids sprint at full speed after the black and white soccer ball.

Parents watch on the sidelines of the soccer field, cheering for their kids and sipping on their coffee.

I am goalie.

I concentrate on the black and white ball and the hoard of kids sprinting after it. The score is tied with only a couple minutes left.

I hate goalie though.

A bug buzzes in my face. I swat at it, but it returns soon after. Finally, I squish the bug in between my two hands.

Little do I know, that bug is a yellow-jacket.

The referee blows the whistle and stops the game because the yellow team, also known as my team, has no goalie in the net. I am crying on the sidelines.

My dad drives me away from the soccer fields to a brick building. The whole way there, I have my hand in a Wendy’s cup filled with ice.

“Is it swollen?” my dad asks.

10 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

In between hyperventilated tears, I mutter some response. What does swollen mean?

I have no idea.

EMPTY SLOT Whispering

---

SLIDE> 12:30a.m.—Arrived at party. Drank 3 beers.

1:00a.m.—Funneled 2 more beers.

Sometime after 1:00—Drank beer while talking with Hank by the fire pit.

Sometime after that—Went back to the house with Hank.

I don’t know what time—Hank and four guys did some type of sexual act on me while Hank pinned me and covered my mouth.

SLIDE BURNED> Whenever—Rachel stopped them all and brought me to her room.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> “Did they rape you,” Rachel asks.

At that point, my memory had already burned that slide.

I sit in my friend’s Mustang, my arms littered with hand-shaped bruises, my face covered with scratches from Hank’s nails digging in, placing a firm seal over my mouth. My ribs throb when I sit up straight, my legs are sore.

My entire body screams at me that something bad happened and yet, I can’t bring back the memory that would tell me everything.

“Kelsey,” Rachel asks again.

Embodied Effigies | 11

Garmendia

“I don’t know, Rachel. I blacked out or something I guess,” I say. “I don’t remember.”

“Who were the other guys?” she asks.

“Rachel, I’m not from your town. Didn’t you see them? Don’t you remember them?”

Rachel tightens the hand closest to me into a fist. “Maybe I was little more concerned about my friend who was balled up in the corner of my little brother’s bedroom completely naked,” she yells, her voice cracking with anger.

I close my mouth tightly. I can hear it in her voice—the beginnings of doubt.

Rachel’s nostrils flared three times before she spoke again. “You didn’t even drink that much.”

I shoot a look at her. Both of us knew that was a lie.

“Well, I’ve seen you drink more and not ‘black out’.”

I look down at my hands and pick at the dirt under my fingernails. I don’t have an answer for her. I don’t even have an answer for myself.

“Are you listening to me, Kelsey?” Rachel asks waving a hand in front of my face. “My mom’s a doctor; she deals with stuff like this all the time—” “Stuff like what?” I yell. “I don’t remember what they did to me Rachel! I don’t remember anything in between Hank taking me to your brother’s bedroom and you finding me!”

I bite down on my tongue. My face gets hot, my throat constricts, vomit fights its way up; welcome to my first panic attack.

Rachel squeezes her fist. Her knuckles turn red then white.

“You know what,” Rachel starts. “I don’t believe you anymore.”

12 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

I nod my head and grind my teeth.

“You liked Hank, and you decided to go up to that room and have sex with him and his friends so that he would go out with you,” she continues. “Is that the case, Kels?”

“Sure,” is all my vocal cords manage to get past my constricting throat.

“You’re unbelievable,” Rachel says throwing her hands up in the air. “You know what, if you’re going to keep your little secrets, then don’t bother involving me.”

I don’t respond. I unbuckle my seatbelt, open the door and limp back to my house with Rachel screaming after me like some crazed mother at a Toys ‘R Us on a Black Friday.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> No one is home which is nice; I actually prefer it. I open the front door, pull myself up the stairs and go to my bedroom. The springs to my mattress hurt my bruises. I close my eyes hoping for sleep, anything other than being in the real world remembering—reliving.

But sleeping peacefully is something that’s only allowed in fairytales—and even Snow White didn’t get that.

--Nightmares SLIDE> “Don’t scream, I don’t want anyone to hear this.”

I shoot up to Hank’s voice floating somewhere in my head. A long breath escapes me as I lay back down. My clock on my nightstand clicks—2:00a.m.

“Go to sleep, Kelsey,” I say.

But I know better.

Embodied Effigies | 13

Garmendia

If I sleep, Hank comes back to me in a flash, and I can’t take another nightmare coming alive again. Instead, I go to my computer and write a story about a girl who’s an alcoholic and drops out.

EMPTY SLOT For the next three days after the party, I slept a total of 6 hours. Rachel called twice after she peeled out of my driveway. Once was to call me a bitch and a slut—the second was to apologize for the first phone call.

I didn’t return either.

I was the text book definition of a rape victim. It’s been five years since that party back in the summer of 2008, and I still don’t know if Hank and his friends were just trying to scare me or if they had sexual intercourse with me.

According to doctors, I experienced a symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder called a suppressed memory. Unlike a repressed memory, the person’s mind chooses to push a certain memory or event so far beneath the folds of their brain, that it doesn’t exist.

This isn’t an overnight thing. Takes years of practice—and lots of alcohol.

--Make Me Beautiful SLIDE> “You want me to cut all this off?” the hair dresser says.

“Yup.” “Alright,” she says, slowly shedding away the inches off my hair.

“Why so short all of the sudden?”

14 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

“I needed a change.”

With each swift cut of the scissors, I feel less like my old self. Less like the Kelsey who let Hank— Well, the Bacardi Razz in a Propel water bottle helps take of the edginess.

After all, my friend is designated driver.

It’s the day before my first day of senior year. I want to feel different, better—no—I want to be different than the old me.

I take a sip from my water bottle and swallow roughly.

“What kind of Propel is that?” my hair dresser asks. “It smells so strong.”

“Raspberry.”

Partying

---

SLIDE> The floor moves like a waterbed straight out of the 70s. I trip over the waves of the carpet and make my way to my friend’s kitchen.

Actually he’s not my friend. He’s more like someone I met a handful of times; a friend of a friend of a friend.

The keg is in a bucket that resembles a red thimble. I reach for the handle and miss, falling face first into the metal casing.

“Keg stand?” someone shouts.

Sure, why not.

Before I can answer, I’m being lifted by my ankles until I’m holding onto the metal handles of the keg. The spout is in my mouth and everyone is counting.

The beer is cold but at this moment, I don’t care. The kitchen’s floor moves Embodied Effigies | 15

Garmendia

like its a permanent turntable.

I close my eyes and picture myself flying—flying down in a spiral.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> “Yoooooo! This girl is the shit!” a guy yells from across the room.

I had made five cups in a row in this game of beer pong.

“You won’t make this next cup, you won’t!” my opponent says.

He only has one cup left in real life, but my double vision keeps it moving back and forth. I throw the ping pong ball and hear cheers.

Is this what it’s like to have fun?

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> 12:30p.m.—Shot of Kahlua.

3:00p.m.—Rum and coke.

3:30p.m.—Rum and coke numero dos.

3:38p.m.—Hide empty rum bottle in the grass along the porch.

4ish—Corona 4 or 5—Write a story about a girl who loses her virginity while she’s drunk at a party.

Uh, 6:00p.m.—Jamaican dark rum on the rocks.

7:00p.m.—Jeopardy.

Eventually—Climb out kitchen window, stumble down the road to a neighbor’s house to drink.

16 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

7:00a.m.—Go to school.

PROCEED TO NEXT SLIDE> “Kelsey, you’re nuts,” says a friend.

I teeter on a bridge after drinking a bottle of tequila.

“What? You’ve never eaten the worm before,” I ask. Neither had I, but that is irrelevant right now.

“If you eat that worm,” a guy next to me says. “Then, I’ll give you 50 bucks.”

I stand on top of the bridge’s barricade like a gymnast on a balance beam.

With the worm marinating in the last bit of tequila, I toss back the rest.

“Chew it,” someone yells.

So I chew it and slowly force it down my throat. The taste finally hits me and I sway losing my balance.

Please just let it happen.

But I don’t fall. My friend grabs hold of my jacket and pulls me onto the concrete.

“Holy shit, Kelsey!” she yells. “You almost just took the plunge.”

I laugh and laugh and laugh. Maybe its because the worm got to me? Or maybe it’s because I thought I would fall?

I can’t give you an answer.

EMPTY SLOT>

---

Embodied Effigies | 17

Garmendia

Suicidal Tendencies SLIDE> I’m in bed. I wake up in a cold sweat; night terror—first one in a year.

I swipe my forehead with the back of my hand and curl up in a ball, hugging my extra pillow to my stomach.

When will it end?

TURN PROJECTOR OFF> I misplaced a few of these slides purposely. Most just blur with the hundreds of other self-destructive behaviors I risked night after night after night.

When I was 14, I used to cut myself with razors because I felt like no one noticed me.

The month after the party, I drank two tumblers filled with tequila and chewed down three sleep aids.

My memories of Hank and his friends were disintegrating, emptying the space for the new me. I told myself then, I wasn’t trying to kill myself—I wasn’t trying to stay alive either—but that I was just trying to keep up with the part of me that was already dead.

--Disenchanted “I know this song,” my father said. “Man, I’d love to play this game.”

All I could do was laugh; the days were far from over where my dad actually participated in the things I did.

“I—uh, had a question,” he mumbled.

I paused the video game and looked up from the TV screen again.

18 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

“Did you know Lindsey Billman?”

The name did not ring a bell. I shook my head.

“Well, she played for the sixteen-year-olds’ team, you know, Heather’s team?”

By this point, I half-expected some long, draining story to escape my father’s mouth about how great of a volleyball player this girl was. I sighed and nodded, just to show I was attempting to listen.

“She uh—fell through a skylight and died this weekend. The whole club is going to the wake. Did you want to go?”

My dad always had a way with words when it came to death.

“Uh, yeah. Sure,” I answered. He nodded and left me there listening to the quiet buzzing from the TV speakers.

I ate General Tao’s Chicken, “high-school style,” for lunch that day. Only reason I remember that is because I threw it up after the wake.

When we arrived at the church in Port Jervis, the red jackets from my volleyball club were overwhelming. The line for the viewing stretched several blocks—past the hospital that Lindsey died in. I, too, joined the red mass and waited for my turn. It was the first wake I had been to that had a waiting line.

The humidity clung to my skin. My feet were heavy; my red warm-up jacket weighed down my shoulders. As the door grew nearer, I saw friends with their eyes swollen from tears; veins bulged from their necks as they passed us.

We were the innocent—we had not seen her yet.

Along the way, I heard that it was open-casket.

“It’s not good,” one woman in red said.

I swallowed. Open-casket—the second one I had ever been to.

Embodied Effigies | 19

Garmendia

I cringed at the thought of seeing what a dead person really looks like. My memory of funerals flashed in my head. I pictured how my mother looked until the image was burned into my optic nerve: The indifferent look on my mother’s face, the cross that hung around her neck, her black hair parted neatly down the middle, her white outfit, how her hands were folded neatly across her stomach. That is what I remembered, and I believed it was the truth.

Until it was my turn.

I told myself not to look, it would be better that way. But my eyes slowly followed the closed-half of the wooden casket. They staggered when they reached her hands.

It was my turn to pay my respects.

Everything looked normal enough. Her lips were bright pink. They were turned up into a cruel half-smirk. Her jawline was set back an inch too far and her neck resembled a tangled slinky. Her straightened hair was misshapen and untamed because of the humidity.

In front of me, a little girl in a red and black cheerleading outfit clung to a teddy bear.

“Go ahead, you can give it to Lindsey,” Mrs. Billman, the dead child’s mother, said. The little girl reached for the top of the coffin and placed the tiny stuffed bear inside.

“Lindsey coached her at cheerleading camp,” the mother of the little girl said. “We’re both so sorry for your loss.”

Mrs. Billman laughed, “Lindsey didn’t really like cheerleading all too much.” A flawless smile spread across her face; it was sickening.

When I stepped up to her mother, I struggled to say I’m sorry.

“It’s ok, honey. Everything’s alright,” she said.

Yeah—everything was all right.

When my father and I returned to the car, I continued to wipe my face 20 | Embodied Effigies

Stained Glass Windows

clean. We drove on the slick streets for a while in silence. I stared at my hands fiddling with each other in the reflection of the window.

“She looked horrible,” my dad commented.

I kept quiet.

His fingers strummed the edges of the steering wheel; it sounded like a heartbeat. “Mommy looked just like that too.” His voice cracked.

As we drove, I stared out the window letting the knot in my throat grow.

I questioned everything that I remembered about my childhood. Before, when my father would tell a story about me, I assumed they were true. I never remembered them, but he did, so it had a higher possibility of being true.

This was the first time he spoke about one of my memories.

We stopped at a traffic light. A church was the only building to have its light on. The stained glass window showed an image of a brown cross surrounded by gold. Shadows passed behind it before my father pulled away.

What did my mother really look like? Did she look like that in the hospital?

Do my sisters know the truth? I did not know anymore.

Behind a stained glass window, those damn colors prevent me from seeing it clearly.

Embodied Effigies | 21

Dear Editor: Nicole St. Pierre

Dear Editor: I am very sorry, but I don’t have a story to tell. I know that I told you that I would, but I don’t, and I am sorry.

No excuse is good enough. I could tell you that I have forgotten what I told you I would do in the first place, but that would be a lie; I could tell you that I forgot the date I told you I would have something, and that would be true, but still not adequate.

I could tell you that I felt, for a long time, as if I was swimming suspended in a large glass bowl of water and everyone else was watching me. That I felt as though I was speaking English and everyone around me was speaking a new language to which I had not yet converted. That it is hard to write stories in a language you do not speak, or when your head is submerged. That now I feel chilled and strangely off-center and the joints of my fingers are too stiff to do what they are supposed to do.

I could tell you that my bones filled up with concrete and my skin is made of rice paper and if I try to move I will break all to pieces and I’ve got no one to clean up the mess. Perhaps this is graphic, perhaps this is dramatic, but you cannot deny that I could tell you this and yet it would not be good enough.

I could tell you that this has all been a process in which a haze has gradually descended, as if I am slowly, slowly, slowly falling asleep, but my eyes have not yet closed completely. Voices are far away, images blur behind my eyes, new beginnings grow and move inside of my imagination and I am enveloped by their warm potential, but I jolt awake again just as quickly, and the process starts over. I have been falling asleep for about nine months. In the time that you could make a human, I cannot even manage to fall asleep or stay awake.

I began to fall asleep when he kissed me on the forehead and walked away, but laying both the blame and the credit at only his heavy Embodied Effigies | 23

St. Pierre

feet would be incorrect. If I am going to write you a story, the credit will be mine. I have always said that I do not need anyone else in order to live my life, which is true, but to tell you why I have been falling asleep, I need him, I suppose, and that pisses me off, but it’s true, and so. I began to fall asleep when he kissed me on the forehead and walked away. Unless I am mistaken, a kiss from a man like that is supposed to be what wakes you up; yet, since his mouth touched my skin, I have not stopped falling asleep.

In the summer, when he was already long gone and the dust settling back down on the road, the sun cooked my skin until I turned brown, like gingerbread, and my hair gold, like the odd triangle boxes of Toblerone bars.

I knew that he must love me when he silently and without grandeur bought me a Toblerone bar at the grocery store when I was not looking, because I do not have them often and their strange shape makes me happy. I knew, then, that must have been a sign; it must have, right? But this was long ago, before the kiss, before the leaving, before the sun turned me into baked molasses, and I digress.

In the summer after he left I got drunk for the first time. I could tell you that. I could tell you that I went to a bar in the middle of Baltimore where the air smelled like the harbor and I thought about the last time I had been in the city; he and I had laid on our backs on a boat in the middle of the water, quiet, alone, and watched the fourth of July fireworks while, on the deck beneath us, other revelers played beer pong and danced to someone’s iPod. I could tell you that, that summer after he left, I told my friends at the bar that I don’t get drunk and that alcohol bores me, which is entirely accurate, and was, then, until the first shot of cinnamon whiskey shot a streak of high-proof fire down my throat, and I dared a companion to take another, because he was woozy and I was fine. “I’m smaller than you,” I said, “and I could take it.”

That boy turned around and came back with another and it burned and I sat down and suddenly time was slow and my hands were very, very pale, and when I went to the bathroom I could not recall if there had always been four stalls, or if two had been added since the last time I needed to use the restroom. The music became so loud that, when I came back to the table, that boy and I, we had to sit close and we had to lean in to hear one another say very important things. I buzzed because this was intriguingly unlike the he I had known, the he who had left before, and because if two 24 | Embodied Effigies

Dear Editor:

shots of cinnamon whiskey in quick succession don’t buzz you somewhere, you’re made of steel.

Later, I turned to endow this new he with the gift of more of my snark and he planted a kiss on my forehead and then I was sober again and in the bathroom stall a moment later, having lost my sea legs. I touched that spot, and I hated him. The first place that boy kissed me was the last place that he had kissed me, and suddenly I was again in a gray and rainy parking lot, full of cavities, cold. A week or two later, I sat in the dark, humid car of this new boy who knew nothing of my drowsiness, and I told him that I could not do it, and he said okay, and neither could he, and we said okay, and he drove me home and just like that, the new he expired, and the old he was left again to pace around inside my hazy mind.

I have had two last kisses on my forehead, and neither one has woken me up; I could tell you that. Perhaps I should grow bangs as a preventative measure, so that maybe I will be able to stop falling asleep. I could make that joke, but it would not be a good one, and would likely become a darling I had to kill later, in revisions.

Anyway, I could tell you that story, but it would not be very interesting. I could tell you that every time I feel myself falling asleep I try to yell, “Wake up! You have never needed anyone else to wake yourself up.”

And one day, I walked into a restaurant and I saw the back of his head for the first time in five months and I walked right by and stood in the bathroom and looked at myself with my tissue skin and concrete bones and I thought, I have been holding on so tightly, and he has been letting go for so long. What, then, is there to hold?

And I walked to the booth where he sat and I took the place across from him and he returned the DVDs I had lent him five months before and I did not give him back the sweatshirt he gave me a year prior because it was more mine than his, at that point, and in the future I may need it for burning. I looked at his stupid beautiful face and the places on it where I used to touch him and I curled my fingers up between my legs so that I wouldn’t, and I said, “You said we may have ruined something special, and that may be true, and that is very sad. We wanted to be friends, but you gave up on me, and now I don’t. I may forgive you someday, but right now, I do not. You must be an eternal optimist for believing that you will always find someone who you can ruin something special with.

Embodied Effigies | 25

St. Pierre

I would have done anything to make you happy, and maybe that was my mistake.”

He looked at me like I spoke to him in the terrible language of cannibals or death; like I had slapped him on his stupid beautiful face. I did not want to slap him or speak to him with knives on my tongue or shut that door I had thrown open so wide; I did not want to tell him those things, but my mouth had sewn itself shut for so long that it happened anyway. Maybe the whiskey was catching up to me again; maybe the water had drained from my tank and I could see and hear everything without a single blur.

Before I knew that I had said it, I had said it, and he said, “Okay,” in that way that he said things which I knew meant that it was not okay, but because it was him, you would pretend to believe it anyway. And he left, and I left, and I sat in my car in the parking lot of the restaurant and I placed my head on the steering wheel and I shut my eyes and I thought, I am not tired.

My feet feel heavy when I walk around and this winter seems like it will never end but I know that it will. Sadness drained away but Anger has been a tall, dark man who came and sat on my chest and stayed for a while.

I get sick often but I get better and when I get better I don’t want to spend my whole day in bed because I don’t want to waste the sunlight. I will write again one day when the stories come, but I’m very sorry.

say.

I don’t have anything for you today. I can’t think of a single thing to

26 | Embodied Effigies

Dancing With the Onion God: Seven Sorts of Salvation David Brennan

I’m not a religious person, but this past year I did find salvation: in music videos. When last April I decided to give up my music in favor of listening to albums chosen for me by other people, one (and only one) album a week for 53 weeks, I figured there would be plenty of variety. I mean, fifty-three new albums! It was going to be a freaking smorgasbord!

Trouble was, before I began this little undertaking, I didn’t realize how sick of an album you can get in a week. Let me tell you now: after you listen to Taylor Swift’s Fearless fifteen times in seven days, you hate Taylor Swift. A week of MGK’s rapid fire raps, and the next cheesy hip-hop beat you hear will make you want to hurl. I quickly learned that 168 hours with only one musical option can make for an ungodly long week.

Enter the video. Why simply mp3-it when you can hop over to YouTube and listen to a song or two from the week’s album coupled with an arresting visual component? Why, indeed. Being the music, but not the music itself, the music video became refuge, a place to hide from the music while still listening to the music. Not only could I relegate the song to second fiddle for a few precious minutes, but watching the video was like being given a front row seat to the music’s subconscious; I played voyeur as the song’s gnarliest intentions flickered into being, the sex-charged fantasies, the tragic inevitabilities, the hallucinogenic highs. Sure, some sucked, some were really good, and the best were entirely accidental. It didn’t matter. I liked them. I liked them all.

1. Salvation from Almost Ignoring a Good Song Week 21: 151a by Kishi Bashi I hadn’t yet paid much attention to the second to last song on Embodied Effigies | 27

Brennan

151a, “I am the Antichrist To You”—its fragile falsetto vocals and creeping strings didn’t strike me quite as hard as the more upbeat, in-your-face dramatics of the album’s first half. Then I watched the video. Normally I don’t place too much store in music videos; more often than not they are simple glitter and flash for the fans to gawk at. But the video for “I am the Antichrist” devastates, in that overly-cute-yet-rife-with-adult-themes manga style the Japanese do so well.

The plot (spoiler alert!): A rabbit-person chews on her ear. Glimpses of sharp teeth. Shots of a tall boy rabbit-person lying on the ground in the forest, eyes closed. Them together on the open sea sailing in a tub while numbers and shapes rain down around them. An oversized 5 falls through the foreground. Boy and girl walking through the woods holding hands.

The sea again. A falling 4, then a gigantic and flaming 3 crashes into the water, obscuring all. Cut to the forest: the shapes and numbers are coming faster now, and boy rabbit-person is standing over girl rabbit-person, shielding her from the numeric/alphabetic rain. He is struck by a shape, number, it is impossible to say, and sent flying through the forest, hitting the ground hard. He quickly dies. Girl’s mouth forms a wide zero of grief and tears gush, puddling at her feet and rising around her until she is swallowed in her own salt water. The sea. An empty tub.

The childlike animation combined with Kishi Bashi’s haunting atmospherics make for an unsettling experience. It is, as he says before he plays the song on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, a song about love.

About love and the unavoidable loss that comes with it. Most prescient is the countdown that occurs throughout the video. 5, 4, 3 … but we never get to 2, we never know when, exactly, the moment will come that shocks us out of our little shared tubs floating across the ocean of loving. You think, Oh, I’ve got till 1, and we’re only on 4. Plenty of time! but the sky says otherwise and before you know it, it’s over.

I am the Antichrist to you. You chewing on your ear. I have left you. I am your grief. You won’t be saved from it. There is only suffering through.

2. Salvation via Beyoncé’s Thighs Week 29: Fearless by Taylor Swift You all know how it went down. Three years ago a young Taylor Swift was announced winner of Video of the Year at the MTV Video Mu28 | Embodied Effigies

Dancing With the Onion God

sic Award’s. As she began her acceptance speech, an agitated Kanye West bounded up on the stage, grabbed the mic out of her hand, and declared that Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” was the true winner, and that Beyoncé had made one of the best videos of all time. Swift was mortified, Beyoncé dumbfounded, Kanye unfazed (and quite possibly drunk).

Everyone reviled Kanye for a while, but he managed to place in the spotlight a question that might otherwise have been swept under the rug, that no awards ceremony was going to answer properly: Which is truly the better video? Swift’s “You Belong With Me” or Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies”?

The problem here is that the two videos are incomparable creatures. Honestly, you’d be hard-pressed to find videos that are less like each other in look and attitude (though both rock the same message: if you want to catch your man, get the hook in him while you can). Swift’s video is faithful to the song’s narrative: two teenagers, neighbors, flash messages back and forth through their bedroom windows, both fall in love without knowing the feeling is reciprocated, the dude messes around with bad girls while our heroine, a dorky nerd with oversized glasses who at the end is transformed into a “princess” when she appears at the school dance all glammed-out drop-dead gorgeous and precedes to make out with her fella on the spot. Very ooh la la teengirl fantasy-esque. Innocence buoyed by dumb courage keeps this piece afloat, along with Swift’s charming performance as both evil cheerleader and sweet girl next door.

“Single Ladies” screams attitude from the first beats and bleeps.

Shot in black and white, the video is simply a leotard-clad Beyoncé and two other ladies dancing their asses off for three minutes against a bare backdrop. That description doesn’t do the video justice, however. “Single Ladies” is fierce (fierce as in Sasha Fierce, Beyoncé’s strange, somewhat unrealized alter ego), sexy, desperate, mesmerizing. The choreography directs the eyes again and again to the naked thighs of the dancers, thick, smooth, strong, thighs that look like they could kick a hole right through a person.

The piece has the air of a typical hip-hop video mashed-up with a contemporary dance ensemble’s take on the genre. And did I mention they dance the entire time in four-inch heels? And what’s up with Beyoncé’s android hand? Weird! I could really get going about this video, which might in itself be the answer I’m looking for. While Swift’s video is fun and all, it looks like a high school musical when juxtaposed against “Single Ladies,” which carries itself as if “Art” has been officially stamped on its packaging. It’s Cute Story vs. Force of Nature: nature wins.

Embodied Effigies | 29

Brennan

So maybe Kanye had a point. The real lesson here might be that people should listen to what Kanye has to say more often. He might be a dick, but he’s a smart dick.

3. Salvation Uncle Pervy Style Week 31: Lonesome Dreams by Lord Huron So you’re in a darkened movie theatre, sad-movie tears rolling down your cheeks, the final scene fading out, and as the credits begin to roll the music shifts, the exit music kicks in, and even though you don’t stay to watch the credits through, the song follows you up the aisle and out the door, sends you on your wandering way.

That’s Lord Huron you’re hearing, as you’re wandering toward the exit. Wandering out of your own personal Idaho. Exiting love, life, the lav.

Wandering for wandering’s sake. Exiting into the vagaries of death, into your standard lonesomeness tropes, getting lost to get found, the trials of immortality and ghosts and such.

Approaching these songs as contemporary takes on the archetypical troubadour, the nomadic balladeer riding his lazy steed into a dusty western town, guitar slung across his back, providing an evening’s entertainment for food and a bed, gone before sunrise, helps me see this album.

And see is important here: these are soundtrack songs, songs to close your eyes and watch the landscape spool past as you listen. Forget the lyrics, they are too buried amidst the instrumentation to be deemed important; the occasional phrase that bubbles to the surface is sufficient for this journey, caught like the snatches of conversation overheard as you drift in and out of sleep on the late train home, on the last leg of a transcontinental flight. They are such image songs they almost don’t stand on their own.

But try this: turn on the travel channel, mute the television, put this album on in the background, and you’ll see what I mean: the flyovers, the shots of barren beauty, the close-ups in crowded marketplaces, all take on an epic, mystic quality when buoyed by these tracks. They remind me of John Seabrook’s post on the New Yorker’s Culture Desk blog titled “Uncle Pervy’s K-Pop Playlist,” an accompaniment to his article on the South Korean popmusic industry, in which he says, “It is notable that I never bought any Kpop songs, and I had no desire to listen to the songs without watching the videos.” That’s Lord Huron for me, only the videos are (as yet) imaginary.

Girls, death, the self: noble topics, but Lord Huron would do just as 30 | Embodied Effigies

Dancing With the Onion God

well to forgo lyrics entirely. Its calling may exist on a subtler plane: to live as sound-shadow to the feast of moving shapes, an aural accent in a visual world.

4. Salvation via the Hippie Freak-Out Week 32: What Wonder Is This Universe! by the Soil & the Sun Packed together on a tiny stage, the eight members of the Soil & the Sun bounce and shout at their microphones, guitar necks weave up and down, a tambourine smashes against a tightened palm, baseball caps go flying, toms thud beneath wooden sticks. They wear shorts and t-shirts and summer dresses and have such long hair it covers their faces as they bend over their instruments, and when they throw their heads back to howl they reveal more hair, beards and mustaches, so much hair at first glance it seems even the women have facial hair that slowly refocuses into shadow and light and loveliness as you watch them saw the violin and cello and pump the accordion and finger the keyboard and for some reason the stage is segregated by sex, women on one side and men on the other, it feels weirdly purposeful, a comment, a creed. Halfway through the song the lead singer throws his guitar away and begins pounding on the drums, and soon everyone gets a blissed-out look on their face, eyes half-closed, taken by the music, each concentrating on his fret board, on her bow, and for a second the bass player looks like he’s going to tear his clothes off, but instead he just twists and whips himself around and screams the lyrics into the open air.

5. Salvation from the Uber-Catchy J-Pop Jingle In the Form of Oddly Intriguing Meta-Commentary Week 38: Pamyu Pamyu Revolution by Kyary Pamyu Pamyu All of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu’s videos are crazy, psychedelica-loaded affairs. “PonPonPon” blends cuteness, crudity, and just plain old randomness into four color-saturated, image-overloaded minutes (an ode to the Harajuku scene, supposedly). “Tsukema Tsukeru” mixes dancing lions and giant eyeballs adorned with oversized lashes into a storybook setting, while “Fashion Monster” gives Kyary’s backing band a turn as a comically creepy version of the Addams Family. Of the four, however, “Candy Candy” seems to me the most coherent and adept at getting to the bottom of what Kyary’s Embodied Effigies | 31

Brennan

all about.

The video opens with four dancers on a stage, their faces numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, followed by a shot of an onion with eyes atop a pedestal. Then we cut to Kyary running down the street in slow-motion, dressed in knee-high pink leather boots, a big pink plastic bow on her head, and a pink and purple hard plastic skirt, a skirt that mimics the hard candy shell some chocolates boast, turning Kyary into a piece of candy, a thing to consumed, if your teeth can handle it. She runs with a piece of toast clenched between her teeth, which is a bit of a manga cliché: when a character is late for school, she runs to class with a piece of toast in her mouth. So Kyary is introduced as character, as cartoon.

It turns out that what Kyary is late for is the song’s chorus, which kicks in as she jumps onto the stage beside her dancers and begins singing about chewing candy and chewing love, as if love and candy were the same things, sugar-coated and sweet. Then Kyary’s break-dancing alter ego steps in, its manly body and anime-style mask doubling Kyary, giving her another self that is her but not quite her. Man-Kyary rocks the stage solo for a few seconds, then the camera pans over to Kyary stretched out an a huge poofy pink sofa eating a heart-shaped lollipop. During the camera’s pan the sound stage is exposed, and we get our first brief look at the video as a construct, the structure and frame that prop up the seen image. We get our first true look at Kyary.

Meanwhile Man-Kyary has taken over the stage, so Kyary slowmotion drop kicks him out of the way (with some uber-realistic anime flashes of Kyary and the onion thrown in for good measure) and reclaims her position as dancing queen. Then the most telling portion of the video arrives: Kyary skips off the stage over to the couch where Man-Kyary hands her her lollipop, then she skips across the sound stage to a giant green screen, where holding aloft her lollipop a scene explodes into life behind her, a wallpaper-print world with pink clouds that pans upward to reveal the onion incarnated as an Aztec-like God in the sky, singing along to the song.

More weird things ensue: Kyary dances with the onion-God, then blows it away with a machine gun; Man-Kyary hovers creepily behind Kyary as she dances, yuck. But it’s the green screen that takes center stage, because though in the video Kyary stands in front of the green screen, as actors will, in her public pop-star life she is the green screen, she takes the guise of what her public projects onto her: cute, scary, sassy, innocent, 32 | Embodied Effigies

Dancing With the Onion God

sex-kitten, irreverent, entrepreneur, pawn-in-the-game, superstar, normal kid; that we can all see a piece of ourselves poking through Kyary’s intense individuality is what makes her special, is what makes us believe we could be her, only if.

6. Salvation via the Interview That Leaves One Both Perplexed and Disarmed Week 40: Born to Die by Lana Del Rey One of my favorite Lana Del Rey discoveries is a short video of an interview she gave back in 2008, before LDR existed, long before Born to Die dropped, back when she still signed autographs “Lizzy Grant,” if she signed autographs at all at that point, because in the interview she is showing the journalist from Index Magazine around the New Jersey trailer park she lives in, had lived in for a year, so you get the sense that the fame and cash money weren’t pouring in, not yet anyway.

It’s a sunny winter day. Del Rey wears a black Midas jacket buttoned almost to the top, her beach-blonde hair tied into a poof with a babyblue headscarf. She looks young and happy as she points out the neighbor’s trailer, which happens to be cordoned off with yellow police tape. A man lives there with his cat and his radio, she tells us. And when the interviewer, sipping her coffee out of a paper cup, asks if a crime had occurred there recently, Del Rey answers, “No.” It’s one of those trailer parks that appears to have germinated out of a great bed of asphalt, not a lick of grass to be seen, like trailers are what would grow out of all patches of asphalt if only we would give them the chance, if only we would stop driving and walking on the stuff. Lana leads the interviewer down a roadway, past a fat man crawling into his SUV, and talks about how nice everyone is who lives there, a niceness that seems to have spread to her as she smiles and laughs and grabs the interviewer’s arm like a mother would her child’s, to make sure she doesn’t run into the camera trailing a step to the side, a step behind.

As you watch you can’t help but think, Why is this girl being interviewed? Because she seems like just that: a girl, a girl who in a year will be married to an asshole and starting to show, who, since the camera is there, thought she might as well talk about eyebrows and lip-liner and how she loves metal and how she loves boys who love metal and how she loves New Jersey because lots of boys who love metal live in New Jersey, and you wonder, if she had stuck around Jersey a little longer, if she might have Embodied Effigies | 33

Brennan

auditioned for Jersey Shore, just for shits and giggles, because from behind her wide-eyed aw-shucks innocence a hint of something cagey shows, something that makes you think she’d fuck Snooki up in a heartbeat, that she’d have those overly-muscled brutes hiding in the backs of their too-big closets whimpering in shame and fear beneath their nicely-hung rows of wife-beaters.

And when the interviewer asks if this is where she wrote the album, even after Lizzy Grant nods yes, you balk, scrunch your face, momentarily confused: Album? What album?

7. Salvation via Vicarious Experience Week 46: Some Kind of Cadwallader by Algernon Cadwallader Algernon Cadwallader disbanded this past summer, so I’ll never have the chance to see them live, thank God. I say thank God because based on what I’ve seen, I’m not sure I could handle the environment.

Take this fan video of show from May, 2008, back in the early days of AC’s career. Shot at close range, it’s difficult to get a good sense of the surroundings, but it seems the band is playing in a basement of some kind, pressed up tight against the wall, and the audience surrounds them in a semi-circle, face to face, so close it looks like you should be able to hear that chunky dude’s breath through the mic. And then, as AC breaks into “Katie’s Conscious,” some guy in frat-boy flannel jumps on chunky dude’s back and starts licking his head, I mean really going at it, big long licks from his neck up across his ear, slobbering all over the place, probably swallowing enough hair that he was coughing up hairballs the next morning, or afternoon, or whenever he woke up.

Or in another song from the same show, if you watch the girl in the background with the crazy tattoos on her legs and arms slugging from an extra-tall can of PBR, near her there’s this tall guy who, while jumping up and down and getting all worked up, bangs the crap out of his head on a pipe running along the ceiling, but it doesn’t slow him down, he keeps on dancing, keeps on jumping. And chunky dude is still there, and now he does grab the mic and shouts a couple solid fuck you’s, just because he’s there, just because he can.

Or at another show when some huge guy grabs frontman Peter’s head in his monster hands and just screams, holy shit—I mean, holy shit if I’m Peter, trying to play bass and handle vocal duties and here some 34 | Embodied Effigies

Dancing With the Onion God

gigantic motherfucker is gripping my head with hands that feel like they could crush my skull without even trying, paper flower in a hurricane, and dude’s breath is rank like he’s been drinking piss and if he doesn’t let me go soon I’m gonna miss my cue but fuck I don’t care I’ll thank God if I escape without any life-threatening injuries, if he lets me go alive, alive and livid and loving it.

Embodied Effigies | 35

Exact Change Speeds Trips Ginger Graziano

That final night before I took my kids to my parents and fell apart, I knew I was in deep trouble. I had kicked Larry out a week before and stopped taking any drugs. I hadn’t been able to sleep or eat much since.

Jenny had been going to the corner grocery, buying eggs, milk and bread, and making French toast for Jeremy and her.

My mind wouldn’t shut down. It kept rolling out scenario after scenario—a litany of all the ways I’d screwed up. Without any drugs to keep me numbed I realized how precarious my situation was—no job, two kids to raise alone in a sketchy neighborhood. I didn’t know how we would survive and tried to come up with solutions. Anything. I was losing my grip on the world. Flailing. Nothing made any sense.

That last night, standing in the glare of the bathroom light, I surrendered to the chaos inside. My mind had been battered by what felt like a week in the middle of a stormy ocean while my small boat spun in helpless circles looking for a harbor but finding none.

I was convinced around midnight that we had to go west like we had done the previous summer on our camping trip and I began gathering clothes, pillows and blankets and stashing them in the trunk of my car. I filled plastic containers with food because we were evacuating. Escaping. I felt completely alone, unable to think clearly or reach for help. Panicked, I paced the rooms while my children slept, sure that the world was coming to an end. I had to get them to a safe place—west—before it did.

Around five, before the late January dawn, people emerged from their houses, walking silently in pairs towards the Boulevard in Irvington, carrying brown paper bags. I was convinced they were leaving the planet. I raced upstairs to wake my children. I didn’t want them left behind. I needed to get them out. Sleepy-eyed, they stared at me as I hurried them to get dressed. Jenny asked, “Where are we going? It’s the middle of the night.”

Embodied Effigies | 37

Graziano

“We have to go west,” I said.

I got them into the car and we sat there shivering, waiting for the heater to kick on. Which way should we go? I asked myself. Which road would get us away from here the fastest? I turned on the lights; saw that the gas gauge was almost on empty. Rummaging through my pocketbook, I found $3, not enough to get us anywhere. I had quit my job as a typesetter two weeks before. I couldn’t handle it. Now I needed money to go west.

Would they take me back?

We showed up at the office just as everyone was arriving for the morning shift. I asked for my former boss and after a muffled phone conversation, the receptionist sidled out the door. My boss came in and stared at me.

“Can I have my job back? Please. I need it.”

He looked everywhere but at me and I realized from the glass window behind him how disheveled I was. I hadn’t showered in days. I was wearing the same clothes I had slept in for I don’t know how long.

He called for his son who was my age, and I could hear him whisper into the phone, “I can’t handle her. She looks crazy. Would you deal with this?”

When his son arrived, he said, “You can’t have your job back. We’ve hired someone to replace you. You’ll have to leave,” all the while moving me towards the front door and out of their office.

Then Jenny spoke up. “Mommy, I have to go to school.” I looked at her standing against the wall under the Jobs Pending board. What was I doing here?

I mumbled, “Let’s go,” and led them through the office, my head down, not wanting to meet the stares of my former co-workers.

I knew I was in trouble but I waited, shaking in the kitchen, until Jenny came home from school. Then I dressed them both, packed a bag and got in the car to drive to my parent’s apartment in Bayonne.

The Garden State Parkway in late afternoon was already crowded with early rush-hour traffic. By the time I pulled up to the tollbooths at Newark Airport, I was shaking. The planes taking off and landing over our heads frightened me. They flew so low I thought they were aiming for us. I merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike and exited at Bayonne. My parents were waiting at the front door when we arrived. I could see that my phone call had alerted them that something was wrong with me. But at least my kids would be safe.

38 | Embodied Effigies

Exact Change Speeds Trips

They already had dinner cooking when we got upstairs to their apartment and my kids fell into the comfortable routine they had at my parents. I couldn’t feel any comfort in being there and paced the rooms, agitated. After dinner my father insisted we stay the night and opened up the sleeper couch in the living room. I knelt in front of the little table that held the latest jigsaw puzzle they were working on. I began searching the floor. My father asked what I was doing and I told him I was looking for the missing pieces. My mother went into the kitchen and I heard her talking on the phone, first to my brother Jim and then to his wife, Lynn, who was a nurse.

I seemed to be viewing everything encased inside a glass bubble.

Voices came from far away. My parents dressed my kids for bed and tucked them into their own bed. My mother said she’d sleep with me but I tossed, unable to sleep. I heard the planes flying into Newark. The streetlights shone into the living room. I kept thinking I needed to go into the city.

Take the tunnel to see a friend of mine. I kept repeating “exact change speeds trips,” as if it was a mantra that if I said enough would calm me down and keep me steady because what I really felt was that I was slipping away and I would never find my way back if I let go.

--Carrier Clinic gave me a safe place to rest and find my way back but what I remembered most was how at night I panicked, not believing that the sun would rise again or that morning would come. I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat by the nurses’ station just to see another human. I remember the locked ward they put me in at first and the Thorazine and other drugs they gave me. I finally refused to take them. I remember playing cards and smoking with the TV constantly on; patients rocking in corners or talking to themselves, strapped into chairs. I remember asking what was wrong with me. No one answered me. I remember finding AA meetings with titles like ‘Anger,’ ‘Guilt’ or ‘Fear.’ At last something made sense.

I ended up in a 28-day rehab program. Every week I received home-baked cookies, drawings from my children and encouraging letters from Maureen. I remember when I realized I had to go home and raise my children.

--I left the hospital after two months. Though officially spring, it was still cold and gray. My parents drove me to my brother’s house to pick up my car. I had a long drive to Hempstead, Long Island, to pick up my children from my friends who had taken them while I was away, even though Embodied Effigies | 39

Graziano

they had two children of their own under six years of age.

--I opened the front door of my apartment. I’d left with snow piled high in the streets and now it was the first day of spring and the trees still dripped from the recent downpour. Dirty snowmelt ran in streams along the curb.

Our house was filled with the absence of life. Someone had taken down the Christmas tree but left stacks of presents heaped in the corner of the living room.

I wandered into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, which I usually kept stocked with food. Even if I only had $20, I’d spend it on good food, a part of my Italian heritage. Empty. I could see the bare white walls, catsup, mustard, rice and an old shriveled apple. That was it.

I walked the rooms like a disembodied ghost floating through someone else’s life. Two months in Carrier Clinic had taken me to many places that bore no resemblance to my cozy living room with its rust-colored couch. My plants were thriving. Who was watering them, I wondered?

My kids slept in my car downstairs along with our bags and the food we’d stopped to buy before leaving Maureen’s.

The house was as cold as the refrigerator. I’d run out of oil. No chance to order any until tomorrow if I was lucky.

I descended the long flight of stairs and one by one carried my sleeping children up to my bed and tucked them under the covers still in their coats. Then I brought up the bags of groceries and our clothes, a twomonth accumulation that I lugged up the stairs and deposited inside the apartment door.

After I put the food away, I flipped on the bathroom light and stared at my tear-stained face in the mirror. I had cried all the way home while my children slept. I had no energy to think about any of it. I turned out the lights and crawled into the cocoon of my bed, already warm from their sleeping bodies. I snuggled down, reached across to draw them close.

I smelled Jenny’s newly washed hair and felt the comfort of my own bed, surprised to find myself here after having gone so far away that I didn’t think I could find my way back. And I had no idea what I was supposed to do now.

40 | Embodied Effigies

Hidden Erin Olds

“Ninety-five percent of dialogue is dancing around what you’re trying to say.” Hedging and equivocating, it’s about not speaking. The breath between words, the caesura and the dark corners are what transform a handful of gold dust to a ribbed human.

Ribbon covers a slight of character; wrapping paper is a façade for displeasure and opinions. From hide-and-go-seek to lying in court, we never hesitate to conceal something when it can be covered. Standing naked in the rain only gives you a cold.

We use clothing to cover ourselves, to hide how we’re shaped. Let us imagine whatever we want! It’s all hidden, why not expect the best? According to me, your body is fluid and sinuous. I’m disappointed if you have a defect.

Tonight, your ghost will ask my ghost Who put these bodies between us?

-Metric, Calculation Theme Dialogue is about not speaking, and since everything worth saying is misunderstood when worded, action better serves our purposes.

Don’t talk of stars burning above If you’re in love, show me!

-My Fair Lady, Show Me We treat the neck like it’s the most vulnerable part of the body.

Well, too: neck injuries are among the most fatal and debilitating. The neck contains the spinal cord, hidden, like all important things. It sits in its nest of muscles, tendons and nerves, waiting for neurotransmitters to depolarEmbodied Effigies | 41

Olds

ize the axon so the threshold is broken, and action occurs. My parasympathetic nervous system reorganizes my chemicals, and a smile appears where there should be a frown. The actions are hidden; why shouldn’t the result be hiding?

Aside from sex, exposing your neck is one of the most intimate expressions man can accomplish. Your pulse flutters below the velvet skin, a caged moth. Concealed under turtlenecks and scarves, veils and collars, the neck is a taboo area. Touching it can only mean two things: either I’m going to kill you or make love to you. Maybe it’s because the neck holds such treasures that we protect it and hide it from grasping hands and outstretched fingers.

We can only let ourselves melt in the privacy of a dark theater, a curtained bedroom or a locked closet. It shows love in a way that simply voicing the words can’t. Necks are forbidden but to lovers; I linger between channels, seeing something so intimate and beautiful. Her neck was like a swan’s, and I half expected him to slice it off her shoulders.

Five lines, a clef and a time signature. A composer, famous as Beethoven or Bach, isolated as Stravinsky, Holst or Giroux, poured his or her soul into these tiny black dots. There are stories inside these notes, hidden between the flags on the thirty-second runs of the augmented fifth scale. Somewhere inside Jupiter and Mars, Holst’s memories of St. Paul’s Girls’ School reverberate. Tchaikovsky’s interpretation of Romeo and Juliet is as poignant as poetry, with more dynamic. Opus 96 will always dance of ballerinas and dandelions to me.

Underneath the layers of French horn solos and violin tremolos is a world unique to each musician. Playing with my whole heart is an exhausting cathartic experience. It exposes me, though, pointing out raw edges and infirmities. We don’t perform in public because it shows where Janet from Wal-Mart cut us from the bolt of fabric, exposing where our pattern doesn’t match. We try and hide the stitches between layers, but there’s always the tell-tale knobs of the beginning tailor that poke out at the seams.

You’re insecure, and that’s no excuse.

-The Faint, Your Retro Career Melted There’s something attractive about a finished piece, a painting with 42 | Embodied Effigies

Hidden

every error smudged out and covered with a latex finish. Only when it’s framed is the art deemed worthy of a gallery, with a promise to enhance your living room if you spend the $574. Inside the twirls of the paintbrush were angry days, when the blue refused to blend with the green, the red turned orange at the slightest hint of yellow. But we can always push control-Z and undo the offending action. Anything that isn’t perfect and expected isn’t allowed in our framed world. Hidden things are there, but they’re always covered with a G-rated, plastic protection.

I’m made of curves and turns, a filigree of tendons and epidermis.

On the outside, my brow is wrinkled, lips drawn tight, eyes sparkling— signs of an impending storm. I’m treated like that’s how it should be: if there’s a concise name to what I feel, then feeling like that is alright. Only when indecision comes into the calculation is it inappropriate to have those emotions. So we lie. Anger and frustration are easy masks to hide behind.

‘Do you feel better?’ he asked.

‘I feel fine,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel fine.’

-Ernest Hemmingway, Hills Like White Elephants ‘I’m just tired,’ is my favorite. It’s a blatant lie, but for some reason, humans refuse to believe that there could possibly be more to your foul disposition than lack of sleep. There’s a real reason under the first glance.

We have mastered duplicity, though, and turned it into an art.

Bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue. Look like th’ innocent flower, But be the serpent under ‘t.

-Macbeth, I, vi., 75-77 We all have serpents under our flowers, but it’s only through exposing our neck that we find the snake – and how we can decide if it’s a cobra or a garter.

See that girl at the end of the hall? She failed her easiest class. Note the faux black hair and studded trench coat. Her eyes are always on the Embodied Effigies | 43

Olds

ground; she smells like cigarettes and never smiles.

Evolution tells me that avoiding conflict has gotten her through life. Gender schema theory says that she must have learned this behavior from society, that females are expected to focus on their home lives and not worry about education and looks. Or maybe it’s her parent’s fault – she learned these behaviors from them. At any rate, our personal space increases whenever we see her approaching.

The mountaintops know, sitting behind the white-grey clouds.

There is something lurking below the surface. Push the thunderheads aside and look into the volcanic soil: see the nutrients that will make this desolate valley fertile? Now, give me rain and seeds and watch her grow.

Her mother and father separated a month ago and they’ve had to sell their 18-year house. Now she lives in an old apartment with her mother. Her older brother was sent to jail, and all she wants to do is stay in high school, but she keeps missing it because of hearings and child protection agencies.

The Oort cloud, composed of comets and ice, is thought to be about one light year away, one thousand times the distance from Pluto to the Sun. The Oort cloud is the source of most comets that enter the inner solar system. The total mass of comets in the Oort cloud ranges between five and one hundred times the mass of Earth.

Hidden inside the Oort cloud, is an icy object, two-thirds the size of Pluto. Sedna is the farthest known object from the Sun. We didn’t know about Sedna until 2003. If big-bang theories hold true, we haven’t been aware of this potential planet for nearly 16 billion years.

It may take ages to reach the water, but the satisfaction is cool and earthy, tinted with granite and limestone.

Slimy and stagnant, a shallow pool is only attractive to larvae and mosquitoes. Dig a little deeper and you’d find an aquifer that tastes like granite and limestone dripping from cave roofs into the cusp of a stalagmite. Gold flecks sparkle in your flashlight’s glow. Deep within the cave, you finally appreciate the stagnant pool moldering above.

The gods are less for their love of praise.

Above and below them all is a spirit that needs nothing 44 | Embodied Effigies

Hidden

but its own wholeness, its health and ours.

It has made all things by dividing itself.

It will be whole again.

To its joy we come together – the seer and the seen, the eater and the eaten, the lover and the loved.

In our joining it knows itself. It is with us then, Not as the gods whose names crest in unearthly fire, but as a little bird hidden in the leaves who sings quietly and waits, and sings.

-Wendell Berry, The Hidden Singer

Embodied Effigies | 45

Six Seconds of Sexy Laura McCullough “Six Seconds of Sexy” is an excerpt from Laura’s full-length unpublished memoir, The Belt of Venus.

I am dreaming of hot Jake Gyllenhaal a few weeks before my ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes, and cervix are to be removed due to Lynch Syndrome—what my father calls the family curse, a predisposition to cancer which has maimed and/or killed more members of my family than I care to count at the moment. The top of my vagina will be sutured shut like the end of a tube of toothpaste, rolled into something called a vaginal cuff, which sounds rather benign, akin to rolling up one’s sleeves, which I might do as I complain about women whose identities are wrapped up in their sexual viability and how there is an oppressive standard of beauty in our culture, no news in that, and that women still trade on this, that there is real power in it, and there’s no news in that.

But there is news in my pre-hysterectomy dream: Jake Gyllenhaal and I both walk up to the swank hotel desk at the same time and are informed there is only one left of the super special, thousands of dollars per night rooms that open onto the private pool courtyard (exclusive use of which is for those in these super expensive exclusive rooms only) and includes a pool floatie made for couples. We are both single, and each want that room. Jake looked at me and grins as if he is joking when he says, “We could share the room.” He almost winks, but doesn’t quite, looks at the clerk and says, “It’s a king sized bed, right?” Then to me, “We’d never even touch each other.”

I am won over. Who even knew I thought Jake Gyllenhall is attractive? Enough to show up in my dreams just weeks before surgery. And he’s, what? A baby? My son’s age? The next morning, I look him up on Google, and he’s only twenty years younger than me, which is a lot, but since my husband is twelve years my junior, the additional eight doesn’t make me squirm as it might. Not exactly anyway. Okay, who is kidding whom?

In the dream, we share the room, go swimming together after chastely dressing in the bathroom that is fitted for moguls and is the size of Embodied Effigies | 47

McCullough

an ordinary hotel room, and lay arm to arm in the super cool pool floaties built for couples. People stare. We chat with other uber rich patrons and drop comments about being “good friends” traveling together, but when we get out of the pool, I lean on his arm, and let me tell you, while I can’t speak for the real man, in my subconscious, Jake–I can call him now by his first name–has the most deliciously hard upper arms a woman could run her fingers over and rest a cheek on. Something slippery and sweet happens in my mind, and there’s a slow, secret feeling, a yummy, eat you up feeling, a loosening of the shoulders and the space behind the eyes feeling.

Then we discover Jake’s aunt has shown up with a passel of cousins and wants to stay in the room with him; he won’t mind, right? The gig is up before anything juicy happens. The Aunt’s squealing, “Jakie!”and pinching his cheek, but in the real world, it is my alarm going off, and it is time to wake up my first and second grader and drive them to school. Damn.

But not before I check Gyllenhaal’s Wikipedia entry. He’s Swedish and Jewish and was a lifeguard and a busboy in his teens, and I guess I’ve seen several of his movies, but looking at his photos now, I am rather impressed at his, well, pretty serious sex appeal. Rakish, boyish, cutish, beefyish. A rather intoxicating blend of manly and youthful.

Oh god, I have turned into one of those women. Maybe even a cougar. What the fuck? I never dream about other men, rarely have celebrities in my dreams. Okay, so once Patrick Stewart showed up and one time Harrison Ford, but I am a sci-fi enthusiast and so it really was all about Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Captain Picard, and I am sure Ford’s early role as Han Solo and the enduring importance of Star Wars conjured him.

Neither of those dreams had even a hint of dirt in them. Not that I’d be ashamed if they had. Who can blame one for dreams, but my point is that in my fiftieth year, just a few weeks before having all my “girlie” parts removed, I am dreaming about a beefcake actor (I mean no disrespect! He’s a terrific actor! Donnie Darko, Brokeback Mountain, Jar Head), as the photos I am seeing online right now reveal him to be, a hottie with a body. Yes indeed. Color me cougar.

According to Wikipedia, I am not alone. Tons of men as well as women, according to People Magazine, consider Mr. Gyllenhaal a sex symbol which is then defined, if you follow the hotlink, as a celebrity noted for their sex appeal, the first one noted being Betty Boop in the 1930s (according to Rotten Tomatoes). I follow the link for sex appeal. There’s a picture of Brigit Bardot and of a Rubens painting. I have always liked Rubens for 48 | Embodied Effigies

Six Seconds of Sexy

his fat-bottomed women, for I am one, and it took a long time to own this butt, now more than ever in the age of the Pilates Mom. The Pilates Mom is rather ubiquitous in Little Bay. She drives a Range Rover or Hummer or something like that, goes to a number of different salons dedicated to particular body parts, is usually blonde or blonde-esque, wears tennis clothes or Lululemon (the fabulous yoga uniform line that makes me drool and which I can’t afford), and lines up, suburban fashion runway style, to pick up their kids after school.

In this upper middle class, Manhattan exburb, the Pilates Moms far outnumber my friends and I: Dara with her head of Semitic black curls down to nearly her tail bone; Elana, tiny Indian via UK with eyes so warm and brown they are as good as extra fudge brownies on a cold day; Jill, born in Taiwan, with thick, ruler straight black hair, a strong, square jaw, and her light brown islander nose; or large sized Catherine, who has an infectious laugh and tosses her so-blond-it’s-almost- white hair when she does, and lights up everyone around her; Lisa, buxom and Italian; and Cynthia, transplanted from Brooklyn to these Jersey burbs, with her accent, and tough exterior, and sometimes even, oh my god, camouflage pants with drawstring ankle. Yup. And me, with me big butt, big Irish teeth, big frizzy, red hair, and a gazillion freckles. And you know what? We are so beautiful!

I mean it. Sometimes–and this may be a grace of my age–I am astonished at how truly beautiful these women are, and when I am talking to them, I can’t help but think so, even when I can see they don’t think they are. In fact, we joke sometimes about the town police chief, whose main job it seems in our tiny town is to drink coffee and direct cars and people every morning at school drop off and who seems only to chat with the Pilates Moms. Even holding up the car line sometimes. And only the blondes! Really!

But I have to apologize to my Pilates Mom friends–oh, wait, I don’t have any; Catherine’s super white, blond hair wouldn’t even count if she were a size 4 instead of 18 because it’s near translucence is almost transgressive, and her tendency toward a belly laugh is way too exotic and trashy ever to let her into the Pilates Mom club.

Because there is a kind of club, and what I am jokingly calling the Pilates Mom club is not just made up of moms who don’t work and who have enough time to seriously work on body sculpting because they have nannies or live-in somebody or others, and husbands who make lots of money even in this nasty, shrinking economy; it is something else. An air Embodied Effigies | 49

McCullough

of exclusivity? An unconscious one it seems, for the most part. A cleaving to a kind of traditional trade: affluent women with some education, certainly college level, who know how to dress and manage a household, do volunteer work (oh, the imperialistic horrors of fund raising, charities, and even just room mother fascism), who aren’t too showy, but show enough of what the social economist Veblen termed conspicuous consumption, and just so no one can accuse me of hedging, their rock hard butts, thighs, calves, and non-jiggling underarms are doing the same thing their vehicles (can you even call a Hummer a car?) are: advertising wealth, and showing off their economic class. And it’s not a whole lot different from monkeys and apes leaning over and showing their glowing red genitals when they’re ovulating and ready to mate.

Only with humans, we want our sexual attractiveness, our suitability for mating, to be evident long after we might be concerned about bearing young. For women, it is still true for many, certainly here on this New Jersey “peninsula” of Little Bay, Mayesville, and (my god, have you seen the houses along the river?) Port Quinby, that smack up against a middle class.

There is still a professional upper class (mostly in NYC finance) and a ton of uber rich, the kind that are now being called the global rich, the kind with homes that look like public institutions (which they often become when the rich either bequeath them to government or can’t afford the upkeep anymore), rather than homes, and for these women, sexual viability and class perception is what they traded on to achieve economic security.

And I am dreaming of hot Jake Gyllenhaal.

Yet I am suggesting how beautiful we women who don’t meet the standard are, how varied, and, if not exotic, gorgeous, and authentic. And it took a long time to own my crazy head of hair: its strange color, its erratic texture; my round and squishy butt; my level of freckles that would make a painter like Seurat go to work even though there are products, tons of them, meant to hide, change, eradicate all of those things. I can’t tell you how many people have advised me how to straighten or color my hair; how many products, training programs, exercise shows, and now even medical procedures, there are about how to reduce my butt and thighs. Walk into any CVS or Walgreens and you’ll find hundreds of products to take the red out of skin, hide freckles, bleach them, or burn them away.

My nickname in seventh grade in St. John Vianney School in Colonia, New Jersey, given to me by my female classmates (Dara? Debbie? Do you remember me?) was “Flat, Fat, and Ugly.”

50 | Embodied Effigies

Six Seconds of Sexy

And they liked to chide, “Put some band aids on those bee stings” about my chest. Okay, so we have all, most of us, been teased and bullied in school (Deb, Dara, bless your hearts wherever you are), but my point is that I worked my whole adult life to accept my looks, to celebrate myself (Walt Whitman!), and claim my own sexy self indeed.

Honestly, it’s only been a few years. Maybe starting in my mid forties, so I got, what, five, six years, of I-don’t-care-what-others-think acceptance of my hot self, of MILF-dom as my male students phrase it. Once, a student, a male, wrote an essay about gender, and in it, he referred to me, his professor as a MILF, with the footnote that he knew I wouldn’t know what a MILF was. I didn’t say he was a smart young man, or, maybe he was.

Or the student, also male, who I once overheard in the hall outside of our class on break, telling another student that he hadn’t known there was such a thing as old-sexy until he met me.

That still makes me chuckle.

But what is sex appeal? Wikipedia describes erotic capital: Adam Isaiah Green defines “erotic capital” as accruing to an individual due to the quality and quantity of attributes that he or she possesses which elicit an erotic response in another, including physical appearance, affect and sociocultural styles.

In Green’s paradigm (and let me note that I think the word hegemonic is sexy, hence, the user of such words, but that’s me, and I am a bit of a geek), the erotic capital is contingent on the group, and changes depending upon the group, and this ties in with the observations of class and economics I see in my town among the women (a new plastic surgery for the affluent, by the way, is the genital make-over: tighten “the box;” get a Barbie), but another researcher, Catherine Hakim, a British socialist along with Green, has identified erotic capital as not just persona and not just specific to particular “fields” or groups, but that it has larger cultural and political implications affecting media, sports, the arts, government, all aspects of public life. She identifies seven components: beauty, sexual variables, social abilities, vivaciousness, presentation, sexuality, and fertility. Hakim and other researchers in this field have identified racial, class, and gender issues and complexities in relation to erotic capital and its convertibility to other forms, financial and social, as in jobs, money, friends, and access to opportunity. Oh, and there is even a study suggesting people with more Embodied Effigies | 51

McCullough

erotic capital have better mental health.

In a March, 2010 article in Prospect Magazine, titled “Have you got erotic capital?” Hakim opens her essay thus: Michelle and Barack Obama have it. Carla Bruni and David Beckham have it. Jordan has even made a career from it. So great is the advantage “erotic capital” can bring to the labour market—especially in sport, the arts, media and advertising—that it often outweighs educational qualifications.

And then she begins to explain her thinking: Erotic capital goes beyond beauty to include sex appeal, charm and social skills, physical fitness and liveliness, sexual competence and skills in self-presentation, such as face-painting, hairstyles, clothing and all the other arts of self-adornment. Most studies capture only one facet of it: photographs measure beauty or sex appeal, psychologists measure confidence and social skills, sex researchers ask about seduction skills and numbers of partners. Yet women have long excelled at such arts: that’s why they tend to be more dressed up than men at parties. They make more effort to develop the “soft skills” of charm, empathy, persuasion, deploying emotional intelligence and “emotional labour.” Indeed, the final element of erotic capital is unique to women: bearing children. In some cultures, fertility is an essential element of women’s erotic power.

Call me vain, call me shallow, but I am weeks away from losing any erotic capital I spent decades developing, and I am reminded how, last December, I helped care for Sally as she lay dying at home in hospice, her body decimated except for her perky breast implants that gave her cleavage even as everything else sagged and deflated, her hair falling out, the flesh hanging off her arms, thigh bones, her jaw, the jaw, too, often hanging open, her eyes sunken, but her breasts stuck out like the stiff bags they were. It was a small embarrassment, one my sister and I talked about once or twice, nothing to be done about it, but so there.

Sally got those breasts in her fifties because she wanted her body to look as she’d always wanted it to look like. She’d been tall, lithe, could eat anything all her life without gaining an ounce, had long straight, brilliant 52 | Embodied Effigies

Six Seconds of Sexy

red hair, but never had a bust, and she got herself one. When I got home, I was in no mood to celebrate. There was no party, no dinner out. I think the kids gave me cupcakes they and their dad made, and hand-made cards, and some soap from the local store. Just right, and this allowed the kids to do something for their mom, which is important. And we all sang happy birthday and enjoyed each other, but we couldn’t manage any kind of life’s passage celebration given Sally’s grave condition.

Later, after they were in bed, I said to Robert, “It’s a shame, though.

Maybe we should have gone to dinner. At least I could have dressed up for you. Turning fifty, I only have about six seconds of sexy left.”

My husband is the best, and we are great, great friends as well as lovers, and he meant it with the sweetest of motives when he said, “No honey, you have like six years left.”

Sally was dead two weeks later and was buried with her perky implants with make-up and a red dress, right after turning 61, just eleven years my senior.

Embodied Effigies | 53

19,599 Debra Fox

Month One Late one windswept evening in March, a thirty-six-year-old woman climbed into bed with her husband, pulled a hand-stitched quilt over them, and conceived her second child.

Fertilization occurred approximately twenty-four hours later, when she was downstairs in her basement office. Right away her child’s physical attributes were determined—gender, hair and eye color.

Though she often wondered if circumstances would have been different had she refrained from dying her hair, stopped taking her dance class, refused to ingest an antibiotic, her doctor assured her that the child’s tenth chromosome would still have been damaged. “There is no way of knowing if it was the sperm or egg that was affected, but it was one of them that broke down,” the doctor said. “Once the sex cell was fertilized, the genetic syndrome was present.”

In April of 2003, the human genome project decoded the sequence of human DNA within the chromosomes. Scientists confirmed the existence of 19,599 genes, a surprisingly low number for the human species.

Although scientists mapped out the entire human genome, they still didn’t know the function of the majority of the genes discovered. And, in the case of the child, nothing is known about any of the ten to twenty genes he is missing.

It is ironic that the child’s grandfather, a neurophysiologist, was an expert in chaos theory, and that he died three years before the child was born. Chaos theory is about finding the underlying order in apparently random data.

--Embodied Effigies | 55

Fox

Month Two Winter firmly held its grip that year, and in the first week of April, there was an unexpected blizzard that closed the school the brother, and the husband, attended. The family played board games, put together the thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle never before taken out of its box, and ate pizza. The mother didn’t yet know she was pregnant.

The child was now a fetus. By mid-April his heart was beating, even if the pulmonary valve was pumping blood in the wrong direction.

His fingers and toes were present. If anyone cared to look, they would have noted his pinkie fingers were curved. His brain and cranial nerves were forming, albeit differently. At the age of five, he would experience his first observable seizure.

In 1961, Edward Norton Lorenz, while a professor of mathematics at M.I.T., discovered something odd when building a weather simulator on his IBM computer. He was trying to invent a mathematical model that would predict weather patterns. Computers back then ran very slowly. As scientists often do, he hoped to run his model another time, but didn’t want to wait the hours it would take for the computer to churn the data. So, before stepping out to buy a cup of coffee, he ran a second simulation where he manually entered data in the middle of the process, and to three decimal points instead of six. Upon his return, he would learn that the results of his two analyses were vastly different. Little did he know that his discovery would revolutionize our understanding of the physical world.

Month Three As the daffodils began blooming in clumps through the tangled ivy and pachysandra that passed for front lawn in front of her house, the mother’s doctor suggested she consider undergoing an amniocentesis. After all, she was thirty-six years old, and things could be amiss, things she might want to be aware of, and even do something about.

She discussed it with her husband on a cool spring evening at the edge of a baseball field where the brother ran drills with his Little League team.

56 | Embodied Effigies

19,599

It was not without risk.

However thin the needle was that they used to extract amniotic fluid, it could still injure the fetus, or cause a miscarriage. Yet there was something attractive about the reassurance that would come from knowing all was well with the pregnancy. That was what tipped the decision in favor of the amniocentesis. They didn’t analyze it much after that.

The risk of having a baby with Down’s Syndrome is 1 in 1500 at the age of 20; 1 in 350 at the age of 35; 1 in 50 at the age of 43.

At three months gestation, an ultrasound would show the child’s arms and legs beginning to move. The development of all of his major organs was complete. The muscles of his trunk were forming, but not strongly enough to prevent his pediatrician from expressing concern at his fourmonth appointment that he still couldn’t hold his head up.

The gestational development of a fetus is a dynamic system that is highly sensitive to initial circumstances. While most fetuses develop in an orderly, predictable manner, some do not. Sometimes an arbitrary small perturbation of an initial condition leads to a hugely different result.

Month Four The brother’s top front tooth fell out and he stored it in a wooden box shaped like a molar that his mother bought him several years before.

After the birth of the child, the mother would watch the brother store the child’s small, shriveled piece of umbilical cord in the same box, and bring it in for show and tell to his second grade classroom. The mother noticed after she told the boy he would soon be a big brother, that he started paying more attention to babies.

The child’s first stool was present in his intestines. The technical term for it is meconium. The child won’t stop wearing diapers until he is seven years old. Now in his fourth month, he is five inches long and weighs six ounces.

Embodied Effigies | 57

Fox

The year before Lorentz was churning meteorological data on his IBM computer, Benoit Mandelbrot, a French American Mathematician, was studying cotton price fluctuations. He analyzed all available data on cotton prices from 1900 to 1960. He discovered each particular price change was random and unpredictable. But, the rate of change was constant. He found this nothing short of amazing. Graphed curves for daily and monthly price changes matched perfectly. There was some sort of order emerging out of seemingly random data. Lorenz was both fascinated and mystified by Mandelbrot’s research. He puzzled over why the degree of variation should remain constant over a sixty-year period that saw two world wars, and a great depression.

Month Five At 2:33 p.m. on a warm Tuesday in May, the ultrasound technician apologized for rubbing cold gel on the mother’s abdomen. She flipped on the ultrasound screen and a fuzzy black and white picture of an oblong figure came into view. The technician was self-conscious about the garlic laden falafel sandwich she ate for lunch that day. She tried not to breathe in her patient’s direction. Once she was sure the fetus was viable, she went to the plastic white telephone on the wall, pushed one button and said, “We’re all clear.”

The doctor entered the room and shook the mother’s hand, which was somewhat off-putting to her, lying there on the metal examining table, her belly exposed. She blurted out, “I want the amniocentesis, but I haven’t made up my mind what I will do if something is wrong.”

As he pulled on white rubber gloves over his hairy wrists, the doctor said, “Are you sure you want to proceed, because if you know you wouldn’t have an abortion, then maybe this isn’t such a good idea.” The whole time he spoke, he stared at the screen, and not at her.

She heard herself saying, “No, I can’t absolutely say I wouldn’t have an abortion. I want you to go ahead.”

“I’m going to insert a long fine needle into your belly,” he said as he ripped away the paper covering. “You may feel a slight discomfort. When I tell you, please remain very still.”

Not wanting to look at the needle going in, the mother concentrated on the slight orangey aroma of the doctor’s hands and tried to relax. She 58 | Embodied Effigies

19,599

remembered when her grandmother was alive, she would bring oranges from Florida at the end of the winter, and they would be big and juicy and flavorful.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said, “the fetus is completely unaware of this procedure.” She hadn’t been worried about that, hadn’t even considered it, in fact. But now even her grandmother’s oranges weren’t helping.

In the fifth month, the fetus develops eyelashes and eyebrows. A fine hair, known as lanugo covers the entire body. The child develops the ability to hear. He learns to suck and swallow. When he is born his muscles will grow weak from trying to suck and he will stop feeding sooner than he should. He will lose more than twenty five percent of his birth weight and a feeding tube will be inserted down his nose. He will be transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. The nurses will warn his parents not to be alarmed when they first see him.

The child’s chromosomal deletion is so small, it cannot be seen on a regular karyotype. Therefore, the mother and her husband will be told, much to their delight, that the amniocentesis was “normal.” After the child’s birth, his doctors will be baffled about the underlying cause of his “anomalies” for another three years. Had they used a different test, they might have known sooner.

When Lorenz plotted the data he collected from the convection rolls in the atmosphere, what emerged was a beautiful three-dimensional figure eight.

It was not what he expected.

He thought the data would plot out in a linear random fashion, not in the fragmented geometric shapes that were split into parts, each of which was a reduced copy of the whole by a property called self-similarity.

A name was given to these evocative shapes: fractals.

Fractal structures have been detected in the shapes of clouds, the paths of lightening, microscopic intertwining of blood vessels, the circuitry of the human brain. Scientists began to wonder if fractal structures in human systems were determined by the way the DNA is encoded.

James Gleick, in his book, “Chaos: Making a New Science,” said, “Now that science is looking, chaos seems to be everywhere.”

Embodied Effigies | 59

Fox

Month Six After the amniocentesis was complete, the mother walked back to the waiting room and sat next to her husband. He reached for her hand.

The technician told her to “have a seat, while I print out your discharge instructions.” The printer made loud staccato noises as it ran from left to right and right to left. A dark haired couple, holding a dark haired baby, maybe two to three months old was seated directly across from them. He was tiny with bright black eyes. The mother was pretty sure the baby had Down’s Syndrome. His eyes were almond shaped, his nose somewhat flat and his tongue protruded ever so slightly. She examined the faces of the parents, and they didn’t appear sad or disappointed. They seemed to love this child as much as any baby they might be holding. She was not completely reassured by this. She had to admit she might have an abortion if the doctor were to inform her that her baby had Down’s Syndrome. Then she attempted to write the whole thing off with a logic so flawed, it was even ludicrous to her. She said to herself that if the other baby in this very waiting room had Down’s Syndrome, then the odds that her baby would have it, or any other abnormality, was that much less likely.

What the mother didn’t know was that her child’s genetic disorder is so rare it doesn’t even have a name. The child’s geneticist will tell her she can post his scientific diagnosis on a website called “Family Village,” where other parents whose children have rare disorders can try to find one another. Had the child been diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome, she would have had her choice of support groups with thousands of members, catering to parents of children with this abnormality.

Characteristics of Down’s Syndrome: t epicanthal folds at eyes t clinodactyly (5th finger that curves) t larger than normal space between big and second toes t low muscle tone t heart defect t frequent ear infections t seizures t autism spectrum disorders t mental retardation

60 | Embodied Effigies

Characteristics of Child’s Syndrome: t epicanthal folds at eyes t clinodactyly t larger than normal space between big and second toes t low muscle tone t heart defect t frequent ear infections t seizures t autism spectrum disorders t mental retardation

19,599

The elegant fractals that Edward Lorentz discovered when plotting his weather data bear a striking similarity to butterfly wings. He named this complex non-repeating pattern “chaos flow.” The notion that certain systems are highly sensitive to initial conditions has been popularly referred to as the “Butterfly Effect,” after the figure eight patterns of Lorenz’s data. The theory goes that a butterfly flapping its wings in China can alter the weather in a small coastal town in Maine.

Month Seven A picture taken in the last week of August of that year features the mother, her husband and the brother leaning against the wrap around porch of the beach house on Lavinia Street they rented. This is their last summer without the child. They have the look of people who have no idea what is heading their way.

A conversation the mother and her husband have had at different points in the child’s life: “If you could zap him out of existence, would you do it?” she asks.

“You mean I wouldn’t be killing him? I would travel back in time and change the past so that he was never born?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean.”

This is the moment where the mother hopes he’ll hesitate and mull it over, but he doesn’t. Here is what he always says: “No, I can tell you I couldn’t do that. As hard as life is with him, I can’t go back now.” And then, the usual retort, “What about you, could you do it?”

She hopes God won’t strike her down, but she says, “Yes, some days I think I could.”

In the seventh month, the child opens his eyes and is able to cry.

From time to time, when his head presses against the mother just so, she can feel him hiccup. His bones are fully developed. She won’t discover until he is four years old that his body contains an extra bone at the base of his skull. Because the bone takes up space, his brain stem is thinner than most, and his neck more fragile.

Embodied Effigies | 61

Fox

Scientists who are attracted to chaos theory develop an eye for pattern, especially pattern that appears on different scales at the same time.

This interest causes a course change in the study of physics. Unlike the study of particle physics and its obsession with smaller and smaller building blocks of matter, chaos theory forces the scientific community to look at the big picture. Whereas before scientists focused on particles colliding in accelerators, now they are examining entire systems like the human brain. It turns out that the twentieth century will be remembered for three scientific revolutions: relativity, quantum mechanics and chaos theory.

Month Eight As the brother enters the second grade that fall, the mother overhears him informing his teacher that his parents will allow him to be present in the delivery room when his brother is born. The mother listens to him telling his teacher matter-of-factly that he plans to write a book about the experience. The mother can’t help but be struck by the earnestness of this boy, a quality that is accentuated by the fact that his second top tooth has recently fallen out.

Fluorescent in situ hybridization, or FISH, is a relatively new technology, approximately twenty years old. Unlike karyotyping, FISH can be used to detect structural chromosomal abnormalities, such as microscopic deletions, that are beyond the resolution of other chromosome studies.

“Telomere” is a term used to describe the very ends of chromosomes. When FISH is used specifically to look for chromosomal abnormalities in this area, it is referred to as “subtelomeric FISH testing.”

In a lab, a segment of DNA can be chemically modified and labeled so that it will look fluorescent under a special microscope. The DNA is called a “probe.” Using this technology, when the child is three years old, his geneticist will provide an official diagnosis: 46, XY, del(10)(p15.3).

At eight months gestation, the child grows and matures. He sleeps most of the time and even has periods of REM sleep. He is preparing for life outside the womb. This will possibly be the last time his environment is entirely to his satisfaction. He has yet to experience hypersensitivity to stimuli. He is thirteen inches long and weighs five pounds.

62 | Embodied Effigies

19,599

Chaos theory confirms a notion that humans have often inferred: that not all disorder is truly random, that miniscule differences occurring at the edges can affect the core, that just because a system appears chaotic does not mean it is arbitrary.

Month Nine At nine months, most fetuses place their heads facing down in the womb. The child followed suit. His placenta weighed one and a half pounds and his umbilical cord was over two feet long. He was cramped with little room to maneuver. He was nineteen and one half inches long and weighed six pounds one ounce.

On November 17, of that year, the husband drove the mother to a hospital in the heart of the city so that labor could be induced. “The placenta begins to degrade after forty weeks, and it isn’t able to support the fetus very well after that,” The doctor said, explaining why applying a gel to the mother’s cervix was necessary. It was a cold gray Sunday at 1:00 p.m.

At 3:50 p.m. the mother experienced her first contraction.

At 5:00 p.m. she was given a private room on the third floor of the hospital in the ante-partum unit.

At 9:34 p.m. she felt a warm gush of water between her legs.

At 11:19 p.m., the doctor slowly coaxed the child out of his mother’s birth canal.

Minutes later, the nurse presented a pink swaddled child to the mother. He instinctively curled his tiny fingers around her thumb, while halfway around the world a swallowtail butterfly hovered over a plum blossom, barely fluttering its delicate wings.

Embodied Effigies | 63

837-­6142 John Richmond

It started off innocently enough. In fact, he didn’t know that it had started at all. No, he was just standing there at the deli counter, number in hand—# 71—watching the LED—“Now Being Served”—number board on the wall and waiting his turn when a voice from off to his right asked, “Who do you think will win, tomorrow?”

Slowly, he turned toward the voice and saw her, standing about eight feet away, smiling. She was cute—but older, probably in her forties— had shoulder-length brownish-red hair, and seemed to be fit and in good shape.

“Well,” he began, “I’d like to see the Giants win—how about you?”

She smiled, shrugged her shoulders and seemingly confessed, “I don’t know that much about football. I would need somebody to teach me.”

“Ah, yes,” he said to himself through a nodding smile with puckered lips, “I see where this is going.”

“Do you think that you could do that?” she continued, upping both the offer and the stakes.

He thought about her voice and its raspy quality. “Definitely a cigarette smoker,” he told himself and clearly remembered that in his little book, entitled, “Criteria,” attractive women with oral fixations were awarded significant bonus points.

“Yeah, I could teach you football,” he finally admitted, “but nowadays I work really hard to keep my nose clean. You know what I mean?”

She smiled, again, and looked off for a moment before she turned back toward him, re-established eye-contact and then approached him.

“Here,” she said and pressed a number ticket into his hand, “just in case—someday—you want to get your nose dirty.”

With that, she turned away from him and headed down the aisle toward the back of the store.

“Enjoy the game,” she called, looking back over her shoulder.

“You, too,” he replied and then watched the way she moved and Embodied Effigies | 65

Richmond

how she was dressed.

Once she was gone and out of sight, he looked at the ticket that she had given him. On the back of it she had put a telephone number—her number, he assumed—837-6142.

He glanced back to where he last saw her, shook his head, and uttered to himself in a low voice, “How about that.”

He fell into thought about her and it wasn’t until—somewhere in the distance—he heard, “Number seventy-one,” being shouted out by a deli clerk from behind the counter, breaking his imaginings. Then, he heard it, again—closer now and even louder--“Number seventy-one!”

Immediately, he found himself back to where he had been in the first place.

“That’s me!” he called back, held up his ticket and approached the counter. “Right here!”

66 | Embodied Effigies

Dragon Fruit Skyy Vodka J. Davis

Dragon Fruit’s tart bite didn’t shoot well, but was surprisingly addicting in grape juice. The tall, empty bottle, a midnight blue glass, now sits at home on my dresser, a memory of becoming legal. At the beginning of the summer, it had nestled, hidden among the intimate items of a young woman, but it never took my mom long to find anything.

I learned early not to keep diaries. I wrote on pieces of paper, then burned them in crumbled piles on the shingles outside of my window, or buried them under my favorite maple tree in little plastic baggies. Paper only takes a few weeks to a couple months to decompose, but plastic can take ten to twenty years. I imagine those small zip-lock bags, haphazardly strewn underground, in the final stages of decay, the forgotten frustrations of helpless adolescence long since gone—speaking never helped, so I didn’t. When you can’t speak, there is not much else to do with what’s inside.

I still have to jot down the hard things, things my mouth can’t form unless it is following the orthography of IDON’TLOVEYOU or Y O U A R E T H E W O R S T M O M E V E R. But I burned them, I buried them, until I finally learned to say some of them.

--“What’s that bottle in your underwear drawer?”

My mom stood in our front foyer, and I paused at the top of the Embodied Effigies | 67

Davis

steep spirals stairs. Without turning around, I said, “It’s Vodka, mother.”

“What do you have it for?”

“I drank it on my birthday…it’s called a keepsake.”

She didn’t reply. Somehow, I had expected more. When I realized she had walked away, I moved it to the top of my dresser where it sits, the faint smell of alcohol and fruit still trapped inside.

AREYOUGIVINGUP?

While the hard things build with age, and I struggle to speak, she is slipping into her own silence; but her brain still moves the same, and I keep finding myself there again. A child still living in muted moments, still digging in the dirt, hiding truth on scraps, honest only on paper.

68 | Embodied Effigies

Dance of the Skeleton Woman Amber Hollinger

And I dreamt it was just us three – another, the Skeleton Woman, and me Together we danced and played, into the moon drift sunlight fade One night I saw clearly, after many years of near-meetings and fleeting calls, the Skeleton Woman of old.

She had slipped into my world while my mind was journeying elsewhere. And when I returned there was she, bones a-draped in mists and silk, hair a force of its own swirling around her. And those eyes—primordial— symbols mirroring ancient truths, impossible to disregard.

Then, you were there.

The Skeleton Woman took my shaking hand in hers and, holding you in the other, led us to a flowered meadow. Under a cerulean sunlit sky we danced and played and dashed and soared. And with her, and with you, I was a little girl again, clumsy and raw with the wonder and weight of the world on my tiny shoulders. All things were great and big and possible.

There had been joys and pleasures and they had been great and big and possible. Moments of fun and marvel.

But when we stopped to rest, how her bones did rattle. And trembling I remembered that her presence meant it would all already be done.

The loveliness swept away and my heart filled with an immense sorrow. How and how could it be over so soon.

She frowned at my weeping, whispering through wind. It is so, my child, the way of the worlds. You have been gifted what you have been given and now I must take back beyond. You knew this day would come. I must go—and I do not go alone.

No! I cry, not ready to let go. It has all gone too quickly. Please I need more time. We wanted – Time? She smiles gently, pityingly and I understand that her time Embodied Effigies | 69

Hollinger

is very different from my own. There is only now, my child. And now is the end and the beginning all at once.

Then she wrapped you in her flowing, warmed you in her knowing. And with her you floated silently, silently away.

And I dreamt it was just us three—my love, the Skeleton Woman, and me. And after we danced and played, my love, she took you into the moon drift sunlight fade above.

70 | Embodied Effigies

Fortune Teller No. 35: A Master or a Saltimbanque?

Candase Wenbin Tang

I randomly picked a man at the No. 35 stand.

“What did you ask for?” No. 35 asked.

“I want to know whether I will win a novel competition,” I responded.

“What’s the stick number?”

“Thirty.”

“When’s your birthday?”

I hold up my lot paper, reminding him I didn’t ask my fortune, just my lot.

He ignored my hint and opened a drawer, taking out something that looked like a calculator. He pressed the numbers of my birthday and some information jumped onto the screen. Usually, answering a lot doesn’t need birthday information.

Including No. 35, whose name is Cai Zhijian, there are 160 mostly elderly fortune tellers at Wong Tai Sin Temple, a Taoist temple in northern Kowloon that commemorates the 4th century monk Wong Tai Sin. But it is most well known for its fortune telling.

When I first came to Wong Tai Sin in January, 2013 and asked my question by shaking a bamboo tube containing numbered fortune sticks, or lots, in Embodied Effigies | 71

Tang

front of Wong Tai Sin Hall until one fell out, I hoped to find a master to read my lot. My number was 30. I exchanged my stick for a piece of paper with the information for my lot and went looking for a master.

Different eyes welcomed me to enter and different hands beckoned me to sit down, but I didn’t stop until I saw a man between 60 to 70 years old seriously reading a book with his grizzled eyebrows raised. He didn’t notice me at first and I looked him up and down. He was dressed formally with a neat shirt, western trousers and polished leather shoes, matching his black glasses. He looked knowledgeable.

I knew he was the one.

This way of picking a fortune teller is normally called “eye lot” by visitors.

Most visitors to the temple come to have their questions answered. These people, aged from schoolchildren to the elderly, including foreigners, mainlanders and locals, are all fascinated by Wong Tai Sin’s magic power to answer anything they want to know.

Wong Tai Sin the divine is much more widely known in Chinese culture than the shepherd Wong Cho Ping, who is said to have been able to transform stones into sheep 1,700 years ago. The story goes that when this shepherd achieved enlightenment, he became immortal and thus known as Wong Tai Sin, or Red Pine Immortal. Wong Tai Sing is worshipped for his healing powers.

An employee who has worked at Wong Tai Sin temple for more than 20 years said most people come here to ask Wong Tai Sin questions rather than learning about Taoist culture.

Outside of the temple’s main hall, numerous people reverently kneel down, shaking bamboo tubes with a “cha-cha-cha” sound. Each tube holds 100 numbered sticks, each corresponding to a lot. Because legend says that Wong Tai Sin cures disease, in the old days these lots corresponded to Chinese medicine prescriptions. Now, people just use the lots to have their fortunes told, but in the spirit of healing, the temple, managed by the religious charitable organization Sik Sik Yuen, maintains a free health clinic for the needy.

72 | Embodied Effigies

Fortune Teller No. 35

I handed No. 35 my lot. His eyebrows rose and he promised that I would soon have good news. Lot 30 is Yang Yuhuan’s lot, one of the Four Beauties of ancient China who was deeply loved by Emperor Xuanzong and became his imperial consort in the 8th century. No. 35 told me I would succeed, just like Yang Yuhuan, who was first made a nun by the emperor before being made his consort.

I felt happy that my lot was good and I paid him HK$25. He told me he has worked at the temple for 12 years and then put his name card and my red lot paper into a red envelope for me.

Turned out, I didn’t win the novel competition. So I went to see No. 35 again.

This time he was playing with a big compass. When visitors passed by his stand, he didn’t ask them to come in like his next door neighbors No. 34 and No. 36, who were soliciting customers by waving their hands and saying “you have a good physiognomy.”

A couple of lovers came by hand in hand. The woman walked to No. 34, who attracted her by pointing out the big portrait of his master on the wall and his photos with famous people. The man walked over to No. 35.

I saw No. 35 withdraw a red paper from the box noted 22 and press this paper with three silver ingots. Then he started to talk with vivid gestures.

I couldn’t hear their conversation clearly, but I saw the man laugh eight times and slap his thigh twice. About 15 minutes later, they were interrupted by the man’s girlfriend who had finished her fortune telling. The man gave No. 35 HK$30, saying, “No need to give me the change. This is my gratitude for your excellent answer to my lot.”

I followed them as they walked away to ask the man about his lot.

This man had asked Wong Tai Sin about his job and drawn lot 22. No. 35 said the meaning behind his lot was Wang Wei, a Tang Dynasty poet, and his reluctant parting from a friend. Therefore, No. 35 suggested this man not to give up and carry on his job no matter how hard it was, otherwise he might feel regret. The man said he felt relieved. He added that he didn’t Embodied Effigies | 73

Tang

usually believe fortunetellers but now he would come to No. 35 again if he had any other problems.

I didn’t understand why people, including me, trusted No. 35 so much.

While I was thinking, No. 35 hailed me and asked me to sit at his stand while he went to the washroom.

I was taking photos of his stand when No. 37 came to tell me to be sure to take a photo of the only photo on No. 35’s wall, a picture of Cai running in the Hong Kong Marathon. This photo was pasted to the right side of the wall, not so big to be noticed and No. 37 told me if I did not ask, No. 35 would never mention his running achievements.

When Cai returned, I learnt that he started running at a time when he felt his physical strength and willpower were not strong enough. So said running developed his physical and psychological power. He started training for a half-marathon.

Cai also said he runs every evening after work to keep himself busy and forget about his loneliness. His wife and children live apart from him because of what he calls his “beggar fortune.”

A beggar fortune, as No. 35 describes it, is a life with no money and full of bad luck. Before becoming a fortuneteller, Cai said he had 72 different jobs which he all failed at. For instance, when he was a shop apprentice, he didn’t have enough food and went hungry every day, he said. When he worked in a factory, the factory went bankrupt. When he was an office errand boy, the office closed down. His wife and children left him to get away from his bad luck, Cai said in a tone of self-mockery.

“So you believe in the fate?” I asked. “And does fortune telling work?”

No. 35 said he believes in fate and that your five elements—the Chinese Taoist philosophy that everything, including a person, is made of wood, fire, earth, metal and water—cannot be changed. He said fortune telling is a spiritual heritage and all fortune tellers do is to give customers positive suggestions. Whether those suggestions are true or not depends on whether one believes them or not. To some extent, having something to 74 | Embodied Effigies

Fortune Teller No. 35

believe is a good thing.

No. 35 also called fortunetellers psychological doctors. People come to them because they want a prescription. Every fortuneteller gives different prescriptions according to their experiences and their way of telling stories. Because No. 35 changed his job so often, having no perseverance, he said, he hopes others won’t give up and accomplish nothing.

“Even if you failed this time, you should not give up,” he said in a sincere voice.

No. 35 told me to carry on writing. I had imaginative talent and excellent writing skills according to my Four Pillars of Destiny. The problem was that I didn’t have enough experience. He said Wong Tai Sin confirmed that I have the fate of Yang Yuhuan, destined to succeed.

While he was talking, a woman approached the stand and was waiting. I didn’t want to take up any more of his time so I told him I would leave. The woman was an old customer, he said, and he was wanted to be sure I was ok. He asked me to come back if I had any problems. Behind him a large piece of calligraphy with the character “Fo,” meaning Buddhism. He gave me the impression of Buddha, always smiling and helpful. As I left, the woman told me that No. 35 was a responsible person. Instead of focusing on money, he would talk with you in detail until you solved your problem.

It was early and I still wanted to know why people trusted No. 35. So I walked to No. 37’s stand and asked him to explain lot 30.

No. 37, Zhang Zi, said I had the worst draw. No. 35 hadn’t mentioned that after Yang Yuhuan succeeded in becoming the imperial consort, she was ordered strangled by the emperor. The emperor lived a life of regret.

“What do you think of Cai Zhijian?”I asked directly.

“What do you mean by that?” Zhang Zi said in confusion.

“I mean do you think he is a master in fortune telling?” I asked more directly.

Embodied Effigies | 75

Tang

Zhang Zi praised No. 35’s talent in eloquence and his hard work in learning by himself. After all, Zhang Zi said, No. 35 only has a primary-school education.

“Besides, if you look at his palm you will see there is a line passing across his right palm without a break. These people are usually easy to go to extremes and are very stubborn,” Zhang Zi added.

“You mean he answers people’s lots according to his own view?” I asked.

Zhang suggested that I ask Cai face to face.

I telephoned Cai one day to ask if I could go running with him. He told me to call back at 5:30 p.m. because he might be having dinner with his son that night. If his son came, he wouldn’t go running.

I called him again at 5:30 p.m. but he was still waiting for his son’s call. “My son said he would call me today but maybe he is too busy to call me up,” Cai said. Thirty minutes later and he called to tell me to meet him in Shatin at 7 p.m.

Cai looked completely different. He was wearing a T-shirt from the Hong Kong Marathon Commission, running shorts and a pair of sport shoes. He had a yellow towel with him that he believed would bring him energy. He said that of the five elements, he lacked fire and earth so he often decorated things—his stand, his name card and even himself—in yellow and red to make up for it.

He walked fast and pointed at my camera, worried that it was too heavy for me to run with. I told him it was a piece of cake since I started running earlier in my childhood, but he didn’t know until I companied him to Fotan.

Before we began to run, he pointed out a public building to me. He rents an apartment there for HK$1580 a month. “I used to live there together with my wife, son and daughter. But now they all moved out and left me alone in that house,” he said.

76 | Embodied Effigies

Fortune Teller No. 35

When asked why they moved out, his answers were always thin. “I live alone so that I can get up earlier to climb mountains and go to bed late to practice running. It’s good to be alone, and running has driven my loneliness. So I am used to that now,” he said, using his right hand to raise his glasses.

Chinese New Year was around the corner. Usually families come together and eat. But No. 35 said he would be busy making money.

“Usually I will buy a box of rice with chicken in Café de Coral as my New Year dinner after finishing my work since many people will come to Wong Tai Sin on New Year’s Eve and I will work late,” he said.

“Your children won’t come to see you on New Year’s Eve?” “They are too busy.”

“But they should have holidays as well,” I argued.

“They have part-time jobs to do after getting off from their work,” he said using his hand to raise his glasses again.

“So that’s the reason your son didn’t come to see you today?”

“Who knows? He said on the phone in the morning that he would call me in the afternoon to have dinner with me. But he didn’t call me again,” he said, looking out at a boat in the Shing Mun River. “I used to take my son here for boating when he was young. But after he grew up, he only telephoned me few times to make sure that his father was still alive.”

Cai laughed and began to run. I could hear his breath as I ran next to him.

He runs to Ma On Shan and back every evening.

“Running is a good thing because one will feel exhausted after running a long distance and will go to sleep soon. When one wakes up, another day has begun.”

When we were stopped by the traffic lights on the way from Fo Tan to Ma Embodied Effigies | 77

Tang

On Shan.

I asked him why he worked so hard and even didn’t give himself a break during New Year Holiday.

He told me he had to make money to support his living expenses.

In Hong Kong, there are many Cai Zhijians who get no support from their children or from Hong Kong government since living expenses are too high in Hong Kong. On this point, many Cai Zhijians even envy elder mainlanders because they both get pension from the Chinese government and support from their next generations. However, in Hong Kong, it’s quite common to see elders working hard at the age they should retire.

Besides working to make money, running is another support for Cai Zhijian.

He told me in a proud voice that he has a goal of running within 2 hours in this year’s Hong Kong Marathon.

Although his best Marathon result was 2 hours 5 minutes in 2011 and last year he got 2 hours 10 minutes 52 seconds.

But this time he seemed full of confidence, although I doubted about it.

In the end, he failed his self-breakthrough on marathon day, February 24, with the same result as 2011, although he arrived at the competition starting spot near Chungking Mansion earlier for preparing practice at 8 a.m. and had great confidence before competition.

There was no trace of sadness on his face. Instead, he was happy like a kid, looking at my camera and enjoying taking pictures with his friends who were influenced by him to take part in this year’s half-yard (21km) marathon.

Without his family members coming to support him, he didn’t feel any disappointment because running in his words became “part of his life” and he would “continue running marathon in 2014, 2015…”

78 | Embodied Effigies

Fortune Teller No. 35

After these words, he ran away alone to Wong Tai Sin for work.

He insisted not to have a rest, just like practicing day, Cai Zhijian insisted that he would run back even his T-shirt was fully soaked with sweat and he ran ahead alone in the same posture and the same marathon shirt until I couldn’t see his figure any more.

After practicing running with him, I came to see him again on February 17th before the last day of the New Year Holiday.

This time, his waiting seats were full of people, unlike the first two times he had rather fewer customers compared with other stands.

It was nearly 5:30 p.m., but he was still working and No. 37 Zhang Zi had no customers at that moment, so I came to ask him the reason why so many people believed in Wong Tai Sin and were willing to come to ‘Kau Cim’ during the New Year.

Because people bestowed Wong Tai Sin with healing magic and would come to ‘Kau Cim’ for health and good fortune during the New Year Holiday. Then this real superstition became a new custom.

But Zhang Zi believed in Chinese Era for fortune telling, rather than ‘Kau Cim’ which could be explained in different ways by mixture of masters and saltimbanques. So Zhang Zi never believed in ‘Kau Cim’ and he would ask my customers’ birthday information to tell their fortune in traditional Chinese metaphysical way. Because the Four Pillars of destiny will not change and this is the essence of unexplainable Chinese superstitious tradition.

“Zhang Zi, what if I got the lot No. 30, how would you answer my lot?” I asked.

Zhang said he doesn’t believe in lots because they are random. Instead, he asks his customers for their birthday to tell their fortune in the traditional Chinese metaphysical way. Because a person’s Four Pillars of Destiny, which are determined by the exact date and time of your birth, will never change, this is the essence of Chinese astrology, he said.

Embodied Effigies | 79

Tang

When the couple at the No. 35’s stand finished, I asked them why they chose No.35, even though they had to wait.

The woman said she had been coming to No. 35 for nearly 4 years. She said the first time was eye-lot and because it was empty. But after listening to No. 35’s explanation, they found him an earnest person, always telling the story behind the lot in great detail. Even when he was busy, he still worked conscientiously and made the woman feel that HK$25 was worth it.

Another customer, a nurse called Miss Zhou, waited for her turn for nearly an hour and later told me that she chose No. 35 because he looked benign and responsible. Besides, his fee was relatively cheaper and he spent a long time talking with customers.

When Miss Zhou left, she turned to me and added that No. 35 knew she had just broken up with one boyfriend for a new one.

It wasn’t until 7:20 p.m. that No. 35 finished. I asked him how he knew the nurse had just ended her relationship with her boyfriend. The secret was her birthday, he said. This information tells much more than a lot. He said it was the same for me. He knew stick No. 30 was a bad lot but instead of simply believing it, he asked for my birthday.

He suddenly took out a big compass and told me his next plan was to master the essence of Feng Shui, also a reliable heritage left by our Chinese ancestors. He said he wanted to go to Taiwan to study it but didn’t have enough money.

“But you are smart. You were able to learn fortune telling by yourself,” I said.

“No. I am not smart,” he said. Cai quit school at 12 in order to earn money for his family. He learned about fortune telling and history from reading books. He also said he tried to dress himself formally and learned Mandarin by heart so as to make himself look literate.

“Sometimes what one lacks is what one yearns for,” he said.

80 | Embodied Effigies

Fortune Teller No. 35

No. 35 puts a ‘Fo’ in the center of his stand to remind himself of adhering to the conscience and law when doing business although he varnished himself in terms of his low-education degree.

“But I work honestly on and never finish fast even if many people are waiting there.” Cai Zhijian argued.

His business in Wong Tai Sin as a fortune teller started after he did fitment for his wife’s stand, the fortuneteller No. 33. The reason was quite simple in his explanation that he found lots of customers sitting behind waiting for asking fortunetellers. And he thought this business was easy to make money. But after his join, the Wong Tai Sin was never as blooming as before.

No. 35’s initial motivation to be a fortune teller was for making money and he did give himself no rest for New Year golden periods for making money, yet I sat in his stand at least five times talking for long periods with him and he would give me any hint that I interrupted him in making money. However, I talked with his wife, No .33, around two sentences and she would remind me that she had to do business. I paid money for her twice for talking with her in the excuse of asking lots, but when she saw someone else came to sit and would end my business right away.

I later knew the reason why No. 35 was a stubborn person.

Because Cai Zhijian spent too much time on one customer regardless of others waiting behind. This would make no money and did no good for doing business, as believed by his wife and some of other fortune tellers.

Thanks to my Journalism Professor Ewing Robin

Embodied Effigies | 81

The Lake Morgan Bazilian

They told me that the water in the lake was safe to drink. I thought about this as I was swimming across it. They seemed so well-intentioned and proud telling me. So I took a sip. It tasted like tap water, and made me wonder about drowning. I swam deliberately. The groan of ancient glaciers crossing the land making the depth of the water now incalculable.

The lake spans six hundred meters in front of the house. When I got to the far side, I treaded water and looked at the docks and the big houses climbing up the hillside. I saw bicyclists go by through an opening in the forest. Two people were lying on the wooden dock just in front of me not making a sound. I turned around and aimed for the big house where we were staying. It has, they told me, the typical architectural style of the lake. It seemed odd that a lake would have its own style, but I barely let myself think this. This typical design has a tall front turret and a thin front façade facing the lake. Perhaps this creates extra space on the sides of the properties for party tables or gardens. Perhaps it is so that one’s home does not appear too large compared to the lake and the forests.

Just beyond the lake’s midpoint, a sailboat surprised me. A pretty girl and boy seemed unaffected by my presence three feet off their starboard side. They slowly passed. The lake did not seem to be a good place to sail, but then I noticed more wind in the wider parts. When I got back from my swim, the sunscreen had run into my eyes, and I was toweling off my face when I heard the father. He yelled, “congratulations” in a booming voice. He was wearing a pink t-shirt and purple shorts. That combination might look ridiculous on someone else, but here, on the lakeshore, it looked perfectly understated and natural. His gray hair was full and well combed. He then turned away from me and looked out at the lake smiling.

Apropos of nothing, I felt like walking over and punching him.

Pike and whitefish were swimming in between my little boy’s feet.

He screamed happily, pointed at the fish and looked at me. He put his fingers in his mouth and then pointed again and moved his feet in and out of the water—running in place. I leaned down and pointed past the far shore Embodied Effigies | 83

Bazilian

to show him the mountains. They looked steep, and I imagined that they were the Dolomites, even though they are not. Italy is not far though—the food from there shows up in the nearby farmer’s markets on the weekends.

But Slovenia is closer. A fact that annoys the lake’s residents—their sense of entitlement slightly tarnished. The enduring ties to Eastern Europe remained an embarrassment.

--My family and I were invited by the son of a very wealthy family to spend the weekend. We were invited because of his wife. She is quiet normally; slight and black. We went because it was easy. We went because we didn’t know many people in Vienna. We went because it was hot out, and the city seemed oppressive. The family’s grandson is born to this woman.

She is South African. A country none of his family had previously thought much about. She is also from a wealthy family—but a very different kind.

The two met at a British university. She found it cold there. He made her laugh with his confidence. She did not entirely understand his English.

They married young, but she still looked at him nicely.

Worthersee is in the South of Austria. The region is called Carinthia in English. It reminded me of Goethe’s famous character Werther and his sorrows. But I don’t think they are linked in any way, save that their names sound the same in my head – and something about the gathering of the aristocracy. The water is an interesting colour of green and blue; famous for this unique mixture. The southern shore is quiet and accessible by a dirt road that leads to large expensive houses and estates. The trees are dense next to the road, forcing your attention to the lake.

--They kept asking me if I ate pork. It struck me the first time as a reasonable question of a host. Perhaps pork had been a singularly disruptive item for the chef here. But the second and third times are strange and off-putting. I tried to list pork products in my head—hot dogs, sausage, pork filets, bacon. I tried to think of who does not eat it: vegetarians, vegans, Muslims, Rastafarians, Jews. I smiled each time they asked—assuming they were just being polite. I didn’t find out about who they are until after we leave. So it seemed kind of quaint—in the fragile way Germans still treat the subject of Jews. I am sure that they were just being good hosts, whispering certain things better not said aloud. All the empirical evidence reinforced this perspective.

Jorg Haider was Governor of Carinthia two times. He was both 84 | Embodied Effigies

The Lake

gay and a Nazi supporter. A combination his friends and followers did not suspect until his death窶馬or one they would have appreciated. He died in a car crash after drinking all night at a gay bar. He played a big role in several Austrian Banks. Some of these helped finance right-wing political groups and yachts. He loved swimming across Worthersee. Maybe he liked the quiet in the middle of the lake as I did. Maybe he had the same revelation about its potable water. He was a close colleague of our host family; they boated and drank together. They funded the same political parties. They laughed together. Thus, the pork. Jews were not historically welcome on the lake.

The pork was delicious though. It was served with tomatoes from the Italian weekend market and slow roasted. The tomatoes were covered in balsamic vinegar and small onions and some leaves of basil. It was served on a plain white serving plate and with a lovely sparkling wine in twisted crystal champagne flutes. It was best if covered with a little brown sauce that was allowed to run into the roasted potatoes. The chef was a tall young man. He looked like a basketball player. It was served at about midday on a long table. The well-mowed green grass sloped down to the water and the boathouses. A light wind carried any unnecessary noises away. A clear day, full of the great slowness and vast potential of the summer.

The grandmother went swimming as we ate. She did not seem to notice us at all. Not even my little boy.

--We were given a set of rooms in a vast, unoccupied three story building on the south part of the property. It reminded me of an image from Fitzgerald. As a boy, when I read his novels I pictured long flowing green lawns spreading out forever. My little boy, uninterested in literary analogies, was occupied by running back and forth through the sprinkler system that seemed to stay on all day. It had a long armature and good pressure, so the spray of water was well-suited to this kind of thing. The son who invited us and I stood in the safe shadow of the spray and tried to find things to laugh about. It was difficult for both of us, and so we each put our hands in our pockets, sway a bit and kept a dull smile on our faces.

The rest of the building, our hosts told me, was not fit for visitors.

Our rooms sat on the east wing, the other parts of the building I saw by looking through the windows with my hands cupped around my face. Pine wood paneling everywhere. It was very hot outside, but the old buildings had large overhanging roofs that provided good shade. The day seemed Embodied Effigies | 85

Bazilian

slowed because of the heat and the wealth. The family could not decide what to do with the buildings on this distant part of the property. No one was in a hurry to decide.

The lake, although bordering the property, seems very far away when you are on the grass lawns. The property is quieter than it should be.

The trees lining the sides of the land muffle the sound of the strictly monitored power boats. Or maybe everyone was speaking in hushed voices.

--I decided to swim across the lake a second time that day. It was afternoon and I felt sluggish despite having taken a deep nap. I had rested on an old, firm couch decorated with little flowers. The sunlight not quite touching my exposed feet. The pillows were faded a bit, but fresh. The only noise was my little boy sighing a bit in his sleep in the next room. I had moved to the couch to give him access to more cool air. He gets so hot when he sleeps. The sweat forming little rings around his head looks like a halo on the sheets when he gets up. He sometimes wakes up shaking a bit and is confused about where he is, or maybe who he is, or what he is. A dinosaur or a fire truck or a boy. It is all rather fluid to him I imagine.

As I moved down the grass towards the lake, the father was sitting with a straight back, staring at the water. I was unobserved. His hands didn’t seem to move much from his bent knees. He seemed to be angry and mumbling something to himself. Then in an instant he appeared calm. A smile came across his face. He leaned to his right and put on a linen sport coat, stood up, and reached for the keys to his Porsche. He drove away without a word. His wife then came out from the side entrance of the main houses and smirked at his leaving. Her mother, now ninety-one, looked at her daughter in disgust.

“You let him treat you like that in front of guests?”

Apparently he had several young lovers in both Carinthia and Vienna; secretaries, waitresses, store clerks, school teachers.

I swim easily across and back. The heat only penetrating a small sliver of the lake’s skin.

--The boys—mine and the young grandson of the family—played on different parts of the paved driveway. They each tried to take away each other’s toys, and both rode the large green play tractor together, but uneasily. The family had stopped making light conversation with us as much as when we had arrived. We were now more like hotel guests; useless to the 86 | Embodied Effigies

The Lake

machinations of the property.

The lake tries to hush the inhabitants of its shores and the activity on it. It dampens the screams of the water skiers; it contains the noises of the bars. It acts like a solid mass at times, like rubber. On the far side of the lake is fertile land—agricultural land. The wheat has not yet been cut down and it grows like a child, wild and wary in the wind. Past these crops, fields of mustard, and the quietness sets in like a weight. Beyond the road, neatly ploughed fields and blue trucks define space, towns, work and history.

Nothing had been mentioned of Mr. Haider or the Austrian farright, or of money lending, or race or colour. Those topics all seem tawdry by the lake, but I wondered when did they get discussed? And where?

Poorly designed rooms in nice hotels? Or at bars or clubs or on the lawns of other great homes and properties? They must have discussed these things—their beliefs—sometime. Or maybe the long devoured hate had now simply become part of the genetic code. No longer requiring intellect, just biology and chemistry, like an infant digesting meconium—amniotic fluid, mucous, intestinal cells.

Despite the acres of land, I felt stifled. So I went for a walk. Out past a short stone wall, through the small, nearly invisible gate. I turned left for no reason. A young girl driving too fast looks at me without any expression. The sun was intricately filtered on the partially dirt road. A male duck moved awkwardly past me towards the lake. The water seemed to be reaching for the street. Through the trees an old dock in front of an older church, accessible only at low tide.

--The next day my boy was getting anxious in the lake; mumbling a bit and fidgeting with his arms. The water was clear and he could see his feet, which he likes. But he still seemed nervous. The only sound was a distant motor boat. He was tired of pointing them out to me by this point.

So he climbed the small dirt hill and ran along the dock, looked at me, and jumped in. Probably a three foot jump. He went completely under, and then bobbed up smiling and swallowing water. I was shocked for a second and then swam over to him. He was kicking his legs like crazy, and laughing, and trying to talk with all the water in his mouth and nose. No one noticed any of this but me.

He got cold after his jump, and wanted to be enveloped in a big towel—only his head was visible. He curled his toes and brought his feet to his chest. I sat him down on a deck chair and he looked out at the water Embodied Effigies | 87

Bazilian

quietly. I sat next to him. Our hosts were not nearby, but then I saw the mother walking around the big house closest to the dock. She was pointing at the upper windows and the balcony, and seemed to be talking to me from very far away. I couldn’t hear anything she was saying.

I walked to her out of politeness. She told me that this was all her property. Not her husband’s. That she came from old money. Not money made at the business. She pointed again to the upper floor and told me that she will build an apartment for herself there with a big deck and a big bed.

That it would be hers alone. Not his. She told me she was going to paint the inside white and extend the existing balcony to be a large deck. A place she could sleep outside if she wanted. All of this detail seemed strange to me.

I started to get furious with these people, but I couldn’t tell why precisely. The anger was some mix of jealousy and politeness, coupled with a feeling of being boxed in by the dense air. As if no one ever screamed there.

The father was looking at me talking to his wife from the side of the lake. He was smiling. He moved his hand to place his hair correctly and stretched his arms a bit. He took off his blue collared shirt and walked into the water, and then started swimming. He swam well for an older man. The stroke was not quite elegant anymore, and his breathing seemed to have an odd rhythm, but I was told he was a champion at one time. This nearly made me laugh. I criticized his stroke out loud, but quietly.

--We ate breakfast in near silence on the last morning. They were ready for us to leave. Despite that feeling, we sat and read the paper and let the heat build and did not rush. I noticed that his Porsche was dented on the front left side. The natural looking curves of that car made hard and angular. It looked like the car might not even drive, the damage was so significant. I noticed a cut on his left arm and on his shin as well. They were not bandaged, but red and scraped, exposing raw areas not often revealed.

That his son bored him. That his grandson had dark skin.

The water lapped the grass rhythmically, and then more assertively after a boat went by. The driveway got too hot for the children to stand on it with their bare feet. They moved to the grass. The day kept building, and we packed our bags and started the car. The air conditioner slowly erasing memory. We drove off without even a wave goodbye.

The pine forest was still. The small lake road opened up abruptly to a large highway. The traffic speeding past, completely unaware.

88 | Embodied Effigies

The Suzy Chronicles: Part I Louis Reyna

The first time I drank with Suzy was the last time I drank. It was the day after Thanksgiving, one year and ten months before the Towers would fall. There were four of us: me, Dan, Suzy and Rebecca. We all worked at Michael’s, an arts and crafts store in Overland Park, Kansas. Dan and I were drinking beer after beer after beer punctuated with shots of tequila. I kept leaning into Suzy, saying, “I wanna fuck you… I wanna fuck you…”

I knew she wasn’t going to sleep with me. At thirty-nine, I was too old for her. She was twenty-five. But it was fun to say it; it was fun to watch her inching away from me.

The next thing I remember I was pulled over on the side of some road in Leawood, Kansas. Dan was passed out, slumped in the passenger seat. I was pushing buttons on my new cell phone, too drunk to work it properly. There were flashing lights in the rear view mirror. The right front tire on my Nissan Sentra was flat. That’s what saved us, not God, not Jesus.

It was a nail on the road that kept me from plowing through some busy intersection, killing me and Dan and some poor soul who had gone out to buy a quart of milk or to return a video.

It wasn’t a miracle, I would tell Dottie, the woman who ran the court ordered alcohol therapy sessions which were part of the conditions of the terms of my probation. She would open each fifty dollar, twice a week session with a devotional prayer from the little black book she held on her lap, and she would end each session with a group reciting of the Serenity prayer. She and the drunks would stand in a circle, hold hands, and ask God to grant them the serenity, etc., etc.

Not me. I would scoot out early. I didn’t need God to keep me from drinking. I knew God didn’t care if I was drunk or sober- but my liver did. I knew Jesus didn’t care if I ever got behind the wheel drunk again—but that Leawood cop patrolling the state line did. And in spite of what Dottie said, I knew God didn’t put that nail on the road that Friday night any more than Embodied Effigies | 89

Reyna

he put a clit between Mother Theresa’s legs. And like Mother Theresa’s clit, that nail on the road was there for any reason you wanted it to be—it was as functional or as useless as you wanted it to be.

So while Dottie would go on about Spirituality and a Higher Power to the other guys, I would talk about selfishness. I’m going to stop drinking for me, not for God, I would tell the group. It was my second DUI; the second time I was being gobbled up by the system. I’d already heard enough horror stories at DUI Victims’ panels held in packed high school auditoriums to know that the system didn’t care for me any more than it cared for that middle aged woman who’d lost her daughter and unborn grandchild to some drunk driver on a lonely stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere. The system just wanted my money, and I’d given them enough of that already, so now it was time to stop drinking.

I would look each one of those men in the eyes and tell them that we all have something in common: “We all have one thing we don’t want to lose. Maybe it’s your job or your marriage or your relationship with your kids… Maybe its season tickets to the Chiefs games. Whatever it is, you don’t want to lose it, and if continuing to drink means that you run the risk of losing it—then stop. If spirituality and belief in a higher power helps you to stop, then fine. But if that doesn’t work, then I say be selfish. Do it for yourself and The One Thing you don’t want to lose.”

They would all just sit there, with their chins buried in their chests, staring at the tops of their shoes…

Now that I was sober I stayed home a lot, in that little apartment by the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. Since Suzy and I worked together, I would give her rides home after work. Soon, she started coming over to my place to listen to music or watch TV. I would buy Chinese food for us and beer for her and she would smoke pot. It didn’t bother me to be around her while she drank and smoked. I didn’t care. I was determined to stay sober.

She was beautiful, with long, reddish-brown hair, high cheekbones, exotic green eyes, and beautiful white teeth. She looked Native American.

But what I liked the most was that she didn’t wear make-up or jewelry, and she had no piercings.

I would tell Dottie and the guys about Suzy at the alcohol therapy sessions. I would tell them about how she would try to get me to smoke pot or have a drink with her; how, when I refused, she would blow smoke in my 90 | Embodied Effigies

The Suzy Chronicles

face or drench her tongue in beer and then stick it down my throat.

“There,” she would say, leaning back on the sofa. “Now, if you have a pee test, you’ll fail it.”

The guys would laugh. Dottie would purse her lips and shake her head as she held tight to that little black book on her lap.

It was spring and I was five months sober. I had lost my driving privileges in Kansas, but I had my Missouri license, so I was still tooling back and forth across the state line in that Nissan Sentra. I had bought the car from my ex-wife when we got divorced. We bought the car when we moved to Kansas City from LA. That was seven years ago, but it seemed longer. Now that I was sober, everything seemed longer and brighter and clearer, but not necessarily in a good way. It was like Ford, one of the men in the alcohol therapy sessions, described sobriety: “The light is always on.”

I taught Suzy how to drive my car, which was a stick shift, and I let her use the car to drive out to her second job as a package handler at FedEx. The FedEx shipping complex was in Lenexa, west of Kansas City, out in the middle of nowhere, where highways K-7 and K-10 converged halfway to Lawrence, Kansas. I was familiar with Lawrence even before I moved to Kansas: It was the city that got blown off the map in the 1982 made for TV movie “The Day After”.

Suzy lived in an apartment complex near the Bannister Mall shopping center. The mall had once thrived during the 1980’s, but now it was on life support, plagued by ghetto thugs from the city’s violent eastside. In fact, the entire area surrounding the mall was rundown. Suzy’s apartment complex was a haven for drug users and dealers.

Suzy was living with an English guy named Alexis. He was nineteen years old, six years younger than her.

“It’s over between me and Alexis,” she said.

We were driving to my apartment. I had picked up Chinese food.

“But you’re still living with him,” I said.

“So?” “I learned a long time ago that if you’re still living together then it’s not really over.”

“So what if we’re still having sex. What do you care? It’s not like we’re having sex. Are you jealous?”

“No.” “Then what do you care?”

Embodied Effigies | 91

Reyna

“I don’t. Just don’t say it’s over when it’s not really over.”

She started rummaging through her purse. Her “hippie” purse, as I called it.

“You’re not holding, are you?” I asked.

She turned to me. “Why do you always have to sound like a cop?”

“Are you?”

“I always smoke at your place. How do you think it gets there?”

We always talked like that, like we were fighting. She was from New York, an only child who had been a latch-key kid who never knew her father. We were both loud, big city people who frightened the other employees at the arts and crafts store because we always sounded like we were fighting when we weren’t.

We had both come to the Midwest because of relationships that didn’t work out. My ex-wife was originally from the Midwest, but after nine years of earthquakes and traffic and smog and, finally, the Rodney King riots, she’d had enough of Los Angeles. So we packed it all in and moved to Kansas City, where homes were cheaper and, according to my ex-wife, people were nicer. Suzy had followed her boyfriend, Dan, to Kansas City because that’s where his mother was. But he was abusive, both physically and mentally, she claimed, and she left him, but not after they had run up a mountain of credit card debt. The only good thing to come out of the relationship, she said, was Mocha, her border collie.

I didn’t like dogs, as a rule. It had nothing to do with the dogs and everything to do with me. I grew up during the early and mid 1960’s in LA suburbs that had experienced “white flight” a decade earlier. I was chased frequently by feral dogs, the descendants of the dogs that had been left behind when their owners packed up and moved farther south.

But I liked Mocha. Sometimes Suzy would bring Mocha to my apartment. We would put Mocha in the back seat and she would stick her pointy snout out the window and sniff the world as it raced by. One day, when I was walking Mocha, I recalled the time I walked out of my apartment and saw a man crying over his dead dog. They were across the street.

The dog was lying lifeless on the grass near the curb. The man was being consoled by a passer-by. The owner was still holding the leash attached to the dog’s collar. The leash was just hanging limp. I had been living in the apartment a few months, long before I met Suzy and Mocha. The dog had apparently died of old age and the man was crying like a baby. At the time, I took in the scene and thought, “Jesus, get a hold of yourself, you pussy. It’s 92 | Embodied Effigies

The Suzy Chronicles

just a dog!”

Now, after knowing Mocha for just a few months, I had an idea of what the man had been going through.

It was a beautiful spring day, a Thursday, and I had the day off. I was driving west on Shawnee Mission Parkway in my Nissan Sentra, on my way to see my probation officer in the city of Merriam in Kansas. It was my third visit. I rode the bus for the two other visits. Now, even though I’d lost my driving privileges in Kansas, I was behind the wheel. I figured it was a nice day and the roads were dry. All I had to do was drive defensively and— BAM! An old woman pulled out from a side street right in front of me! I saw her face as I veered to the right and then slammed into her door. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was gaping.

As I was sitting behind the wheel in the middle of the street, all I could think was that I was going back to jail. The judge would revoke my probation for driving in Kansas—even though the accident wasn’t my fault—and send me back to jail for six months.

The woman drove across Shawnee Mission Parkway and then parked on a side street. I made a left turn and parked behind her. We both got out of their vehicles.

“What the hell?” I said, raising my arms in angry frustration.

“What happened?”

The woman was on the verge of tears. She put her hands over her mouth. “I know! I’m sorry! Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

She looked at my car. The front end was smashed in. The left headlight was busted and the hood was crumpled.

“Maybe we can just exchange insurance information,” I said.

Just then a stout man wearing a sports coat appeared. He started surveying the damage on my car. “Oh, no!” he said. “You got more than five hundred dollars in damage here.” He raised his arm. He was holding a walkie-talkie. “Don’t worry. I radioed a patrol car. They’re on their way over.”

That’s when I noticed the unmarked police car parked across the street. He was an undercover cop.

Jesus, that’s all I need, I thought.

I had learned an important rule when I was young: keep your Embodied Effigies | 93

Reyna

mouth shut, especially when dealing with the cops. You can never go wrong. Don’t give any more information than you have to, just name, rank, and serial number.

We all smoked while we waited. Finally, the cruiser arrived. A female officer stepped out. I reacted the way most men would when seeing a female police officer: I breathed a sigh of relief. The officer asked what happened, asked if anyone was hurt, and then inspected the damage on both vehicles. She collected our licenses, registrations and insurance cards and then went back to her cruiser. She got behind the wheel and closed the door.

I still had my Missouri driver’s license, even though I had my Kansas driving privileges revoked. They didn’t ask me to surrender my license in court and I didn’t volunteer. After about ten minutes the officer came back to us. I was prepared for her to put me in cuffs and haul me off to jail, but she didn’t. She just handed us back our information and gave us each a copy of her report.

“File these with you insurance companies,” she said. She turned to the woman and pointed at her. “And you… be more careful.”

I got back behind the wheel of my Nissan Sentra, with the left headlight busted and the hood crumpled in agony, and continued to the city of Merriam, deeper into the state of Kansas, to make the appointment with my probation officer.

I was glad I didn’t have to go back to jail. I did five days in the Johnson County Detention Center in Olathe back in March. I scheduled vacation time from the arts and crafts store to do the time. Suzy dropped me off at the detention center on a Monday morning. She used my car during that week to go to her two jobs, at the arts and crafts store, and at the FedEx complex.

My divorce was finalized at the courthouse right next to the detention center. That was in February. I remember walking into the courthouse with my then still legal wife and looking to that big hunk of stone, steel and glass, which was the detention center, and thinking, “I’ll be seeing you next month.” My wife and I didn’t get lawyers for our divorce. I think she just checked out a copy of “Divorce for Dummies” from the library. We even sat next to each other during the proceedings. The courtroom was small, about three quarters the size of a normal courtroom. The judge was a big man. He looked imposing stuffed into the small room with that black robe draped over him. “Mr. Reyna,” the judge called out, peering over his bifo94 | Embodied Effigies

The Suzy Chronicles

cals at the empty bench on his right side of the aisle.

“Here,” I called out, raising my hand. I was sitting hip to hip with my soon to be ex-wife.

I had never been to jail before, at least not for an extended period of time. My father and brothers and most of the men I had grown up around had been to jail. Where I came from, back in Los Angeles, it was almost a rite of passage. In the weeks leading up to my having to report to the detention center I would go through periods of anxiety at the prospect of being locked up. Then I would hear the voice of my dead older brother, Gilbert: “Five days,” he would say, laughing. “Five days! Is that all? I can do five days standing on my head!” Or I would remember the story my stepsister Anna’s boyfriend Roy told me when I was thirteen years old. Roy was a bad-ass biker who looked like a cross between the singer Tony Orlando and Charles Manson on that famous TIME Magazine cover. Roy told me that he was in a holding pen at the LA County Jail and a big black guy lined everyone up against the wall and went down the line, pointing at each man and saying, “I’m gonna fuck you… I’m gonna fuck you… I’m gonna fuck you…” When he got to Roy, he paused and then skipped over him, continuing down the line. “I’m gonna fuck you… I’m gonna fuck you…”

Jail just turned out to be tedious and boring. The only fear I had was that I would fall off of that narrow top bunk and crack my skull (They had lined the common area of the facility with bunk beds because of overcrowding). I exercised by the side of my bunk, doing sit-ups and push-ups and running in place; I walked the perimeter, ate, drank coffee and watched TV in the morning, and read Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities”.

I was released on Saturday morning. Suzy picked me up. When I turned my cell phone on in the car I saw I had twelve missed calls from my friend, Ashley.

Ashley was seventeen years old. She was beautiful, with dark hair and big brown eyes. I met her the previous summer, when I was working at Hobby Lobby, the arts and crafts store I had quit to come back to Michael’s.

Ashley had come to the store with her grandmother to get some family photos framed. I helped them. After that Ashley would come to the store to visit me. She lived nearby and had just gotten her driver’s license and a car. I knew that Ashley’s visits raised eyebrows with the other employees at the store. When I started working at Michael’s, Ashley would come to the store to visit me.

Suzy was scandalized.

Embodied Effigies | 95

Reyna

a joke.

“Are you a pedophile?” she had asked, not masking the question as

“No.” “You could’ve fooled me.”

“I’m not having sex with her.”

“But you would, right?”

“No. She’s too young. It would be unfair. It would be like Tiger Woods challenging me to play golf for ten dollars a hole.”

Suzy wasn’t convinced. I didn’t care. My conscience was clear. I knew that millions of years of evolution had instilled a paternal instinct in me, and that instinct needed to be directed somewhere. Since I didn’t have my own children, I directed that instinct at Ashley. I loved going out to lunch with her, or talking on the phone about school or her boyfriends.

I loved giving her advice.

I called Ashley when I got home.

“Where were you?”

“In jail,” I replied.

“In jail? For what?”

“That DUI I got back in November.”

“You didn’t tell me you were going to jail!”

“It’s not something I wanted to brag about.”

“Why not? I think it’s cool.”

“You would.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you have an adventurous spirit.”

“Are you going to write about it?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you have gay butt sex?”

“No.” “Can I come over?”

“Sure.”

Ashley was a “fashionista”. She came over with her sewing kit, which looked like a big plastic toolbox, and some patterns and fabric. She was working on dresses for a fashion show coming up at her high school.

I sat in my chair and smoked a cigar while Ashley worked on her dresses.

“Does your grandmother know you’re here?”

She rolled her eyes and nodded.

96 | Embodied Effigies

The Suzy Chronicles

“She still doesn’t trust me,” I said, with a smile.

“I told her, ‘Grandma, if Louis was going to rape me and kill me he would’ve done it by now!’”

I laughed.

Ashley went on about the fashion show and the other girls in the show and how they were “haters” and all the other gossip and fighting and backstabbing.

I listened intently, but I knew that Ashley had come over for a bigger reason than to tell me about the fashion show.

Finally, she turned to me with those big brown eyes. “Can I borrow sixty dollars?”

“For what?”

“For a pair of shoes for the show. I’ll pay you back, I swear!”

“Jesus, don’t insult me,” I said, “There’s a coffee can in the cupboard above the microwave. Take what you need.”

She came over and wrapped her arms around my neck. “Thank you, papi!”

I have a rule: I don’t loan money out. If I can spare it and you need it, then it’s yours. Don’t bother paying it back.

I watched Ashley get into her car from the window of that second floor apartment. I knew I wouldn’t hear from her for a couple of months.

But that was ok. I also knew that if Ashley were really my daughter, then that’s what it would be like: I’d only see her when she needed money.

It was summer, and it was time for Suzy and Mocha to get their own apartment, away from that drug-infested ghetto of an apartment complex near the Bannister Mall—and away from Alexis, the young Englishman. Suzy kept complaining that he was getting more jealous of me. I had made Suzy a card for Valentine’s Day. She loved The Beatles. On the front of the card was a cartoon of a bull with his hooves clasped in front of him, a faraway look in his eyes, and hearts-a-poppin’ over his head. The bull was gazing longingly at a cow grazing out in a field. The inside of the card read: Something in the way she MOOS… attracts me like no UDDER lover.

Suzy told me that she came home one night and Alexis was sitting on the sofa in the dark. When Suzy switched on the light she saw that he was holding the card in his hand, and he was pissed.

He tossed the card on the coffee table and said, “Pretty fookin’ clevah!”

Embodied Effigies | 97

Reyna

Suzy found a ground floor apartment in a six unit brick building in Gilham Park, not far from where I lived in South Moreland Park. It was a two bedroom with wood floors and a screened porch. I helped her move.

We packed my Nissan with boxes and bags of clothes. The pieces of furniture that couldn’t fit in the car got strapped to the roof.

Suzy’s car was still in the parking lot. It was a late model Chevrolet, a Celebrity or something like that. The transmission had gone out and she abandoned it. Now, it was all rusted and trees limbs were working their way into the driver’s side window, which couldn’t roll up all the way. She wanted to have the car hauled off and sold for scrap but she couldn’t find the title. She spent a couple of hours that Saturday looking for that slip of paper while Mocha and I looked on. It was a vicious and insane spectacle.

Finally, she gave up.

“Let someone just take it,” she said, waving her arms over her head.

“I don’t care!”

I’m a control freak, which makes me fastidious when it comes to how my apartment is organized. I have everything in its place and a place for everything. Suzy, on the other hand, was, in my eyes, like most everyone else: a slob. She lived among piles. It seemed clear to me that she was just transferring piles from her old apartment to the new one.

I tried to give her a few tips. “If you still have a box that hasn’t been unpacked for two weeks, then toss it. Don’t even bother to look what’s in it.

Just toss it.”

She was scrubbing the bathtub. “Jesus,” she said, as she wiped the strands of hair from her forehead, “when you’re not sounding like a cop you’re sounding like my mom” Since Suzy’s credit was in ruins because of all the credit card debt she’d racked up with her ex-boyfriend, she couldn’t even open a bank account. I deposited her pay check into my bank account and then wrote out a check for her rent. The landlords were a married couple in their midthirties who lived just down the block. Suzy would deliver the check when she and I were out walking Mocha.

“They probably think I’m your sugar daddy,” I once commented as Suzy waved goodbye to the young couple standing on their porch.

“I wish I had a sugar daddy,” Suzy replied.

After Suzy got settled into her new place I decided to lay my cards on the table.

“Look,” I said, “if I keep hanging around, then I’m going to want 98 | Embodied Effigies

The Suzy Chronicles

us to be together. If you don’t want that, or if you think I’m too old for you, then I’ll understand. You’re on your own now. You might want to start dating men your own age. If that’s the case, then don’t expect me to hang around.”

I was standing in the center of the living room making my speech.

I wanted to be able to make a quick exit. She was sitting on the sofa.

“Are you saying you don’t want to be my friend anymore?”

“Not if you’re going to be dating other guys. I don’t want to be around for that. I like you too much. It would be emasculating.”

She was angry. “I can’t believe this.”

“I’m just being honest. I thought that’s what women wanted.”

“You’re saying you won’t be my friend unless I sleep with you.”

I sighed in frustration. “No! I’m saying I want to be more than friends with you. But if you don’t want that I’ll understand. I just don’t want to be around if you’re going to be sleeping with another guy. I’m not you’re gay boyfriend.”

“Why can’t we still have sex and not be together… at least not as boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“That’s not possible.”

“What’s not possible?”

“For two people to have sex and not be emotionally committed.”

“I can.”

“No you can’t,” I said. “You just think you can. It’s easier for a man to have sex without an emotional commitment. We’re programmed for it.

But with women, it’s almost impossible. Your brain releases a chemical that emotionally bonds you with your partner. It’s a fact. It’s science.”

She sat forward on the edge of the sofa and started pulling her long hair into a ponytail. “Well, I don’t care what science says. I can have sex and not be emotionally committed. I want us to be together.”

That was the beginning of a relationship that would rival the best and worst parts of my ten-year marriage. Before it was over, I would tell Suzy, “I will never love another woman the way I loved my ex-wife… And I will never want to love another woman the way I love you.”

Embodied Effigies | 99

The Visitation Iris Dorbian

He told me he was a direct descendant of Dutch royalty and even showed me an antique ring on his finger claiming it was an heirloom tracing back to the Hapsburgs. He also told me that his mother was an engineer who worked at Cape Canaveral and that he was a member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Oscar voter but he decided not to vote that year because he was protesting the insipidness of the nominations and the movie industry in general. He also said that he had a roommate who defecated in the elevator and another one who was Oedipally involved with his mother.

But the real whopper that stood out from the rest concerned a devastating car accident that Paul had been involved in many Christmases ago when he was still a student at a small college in Vermont before transferring to NYU. During the holiday break, Paul was driving a car while his beloved fiancÊe Francesca was in the passenger’s seat. It was late and the snow was falling down very heavily. Paul and Francesca were coming back from eating dinner at a local restaurant where they had stayed past closing time, drinking wine and chatting with the other customers. They were heading back to the dorm in Burlington when Paul noticed a deer running across the road. Swerving to avoid hitting the animal, he ended up hitting a pole, killing Francesca instantly and causing him injuries that landed him in a hospital for months.

Because he was so grief-stricken, he dropped out of school in Vermont and decided to make a clean break with his recent tragic past by applying to NYU where he was accepted on a scholarship.

It was a story that when he would tell it, his eyes would show that he was reliving the whole horrific experience of losing the love of his life in a terrible twist of fate. I didn’t know what to believe. Was this true or another fabrication? I was never sure but somehow I always wanted to believe him, particularly because at times he seemed like a lost kindred spirit.

But often when Paul was spinning yet another possible yarn, one Embodied Effigies | 101

Dorbian

that mutual acquaintances threatened to expose by sleuthing into his past, I’d beg them to stop, suspecting that once the veil of illusion was lifted, there would be nothing left of this enigmatic hologram that was my friend.

His pain stemmed from being physically homely in a world preoccupied with beauty. With his pockmarked face, bulbous nose, lopsided mouth and searching eyes, Paul compensated for his unprepossessing features by becoming something akin to a modern age dandy. Tart-tongued and always dressed with a sartorial flair that you would never see in slovenly fellow undergrads, Paul was flashy and flamboyant, part Oscar Wilde, part beast. An art and drama major, Paul insinuated himself into my life early into my junior year. We met through the same mutual friends who later warned me that Paul was not who he said he was—that he lied as fluently as he breathed air.

But I didn’t care or rather I ignored all that, choosing to concentrate more on the hilarious barbs he’d cavalierly toss into every conversation like a champagne-popping refugee from an Noel Coward play. He made me laugh and was a sympathetic listener after I got inducted into the pantheon of post-adolescent heartbreak, having been dumped by a fellow classmate for another girl following a two-month romance.

Talking to Paul was tantamount to therapy, except in this instance, I didn’t overdraw my limited checking account. Plus, it was so much fun dishing the dirt with him—we truly felt like two blended souls that year, with our commonality being a desire to flee our fragile identities. He needed to escape from his physicality by creating a world of high aesthetics; and I needed to escape from the fear I was nothing more than a mousy Jewish girl from New Jersey and not the exotic creature of glamour I yearned to be.

Sadly, our bond derailed the following semester, the beginning of my senior year. It had nothing to do with Paul’s suspected penchant for telling falsehoods about himself. Rather, the real culprit was my involvement with Bobby, a friend of Paul’s. Although Paul had no problem revealing that Bobby was interested in me, he would counter that by issuing me vague ultimatums that our friendship would be ruined if I slept with Bobby.

It wasn’t so much that Paul was jealous, he claimed; rather it was Bobby’s lifestyle he found objectionable. And yet it was okay for Paul to be friends with Bobby because he was a guy and supposedly not interested in Bobby or myself. But then Paul did freely own up to having bisexual pro102 | Embodied Effigies

The Visitation

clivities so I didn’t know what to believe.

Although Bobby had identified himself as gay and was at the time we met being kept by an older wealthy investment banker, he was terminally promiscuous with both men and women, flitting in out and of bed with strangers the way someone liked going through a bag of potato chips.

It was all sport for the sexually omnivorous and insatiable Bobby, who with his rugged good looks, tall, trim physique and mischievous cobalt blue eyes had no trouble attracting lovers.

I tried resisting Bobby at first but it was difficult. Certainly my lovelorn state made me more vulnerable to his advances. But after accidentally seeing the previous object of my desire engaged in a steamy smooch with his current paramour on the corner of University Place and 8th Street, I soon capitulated to the sandy-haired and sexy Bobby.

Except for my roommate, I told no one about my relationship with Bobby. He, on the other hand, told everyone. Soon word reached Paul and he began to avoid me.

One day I ran into him in the dorm lobby. He looked visibly thinner and was wearing heavy eye makeup and eyeliner that reminded me of one of those glam rock stars from the early ‘70s, people like Marc Bolan of T. Rex or early Bowie. In those five minutes he griped about everything and everyone under his radar.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked him.

“No, why would you think I’m mad at you?” he shot back.

“You just seem a little…angry and bitter.”

“I’m fine. Don’t you worry about me. You worry about yourself.”

He then stalked out of the dorm, leaving me standing there, confused and speechless.

Shortly after my odd run-in with Paul, he surprised me by visiting.

He looked delighted about something. I grew very tense and started stuttering.

“Uh, P-P-aul. Wha-Wha-t are you doing here?”

“Listen, I want us to be friends again. I missed you!” He leaned over and hugged me, practically crushing my ribs. I felt like a lox in his embrace.

“I have to show you something,” he excitedly exclaimed.

In his left hand were photos of a young dancer in performance. I recognized the person in the photos as Bill, a dance student at the School of the Arts, who also lived in our dorm. Paul had met Bill through a mutual Embodied Effigies | 103

Dorbian

acquaintance a month before and since then, they were inseparable.

“He’s at rehearsal tonight. That’s why he’s not here with me,” he said, as if anticipating my next question.

But that wasn’t the question crossing my mind: I was just wondering, given Paul’s tendency to embellish, if this relationship was real and not just a friendship Paul was mythologizing into a romance.

Paul was shrewd. He quickly read my thoughts, which shamed me.

“Can you believe it, Iris? He loves me. Someone who looks like that, who is as beautiful inside as he is outside. I want you to get to know him. The next time we go out for dinner—not at one of the dorms—a real dinner at a real restaurant, I want you to join us. You’ll like him a lot. He’s a sensitive soul. Just like us.”

Upon saying this, he clutched my hand and I could feel the warmth of his blood practically course into my own.

That was the last time I saw him alive. Two weeks later, I walked into the dorm lobby and found myself literally walking into John Matthews, the dorm administrator and the other administrator, Marianne, a robust blonde who always looked like she walked off the slopes, even in summer. They both were standing vigil outside the dorm’s entrance, looking jittery and anxious. They were waiting for me.

“Iris, we need to talk to you right away,” said a stricken Marianne.

Her expression frightened me.

Alarmed, I immediately glanced at John, whose face was devoid of color.

“Did I do something wrong?” I asked nervously as they both ushered me into John’s office. Marianne shut the door. Though there were several chairs in the room, we all remained standing.

He shook his head at me. “No, it’s not you. It’s about a good friend of yours.”

Marianne continued: “Iris, I’m sorry to tell you this but…Paul died early this morning.”

I stared at her.

“What? What do you mean he died this morning?” I cried out. I tried to steel my quavering voice, to compose myself but it was futile.

John told me that Paul’s roommate Sam, a pre-med jock from Alabama, was the one who discovered Paul dead in his bed. At first, Sam didn’t think anything was wrong: He thought Paul was just in a deep sleep. But then he noticed something strange—Paul wasn’t breathing. To get a sign of 104 | Embodied Effigies

The Visitation

life, Sam shook him a few times to wake him up. Nothing.

Terrified, Sam then knocked on John’s door. John alerted Marianne and this resident fellow named Joe, a law student who had once been a marine, to check out what was going on with Paul. Joe administered CPR to Paul for ten very vain minutes.

“It’s useless. He’s gone,” he whispered to John and Marianne, while Sam sobbed near by.

“What happened?” I asked. Normally, I would consider drugs but Paul never took the stuff. At least, I never saw him take anything. His only vice was his tremendous insecurity that caused him to devise tall tales about himself. But that wasn’t a crime. You can’t die from fibbing too much.

“We don’t know,” said John.

“The autopsy will be in a few days—then we should know,” replied Marianne.

Their commingling voices raged in my head like a discordant fugue I could not control. Oh my god, he was just 21 years old.

“I saw him last week. He was in good spirits. Happy…” I glanced at John and Marianne, “and in love.”

“Yes, we know,” said Marianne. “Bill. He was the first person we told. We asked him if there was anyone else we should tell before we publicly announce that Paul died and he said, ‘Yes...Iris.’”

My throat clenched a bit when I heard this. The pain tightened in my larynx so hard that for a second I couldn’t speak or cry.

I shook my head and understood. Nodding, I told them both: “Well then, I’ll have to start telling people.”

Feeling like a robot, as I strove to stifle the grief—and anger—welling up inside, I walked to Bobby’s room and knocked on the door to tell him the news. Prior to today, I had resolved never to speak to Bobby again.

I got into a stupid argument with him a few days before—it was about his never being around, always gallivanting from one gay bar to another; plus, I was sick and tired of dealing with Lucy, another girlfriend of his, who was growing increasingly jealous of my presence in Bobby’s life.

But now as I stood outside Bobby’s room, prepared to break the news of Paul’s death to him, all of these annoyances receded into oblivion.

It didn’t matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was our coming to terms with the suddenness of Paul’s demise and its mysterious circumstances.

“What the hell did he die of?” I asked Bobby, as I sat on the chair Embodied Effigies | 105

Dorbian

behind his desk and he stood up, pacing furiously back and forth, trying to inject meaning into something that made no fundamental sense whatsoever.

He lowered his head, then straightened it for a moment, looking sad and pensive.

“I think he killed himself.”

My throat ached. I thought the same thing.

“He didn’t take drugs, Bobby. I never saw him take anything. We were the druggies. Not Paul…Why did this happen?”

There were so many rumors—he died of a heart attack, he had a stroke, he died of natural causes. All of these causes I found preposterous because they were something old people died of, not a presumably healthy 21-year-old. We all assumed a drug overdose but had never gotten any confirmation. And every time I’d walk into John and Marianne’s office to ask them if the autopsy results had come in, I’d get the same canned answer: “It’s still unclear.”

Subsequent weeks were spent taking finals and later preparing for graduation. I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life but at least I had a life. I was alive with a future ahead of me. Paul was gone, a supposed close friend and I never knew him.

The mystery of who he was and how he died haunted me for a long while but it didn’t stop other dramatic events from transpiring. Two weeks after I graduated from NYU, I found out I was pregnant. I called Bobby who was in the Hamptons with the banker, about to embark on a world cruise with him. Because we both agreed we were not ready to raise a child, we thought it would be best if I had an abortion, which I did a few days later.

After the procedure, Bobby called me to find out how I was doing.

We periodically stayed in touch until he returned in September to start his junior year. He never once mentioned Paul nor did I ever bring him up. It was like on the surface we had both moved on. The same applied to whatever remained of our tenuous relationship. Listening to Bobby regale me with his nocturnal misadventures no longer held the same perverse appeal as they did prior to Paul’s death. So I stopped calling him and he reciprocated with silence.

Shortly after graduation, I began to have these recurring dreams about Paul. In one dream, I was walking through Washington Square Park when suddenly I saw him standing in front of me. Instead of the debonair 106 | Embodied Effigies

The Visitation

amiability he would always exude when we initially became friends, the dream Paul was overtly apathetic toward me, even a bit hostile.

Approaching him, I’d ask: “Paul, what are you doing here? I thought you were dead.” Uninterested, he drew away from me, muttering a few unintelligible words I couldn’t catch before striding off. Then I woke up.

There were other dreams where Paul would make a cameo appearance, the way a well-known film star would make a cameo on a sitcom. I would always be surprised by his presence and in each dream, he’d remain detached from me, impervious to whatever friendship we might have had prior to his passing.

The guilt that overtook me right after he died intensified the weeks and months that ensued. Though I was no longer as numb and in shock about his passing, I still wondered if there was anything I could have done to help him. He was the first friend of mine to have died--and so young.

It made no sense and certainly my school provided no answers as to the cause of death.

After spending that summer in a sublet in East Harlem, I ran out of money and moved back to my parents’ house in New Jersey. It was there during the course of a week, I had the most unsettling experience. To this day I wonder if it was real or perhaps a transitory lunge into madness.

Soon after I moved in, I kept getting awakened by the sound of my bedroom door opening, steps creaking on the floor and a weird wind blowing against my face. It was scary but I was also intrigued.

It continued like this unbroken, a disquieting otherworldly ritual, until one night I sensed something, inexplicable and imperceptible, sitting on my bed. It felt like a shallow depression people make when they sit on a sofa or chair. Then a gentle, sweet kiss lightly pricked the left side of my cheek and I knew. I recognized this sensation instantly and who it belonged to. It was Paul who had died six months before. Except for the brief period when he avoided me, (probably because he found out about Bobby and me) he would always kiss me on the left side of my cheek when greeting me or saying goodbye.

I interpreted this “visitation,” I didn’t know what else to call it, as Paul’s way of telling me not to feel guilty about his death and that he wasn’t mad at me when he died. I feared he had been even though he told me he wanted us to be friends again.

I never felt or heard his presence again. There was no Casper the Embodied Effigies | 107

Dorbian

Friendly Ghost apparition, no poltergeist-like infliction of torment, no sinister incorporeal effusions—just a kindly, benign spirit letting me know that yes it wasn’t completely in my imagination and he did exist.

“It was me, Iris and you didn’t even know,” he told me in the last dream I ever had about him, almost three decades ago.

Ah, but you were wrong, Paul. I did. I did.

108 | Embodied Effigies

The Dog Brad Garber

It started with the cat.

I didn’t want the cat. We already had two cats, two outdoor cats that were free, tough and unobtrusive, and loving when they wanted food.

My wife wanted a “Persian,” a smashed-faced fluff ball that is totally unsuited to normal cat existence. The cat could, obviously, not live outside with the other two. It would have to be a “house” cat. I didn’t want it. My wife wanted it. She’d found a website (those most horrible of information sources) where people who raised Persian cats, took photos of them and sold the little smashed-faced fluff balls to unsuspecting people all over the world. My wife saw a picture of a white cotton ball with a mouth and an asshole and fell in love with it. She wanted it. She would take care of it. She would brush it every day. She would bathe it and cut its toenails and clean up its puke. She would be the happiest person in the whole world. She enlisted the help of my daughter, who has the same locus on her sex chromosome that makes her go gaga about smashed-faced fluff balls, and I had two relentless females begging me for permission to purchase yet another cat.

Now, let’s not jump to conclusions. I (contrary to the opinions of some) do NOT hate animals. I like animals. I am the kind of person who will pick up a drowning worm on the sidewalk and throw it into the grass, so it might have a chance to live. I can’t remember how many insects I have saved, how many rodents I have swerved to miss on the highway, how many birds I have fed in sub-zero temperatures, or how many dogs and cats I have massaged to sleep. I like animals. I came to Oregon to enroll in a graduate program in marine biology because I like animals.

But, pets are another matter. Pets are obligations, although they go out of their way to make you feel otherwise. I’ve taken to characterizing dogs as mentally challenged children. You can’t leave them too much food, because they only have an “on” switch and will eat until they’re sick. Then, they’ll run into your bedroom and puke under the bed. They get sick and can’t tell you where it hurts. They bring worms into the house, after digging Embodied Effigies | 109

Garber

up the garden, and smear them into the carpet. They fart indiscriminately, in the presence of anyone. Cats are a bit better, but not all that much. They hack up hairballs and dead mouse parts, in the middle of the night, on the bedspread. They harbor fleas that are immune to any deadly chemical.

They chew their nails off and leave them lying about the floor, or scratch them off in the furniture. They kick their litter all over the floor and drop remnants of their bowel movements all over the house. Worst of all, if they don’t like you, they piss all over everything. Dogs never hate you; they’re too stupid. Cats hate you and make sure you know about it.

So, after hours and days and months of relentless pecking, I broke down and purchased a small, female, Persian cat and presented it to my wife as a Christmas present. Technically, I gave her the money and she drove four hours, into the next state, to pick it up. It was, of course, ridiculously cute. It was the size of a can of soup and looked like a dust bunny.

And…it had the attitude of a Doberman. Everyone instantly became attached to this diminutive empress as soon as she entered the household.

It was readily apparent that she knew how to win me over. She went to the litter box, climbed in and did her duty. That was enough. I accepted her into the family. Any animal that doesn’t walk into my castle and crap in it is okay.

My wife named this little spitball of a cat, “Flash.” It was a fitting name. She would run through the house like a piece of lint, and leap into the air like an acrobat, flip around and start all over again. Even though she weighed about three pounds, nothing stood in her way. And, she had this endearing quality (which she still has) of holding out one paw and scooping it under, like she was picking up a prized gem. It’s kind of a “queen” thing. When she found a bug crawling across the floor, she would try to scoop it up. When she was successful in her attempt, she would hold it in front of her squat face and examine it, like it was something precious. On one occasion, I watched this animal with a brain the size of my thumbnail, climb under, on top of, and around the back of the television, in an effort to discover where the picture was coming from. She is not a clueless animal.

It came to pass that (according to my wife and child) Flash “needed” a friend. After all, we had two cats that came and went as they pleased and paid no attention to the queen in the house. Poor thing. She had no friends. Such is the common lot of royalty. Being the smashed-faced fluff that she was, she could not possibly fend for herself in the real world of cats. She needed another similarly crippled cat to befriend and frolic with, 110 | Embodied Effigies

The Dog

some other long-haired, functionally impaired, smashed-faced cat to snort around the house with. Low and behold, the dreaded website advertised the existence of yet another hapless cat that needed a family. Oh sure, why not? This one would purportedly be my daughters. She promised to take care of it, brush it every day, bathe it, cut its nails, yada yada yada….

Enter second house cat, Cocoa. I can’t remember how he got his name; I wasn’t asked about my ideas for a name, like “Dustball,” or “Smashmouth,” or “Ragmop.” This cat, a male, is part Persian, part Himalayan, part terrorist, part Dom DeLuise. His fur is dusky gray, about two feet long and thick as new shag carpet. He has whiskers that stick straight out from his face like antennae and are lighter in color than the rest of his face, so he looks like he has a “Fu Manchu” moustache. Cocoa quickly followed Flash’s lead in dictating how the household was to be run. My bed was his bed; my wife was his wife; my quiet time on the toilet, at 6:00 a.m., was his quiet time. Except, it really wasn’t his quiet time. It was his time to come in, look at me, and wail. When I tried to pet him, from a rather limited sitting position, he would flop on his side so I couldn’t reach him. Then, feeling slighted, he would sit back up again and wail until I stroked him, at which point he would flop onto his side again, thus making himself unreachable.

It was maddening, at 6:00 a.m., when all I wanted to do was take a nice pleasant dump.

It soon became apparent that I was water boy to the cats. As soon as I woke up in the morning, the house cats were like shadows, following me down the hall, into the kitchen, into the bathroom, into the living room. Wherever I walked, there they were. Especially, Flash. She wanted food. And she wanted a particular kind of food. She wanted canned food, and she wanted it NOW! And that’s not where it ended. The outdoor cats, Chance and Spyder, were lurking outside, peering in through the French doors, hooking their claws in the screens and pulling on them, crying for food…any kind of food, just FOOD! FOOD NOW! So much for a peaceful start to the day. I decided to develop a routine, just so I could have some peace of mind. Of course, there’s nothing that pets love more than a routine. They know when you wake up, when your bare feet try to sneak down the hallway, when you take a leak, when you open drawers in the kitchen, when they should hear the metallic snap of an opened can of food….they are, unfortunately, much smarter than they should be. And these cats (all four of them) had me pegged. As did (it turns out) my wife and daughter.

I really don’t know if Al Gore invented the Internet. I don’t know Embodied Effigies | 111

Garber

if he even had a small part in its development. All I know is that, whoever it was who invented the damned thing, they ought to be buried up to their neck in dog shit and cat litter. My wife stumbled, ambled, wandered (whatever) onto an internet site that ships “rescued” dogs all over the nation.

Rescued from what? Derision? Gut-splitting laughter? Embarrassment?

These were not just any kind of dog, mind you, but Bostons. “Bostons.”

The word conjures up a city where our nation was born. I still, to this day, wonder why the name of the city has anything to do with the name of the dog. It’s a squat little black and white dog, with jaws like a bear trap, and a nose that disappears into its head somewhere. It has eyes that put a frog to shame and a tail (when it’s not lopped off at birth) that hooks around and threatens to get caught on doors, blackberry bushes, and bedspreads. I’m wondering why the City of Boston would put up with such a dog. Is the city shaped like a seal with legs? Is it half black, half white? Is it inherently ugly, kind of ogre-like? Does its garbage smell like a fart from hell? My wife took a look at the mug shots on the internet site and decided that she had to have one of these things.

She showed me pictures of the dog while I was at home. She emailed me pictures of the dog when I was at work. “Oh, isn’t he cute?” she’d ask. Are you serious? I would think. The poor animal looked like someone strapped it to the front of their car and ran into the garage door with it.

Cute, in the way that naked mole rats are cute, maybe. “He’s really a good guy,” she’d say. Good at what, standing on his face? And then, “I’ll take care of him, you won’t have to.” Yeah, like I believed that line. She enlisted the kids again. The whole family, except grumpy old dad, wanted the dog.

They stood around the computer screen, each night, oohing and ahhing at each online photo of the dog that was posted by this damned “rescue” place in Texas. It certainly wasn’t rescuing me from anything; it was subjecting me to the verbal and emotional equivalent of Chinese water torture, every night! In order to keep from going insane, I agreed that the dog could make the journey to Oregon and stay with us. I made it absolutely clear, however, that the kids and my wife were to bathe him, feed him, take him for walks, clean up his poop, etc., etc. Not in MY job description. Of course, they readily agreed to my terms, knowing full well what would happen once the dog arrived.

My wife and I met Gabe on a rainy February day, at the airport.

The little porker weighed about 40 pounds. He was a sumo wrestler among Bostons. Watching him step out of his carrier was like watching a rugby 112 | Embodied Effigies

The Dog

ball move all by itself. How those four little stick-like legs supported him was beyond comprehension. All I could think of was how bumble bees are aerodynamically not supposed to be able to fly. He shouldn’t have been able to walk. His head was screwed on so tight that he had no neck. His eyes looked like they were about halfway out of their sockets already and maybe a good sneeze would send them popping out onto the floor. His ears stood up like cardboard triangles that had been glued there as part of a kindergarten art project. His tail was clearly a mistake. It was a tail caught in the act of trying to leave, because it was embarrassed. It exited his rugby ball body like it was going to go somewhere, then took a sharp 90 degree turn and petered out in a sharp little point about two inches from where it started. Gabe looked at me with his buggy eyes and wiggled his rudimentary tail. That’s all it took; I was sold. I was his friend.

We took Gabe outside the freight warehouse, where he proceeded to pee on every decorative plant along its outside wall. Then, he quite happily climbed into the car and grinned. Yes, grinned. Bostons have a jaw that curves around their round head, from ear to ear, kind of like a hippopotamus. When they open that mouth, they look like the dot eating character in a Pac Man game. When they are excited or happy, they draw their lips back and smile. Gabe smiled all the way home from the airport. Being a four-year-old “rescued” dog, he had been through some tough days and he had the scars to prove it. Those days were all behind him now. He clearly felt that he had found a home.

Flash and Cocoa were not so sure that Gabe had found a home.

And his presence was met with some resistance from Chance and Spyder, too, although it was muted and expressed, primarily, by momentary posturing followed by a retreat to safety. Chance is a big cat, so I half expected a showdown. But it was Flash, the five-pound Tasmanian devil, who decided early on to let Gabe know where he stood. She walked up to him and stuck her smashed nose in his smashed nose. It was kind of like two people backing into each other. She sniffed. He sniffed and wiggled his hooked tail. Then, as if to say, “You ain’t shit,” she calmly turned away and walked to her favorite perch. Gabe was not used to the cold shoulder. He stood there, somewhat dumfounded. Should he attack? Should he be happy with this ambiguous acceptance into the family? He stood there for a second, pondering, then snorted and trotted off in search of a friendlier animal.

It did not take long for Gabe to work his way into the household psyche. He gets along with the cats, he doesn’t chew the furniture, he is Embodied Effigies | 113

Garber

quiet, and he doesn’t take up a lot of room. Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks. He gets anal abscesses. That’s a nice thought. It’s a nice juicy pocket of puss that swells into a painful boil next to his asshole. He’s had surgery twice on these delightful things. He’s also prone to cancer and recently had a tumor removed from his leg. His bulbous eyes collect everything floating in the air, so he has eye infections. He has a nasal problem and occasionally goes into spasms in which he snorts like a pig for about a minute. He will be walking along, like a normal dog when, suddenly, he squeals in pain or confusion when his hind leg gets stuck. It just locks in place and sticks out to the side like an artificial appendage. After a while, the tendon snaps back into place and he goes trotting off, like nothing happened. It’s disconcerting, though. Kind of interrupts the peaceful continuity of the moment. It’s kind of like living with a dog with Tourette’s syndrome. In addition, he has a heart murmur that causes him to collapse after walking about one mile. And…I have NEVER heard any animal, man or beast, which snores as loud as Gabe. His snoring reverberates through the house like a foghorn. I could find my way from one end of the house to the other, in the darkness of night, just by listening to his snoring. The snoring wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that he has taken to sleeping on MY bed. Which means I am often awakened, from a dead sleep, by the loudest nasal reverberations in the house. It sounds a lot like reverse farting and is fairly disgusting. Finally, the dog does NOT relax when he sleeps. His stick legs project into space like they were welded onto his rotund little body. He doesn’t roll. If he could be propped up on his feet, he would simply stand there, like a statue of a dog, snoring away.

Things were just settling down when my wife and child decided that Gabe needed a companion. He was, after all, surrounded by taciturn little hairballs who wanted nothing to do with him. Flash would lie in ambush and swipe a tiny paw at him, whenever he walked by, Cocoa ignored him, and the outdoor cats viewed him with general contempt and disdain.

His friends were human. So, it came to pass that the decision was made to bring yet another animal into the house, a female Boston. The decision, of course, was not mine and I, of course, resisted it (for a while). I have to admit, there was a certain symmetry to the whole thing: two outdoor cats, two indoor cats, two squatty little dogs, two human children, two human adults. I haven’t counted the spiders that have taken up residence in the house, for fear of arriving at an odd number. The female Boston, of course, was to come from the same “rescue” organization that sent Gabe to us.

114 | Embodied Effigies

The Dog

And, of course, photos were sent over the internet. The photos showed a white, rat-like, animal with large black splotches on its body. But, it was the smashed-mouth head, with the buggy eyes and hooked tail, which made it such a cute thing. She was primarily white, not common coloration for Bostons. Seems the breeder thought she was on to something, so she selected the white coat gene. Unfortunately, the “standard” of the breed is not a white-coated Boston. DUH! So, she was stuck with a bunch of white lab-rat dogs that she couldn’t get rid of. So, she pawned all of them off on the “rescue” group in Texas. We just HAD to have one.

My wife went to pick this dog up at the airport. She had previously determined that the dog would be called “Scout,” after a character in To Kill a Mockingbird. I have never read the novel, so it didn’t matter to me.

So, Scout it was. And Scout came home in a carrier that weighed more than she did. The moment of her arrival was supposed to be shrouded in secrecy, so she wasn’t mobbed by adoring children. That, of course, didn’t work. Word leaked out. It was like the night before the Oscars. Everything was abuzz. The media trucks were lined up outside the house. The tabloids were flooding the telephone lines. The neighbors were lined up around the block. Okay, not really. But, the family was quite excited. Gabe, of course, had no idea what was about to befall him.

What has befallen Gabe, and the rest of the family, is a little tiny sprite of a dog, with a smooth coat and soft underbelly and a dark coloration on her lower lip that makes her appear to be pouting all the time. It’s a very photogenic sort of thing. She has the same hooked tail as Gabe, and the same buggy little eyes. One eye, however, has a blue tint to it, which sets it off against the dark brown eye on the other side. She has the courage of a lion and the bladder of a mouse. Sure, she is tough. But, she pisses all over the carpets and bedspreads. We take her out into the backyard and she pees and poops, like a good little doggie. We bring her back into the house, thinking that she is on empty. But, that’s not how puppies work, I guess.

Five minutes later, she craps on the carpet and pees again. I’m not sure whether there is ever a break in the conveyor belt, from her tiny mouth to her tiny butt. Stuff just keeps moving through, at a steady pace. And, like Gabe, she has afflictions. I’m sure we haven’t discovered them all, yet, but the one we have discovered threatens to kill her. She’s allergic to bee stings!

Her little head blows up like her mouth is attached to a helium tank, and she has trouble breathing because of her shortened nasal passage. So, we have to watch her like a hawk when she’s outdoors, so she doesn’t stumble Embodied Effigies | 115

Garber

on a bee and make an enemy out of it. We have an emergency kit in the house that consists of Prednisone and Benadryl and two pages of instructions, which are taped to the refrigerator. Scout is a good little dog, however, and is free with her kisses, which consist of much licking of one’s chin, lips, nose, eyes, etc., etc. And, she loves to fall asleep in peoples’ laps, which seems to always mean a great deal to us humans. We get to feel protective, I guess.

I’d like to say that I have some control over this unfortunate situation, but I don’t. I’m just along for the ride. From two outdoor cats, we have accumulated four more non-human dependents. I would like to be able to declare them on my tax returns, but I don’t think the IRS would accept Chance Garber, Spyder Garber, Flash Garber, Cocoa Garber, Gabe Garber and Scout Garber as children, although it might be worth a try. People call their kids a lot of strange things, nowadays. And they are, after all, like children with particular physical and mental deficiencies which, for various politically correct reasons, will go unmentioned. Unlike children, however, they can’t be bribed into cleaning up after themselves. Their chew toys, water bowls, food bowls, collars, paw prints and hair are all over the place. I can’t begin to count the times that I’ve stepped on a dried pig ear, while on my way to the bathroom at night. I pick cat food or cat litter off the bottoms of my feet in the morning, while I’m making breakfast. And that nice, white, living room set that we moved into the house last year is spotted and gray and frayed at the bottom, where Scout’s needle-like teeth have been at work. I guess I have to admit that I still like animals and the animals in our house make it, somehow, a more livable (certainly, a more “lived in”) space. But, I’m waiting nervously, for the macaws, chimpanzees, snapping turtles, and elephants to start showing up on the doorstep.

116 | Embodied Effigies

Following Tracks Tina Vivian

There had been a tiny pair of footprints, those of a young child and I wondered if he or she had been bundled up, a scarf wound round and a hat pulled down over the ears. By nightfall the snow had covered them again leaving no evidence of a child in the world walking in the cold.

Things come into your head sometimes when you’re walking, things you forgot to do or things you want to do as soon as you get wherever you are going. I often forget those things the minute I take my hat off as though that precious information has flown right out of the top of my head once the hat wasn’t there to hold them in. All of those important phone calls, the unanswered e-mails, a fine description or the first line of a poem, rise like fog to burn off in the atmosphere.

Our footsteps are a constant problem for Steve, the one that polishes the floors. He is constantly pushing something down the halls, something that cleans or sweeps or polishes. I walk right by smiling my apologies, leaving fresh slush where he had just cleaned. When a spider’s web is destroyed over and over it gradually becomes more and more distorted.

Steve’s floors show no evidence of any mental disturbance. Even the corners are swept clean and he doesn’t complain or even scowl. Mom would have made us all stay outside until she was done and the waxed surface was completely dry. Maybe we should all take our shoes off at the door.

The squirrels leave sets of tracks in the snow. I followed one down the sidewalk the other day. He kept turning around to see if I was still coming. We just happened to be going in the same direction, but he probably thought he was being stalked, his poor little squirrel heart pounding. He took the first tree on the left clinging to the far side of the trunk, watching until I had passed.

A guy in a motorized wheel chair came out of the 7-11. He had a case of beer between his feet as he navigated through the snow and slush. At the corner he plowed through the rising water with his beer safely guarded.

There are more and more people on motorized wheelchairs in our neighEmbodied Effigies | 117

Vivian

borhood. They leave the tracks of their wheels in the snow. Or maybe it’s the same guy riding around and around because he can’t stand to be inside his house anymore with the insulation covering the windows so that it is as dark as a cave.

Tracks in the snow are anonymous unless you recognize the tread.

I followed Bobby’s tracks one day and it was almost as though we were walking together. His regular stride made me feel comforted somehow, the evidence of his presence in the world, or the impression anyway.

A set of tracks that were widely spaced looked like someone had been running. Sometimes people don’t pick up their feet and leave long sweeping tracks. The mailman had left his footprints across the yard and the children walking to and from school had walked up and down the sidewalk.

Eventually there will be so many tracks that any single tread is indistinguishable. We become a moving mass of humanity churning the snow into a rumpled mess. When it refreezes, it is like walking over old bones that have worked their way out of the ground to trip us up.

When coming inside we try to stomp the snow off of our boots but sometimes we leave a trail in the dining room like torn pieces of white paper. I want to collect them to put the pieces together and decipher the cryptic code, but they melt even as I touch them, their secret lost forever.

Hunters are happy if it snows during gun season because it makes finding the deer so much easier. The deer leave distinctive cloven prints that are so delicate and fine you can almost see them springing through the trees with their white tails flashing. We drove by a herd of deer hiding behind a house in the neighborhood while miles away a hunter we had passed earlier stared into the empty woods with his rifle across his lap.

Birds leave the most delicate tracks of all: a script in a foreign language, the scrimshaw of a migrating traveler, the lace trim of a bridal garment. They chirp and flutter in defense of the cold, leaving an etching of their survival dance.

Winter is best on a morning like this when the footsteps have all been covered. Trackless and silent, a blank sheet of paper pausing before the first word, before the first footstep mars its shining surface, leaving only a memory of tracks to follow.

118 | Embodied Effigies

Not-­Dad Brandy Bauer

Mom’s first date with Not-Dad is dinner at Applebee’s. She’s giddy in a way I’ve never known her to be, the way I probably would be if someone was taking me out, but since no boys are ever interested in me, I really don’t know how I’d act. We talk about what she’ll wear, what perfume she should put on, and then I help her pick out some casual pants and a nice sweater, perfect for an informal meal.

Not-Dad is a friend of Mom’s best friend, the woman who used to live down the street from us but later moved after her own divorce and now is living in Nags Head with a rich sugar-daddy. Not-Dad could be a sugar-daddy, too, since he used to be a nuclear physicist and drives a gold Corvette. But he’s not flashy rich the way some sugar-daddies are, so it’s hard to tell whether he really does have a lot of money or he just spent it on a few choice items.

Not-Dad looks a little like Santa Claus when you see him up close.

He’s got this very white hair that’s cut fairly short, a white beard and mustache, and blue twinkly eyes the way Santa does in all those children’s drawings. He’s even portly, and I’d bet he’d make a good version of Santa if he wore a red suit, better than those guys at the mall with the fake beards and stuffing.

But when I meet Not-Dad I’m not sure he has the personality to play Santa; he’s kind of gruff and frank, and he would probably scare the little kids. Maybe it comes from years of handling plutonium. When he arrives at the house, I let Mom meet him at the door, listening through the vent that carries noise from the front hall to the den. I perfected the art of listening through the vents back when my sister still lived with us, when I’d press one ear to the dustiness to try and discern her making out with Ken or Paco or another one of her many boyfriends. But since I know Mom isn’t going to be making out this soon, I wait until they’ve said hello and then go through the door separating the den from the rest of the house to meet him myself. He seems nice enough, not nervous the way I’d be (and Mom Embodied Effigies | 119

Bauer

is) on a first date. Maybe he takes women out a lot. I wonder if Mom cares about that.

They leave before I can get a sense of him, and I wait up watching TV until Mom comes home, but it’s not really waiting up at all since they’re back by about 8:30. Then they go into the living room and sit and chat, and I try to mute the television in the den to hear what it is they’re saying, but the vent doesn’t carry sound that well from the living room. When he leaves, Mom comes into the den and sits down and smiles.

“Well, that went well,” she says with a laugh and slight raise of her eyebrows, like she’s trying to convey something deeper that she wants to say.

“So, are you going out again?” I ask.

Mom nods her head, and says yeah, if he wants to, and I know she means she hopes he will call again.

--Not-Dad does come back again; he comes back often. Mom thinks I don’t like him because I usually leave when they’re around, but I’m not being rude, I’m just trying to give her some privacy. But Mom wants me to get to know Not-Dad better, so a few weeks after they start dating, Mom invites Not-Dad over for dinner and insists I eat with them.

I sit in the recliner in the den when he enters, engrossed in a book of Far Side cartoons. Not-Dad smells of heavy cologne. It’s not bad cologne, but it’s weird to have a man’s scent in the house. Dad never wore cologne and the only time you could smell anything on him was if you got right up under his chin when he put on aftershave. Not-Dad sits on the gray couch under the two paintings of clowns, and asks me what I’m reading. I lift up the book to show him the cover.

“Funny?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say, averting my eyes from his.

There’s an awkward silence and then Not-Dad takes the remote control and finds a football game on TV. He’s absorbed in that for several minutes until Mom comes in from the kitchen to check on us. She asks Not-Dad about his drink preference, and then she exits the room after giving me a look that reads, Go on, talk to him.

Rolling my eyes, I turn back to my book and try to find a cartoon I can show him. I find one that’s particularly relevant, one inside a nuclear power plant. There’s this canary with three eyes sitting in this cage and a scientist guy screaming, “The canary has mutated!” I mark the page with 120 | Embodied Effigies

Not-Dad

my finger and go stand next to the couch.

“Look at this one,” I say, leaning over Not-Dad and pointing to the cartoon with my finger.

Not-Dad reads it aloud and then laughs heartily, a real belly laugh that makes me laugh too. Then he looks at the cartoon on the page next to it, and reads it, too.

“Roses are red, violets are blue, that’s what they tell me, because I’m blind,” the sign on this blind man’s shoulders reads.

Not-Dad laughs at that one too, and pretty soon I’m sitting on the couch beside him, pointing out other ones I think are funny.

When we get up after a few minutes to eat dinner, Not-Dad winks at Mom with this look that reads I told you we could be friends. Even though it vaguely annoys me, I don’t let on. So what if he thinks we’re friends? I guess things could be worse.

--Mom tells me Not-Dad was a medic in the Korean War. He joined up when he was barely 18, and got shipped out and saw all this crazy stuff that you hear about in movies, but you never have met anyone in real life who’s experienced it. She tells me Not-Dad watches M*A*S*H and cries, and I think how strange it is to cry at that show, which is just a bunch of guys in green making dumb jokes and that one guy wearing women’s clothing. I want to ask Not-Dad about his term in the service, but Mom says no way and so I have to just glean the information secondhand.

That’s how I learn about most of his other life, is secondhand.

Mom tells me Not-Dad has four kids, except the oldest one isn’t really his kid, but his ex-wife’s daughter from her first marriage that he adopted when they got married. He likes her more than he likes his own kids, which I find odd, but interesting. Not-Dad’s wife left him for another man, Mom tells me with a smirk, as if to suggest it’s great that they can share that, their respective ex-spouses leaving them for other people.

Not-Dad never mentions his ex-wife but he does talk about the early days of being a young nuclear technician and father, how they lived with the four kids in this house in Tennessee, and then one winter when they could barely afford heat, the kids would climb into the bed with their parents and they would snuggle under the blankets, all six of them. NotDad has a wistful look when he relates this story, sitting across from me over the dining room table, swirling his beer in the German beer stein my mother gave him to drink out of. Since I’ve always been envious of large Embodied Effigies | 121

Bauer

families, I’m wistful, too, thinking how much fun it would be to have a pack of brothers and sisters to cuddle and fight with. My parents never let me sleep with them. Even in the midst of fever I was bathed with rubbing alcohol and tucked back into the confines of my pink room with the canopy bed.

I can tell Not-Dad is beginning to think of me like I’m one of his kids, too. When, a few months later, we—he, Mom, and I—go to see Father of the Bride, he sits beside me and pats my leg at the sentimental parts.

“That’s gonna be you someday,” he says, as Steve Martin winces, watching his little girl all grown up, waltzing down the aisle.

I think about the day I’ll get married, and wonder if Not-Dad will be there. I wonder if my own Dad will be there, too. Dad has never been sentimental, so I can’t imagine him gushing at the sight of me in white, or crying, nor can I imagine getting all mushy myself and calling him Daddy.

If Dad is around for my wedding, I’d like both he and Not-Dad to walk me down the aisle, the way my friend Debbie did with her Dad and stepfather.

Even though Not-Dad is technically not my stepfather, he feels like he is.

Not-Dad talks about the future like he’s going to be there, and Mom even admitted that one night he told her he’d be thrilled if they had a child together. Of course, that would never happen, Mom having had her tubes tied years ago, but I kind of wish it could. Even though I’d be a lot older (15 years!) than my little brother or sister, it would be fun to have a baby to stroll around the neighborhood and then have a kid to draw me pictures to hang in my locker at school.

Mom is spending more nights over at Not-Dad’s townhouse. They don’t ever stay together at our house, which is okay with me, but the nights she packs her little overnight bag to go to his place make me feel lonely and nostalgic for something I can’t even explain. I kiss her before she goes, click the upper lock shut on the front door, and then climb the stairs to watch the old gray Honda pull out of the garage. Then the garage door closes, Mom’s car disappears down Eastwood Drive, and the house is quiet. It’s the weekend, so I guess I could be out at the mall or movies with my friends, but I’m not. Mostly I sit at the end of Mom’s bed, on top of the cedar chest, and watch news magazine shows until it’s time for bed. Then I brush my teeth, and climb under the covers, one ear pressed into the pillow, the other attuned to the sound of a key clicking in the door, in the vaguest hope someone is coming home.

122 | Embodied Effigies

Bittersweet Danielle Palumbo

My Dearest Friend, I’m not really sure how to start this. What can I possibly say after all this time? I’m sorry is the first thing that comes to my shameful mind, but we both know that that one lonesome phrase could never be enough. There is no apology in this precarious world that would be able to mend my guilty heart. Unfortunately, there are no words that I could say that would ever bring you back to me.

Not a day goes by where I don’t think of you. Our memories have seeped into my bones. I carry their weight with each step I take. There are pieces of you that I still remember like they were yesterday, times that I feel like I could reach out and touch if I could just close my eyes tight enough, dig deep enough. But it seems no matter what I do it’s my inadequacies that I remember the most. The truth is what stabs at my mind, grows on every memory like a proliferating vine, suffocating anything that was good.

Even though you’re never far from my thoughts, I’ve moved on. I’ve grown.

You’d be surprised how things have changed, how different I am. Nothing ever really stays the same. Time has taken who I once was, shaping my identity with its bony fingers as if it were soft clay, molding me in to someone new. I’m no longer that little girl you once called friend, the one with the fractured smile and unbreakable spirit. I’m a woman, obscured by her clouded conscience, humbled by her faults.

I’m married now. We met because of you actually. Once you left I felt like the world was against me, that no one understood the rage that burned so deeply in my chest. Each piece of me was fragile; every breath took a mountain of effort to complete. He knew I needed a shoulder. He strived to help me heal.

Embodied Effigies | 123

Palumbo

He was there my dear friend, when you weren’t.

I became a mother not long after we said “I do”. Two sets of little feet gallop through our home. Impish giggles fill our ears and brighten our souls.

They’re growing incredibly fast. With each blink of my eyes another year passes. I wonder if you would love them like I do. I wonder if you would be proud that the oldest bears your name. Like some strange fairy tale you have claimed my first born. She has been branded by my past, named after my regrets.

She is as beautiful as you were, yet different in so many ways. She’s beginning to create friendships, form bonds I pray last her a lifetime. Weekend sleepovers and whispered secrets make me smile, remind me of you. I just hope that she cherishes every single moment, that she doesn’t make my same mistakes.

I know now what a mom is supposed to be like. Encouraging words at every turn. Bed time kisses. Safe, warm arms.

Although I was only thirteen, she disgusted me then. Now, as an adult, I loathe your mom even more.

I despise the liquor she replaced you with so easily. I hate the weaknesses she gave herself over to, the demons she tried to chase. She robbed you of what was rightfully yours. Little girls need their mommies, but she was conveniently absent. That was part of the reason you left, wasn’t it?

You cried for her a lot, I know you did. I held you many nights, your tears making salty rivers down your angelic face, a face any mother would be foolish not to love. Our friendship helped you get through some of that pain, didn’t it? It certainly eased mine.

Seventh grade was the beginning of us. A shy captivating smile and sad blue eyes drew me to you instantly. You were beautiful beyond our awkward preteen years. But I chose to admire you from afar. You had become instantly popular, one of those girls I had loved to hate.

I have to admit, when you invited me I hadn’t planned on actually coming 124 | Embodied Effigies

Bittersweet

to your party. I had shoved the brightly colored invite to the bottom of my bag. Somehow a Saturday night spent with the people I would’ve given a year’s worth of pimple cream to avoid just didn’t sound appealing. It was bad enough I had to endure their wretched glares and degrading snickers during school hours, I wasn‘t about to subject myself to them on a weekend. Although it meant you would be committing social suicide to hang with a dork like me, you insisted that I come. Even with an outcome such as this, I’m glad you changed my mind.

The world looks so different through the eyes of a young girl. Every heartbreak feels like the end, every boy seems like the one, and every secret is the deepest. My secret? I worshiped you. I thought that you were exactly who I wanted to be. Until I realized differently.

We continued our unbreakable connection for years, our lives woven tightly together. At times I wasn’t sure where you ended and I began. We were two girls up against a world full of disappointments. We made the best of what we were given though. By sticking together we conquered it all.

Double dates, late night movies, dances and holidays, some of the best moments of my life.

Things changed though. You became like a favorite childhood toy I eventually out grew. I began running forward, winning the race while your foot stayed on the starting line. My confidence soared, becoming like a strong wind at my back propelling me forward. I left you behind. I could see the struggle in your eyes and I turned the other way.

I know that at some point you loved life. The fact is, it just didn’t seem to love you back. Heartache was fed to you in copious amounts. You must’ve had days where you were full to exhaustion.

Eventually you choked. I get it now, I really do.

For me, turning seventeen was a bittersweet affair. I got my license, my own car. I demanded freedom and took down anything in my way.

And I sobbed until I couldn’t breathe, until I blurred your face from my mind.

Embodied Effigies | 125

Palumbo

It had only been nine days since you died. No wishes on my melting candles would change that.

I failed you, and It’s a wrong that I can never make right.

I’m left with this feeling that I could have intervened. There must’ve been something I could have done. Why didn’t I go to you that day in class? You sat there all alone, no ally in sight. I’d heard he left you, your first real love.

You had been wearing that pain like a dirty jacket. Anyone who knew you could see it. What kind of person ignores that?

Selfish me.

If I had said that I loved you, would you have swallowed each of those jagged pills? Would you still have pumped that poison into your veins, stopping your fragile heart from ever beating again? If I told you that you were one of the greatest people I ever knew would it have mattered? What if I had never walked away?

Tell me my dear friend, could I have saved you?

126 | Embodied Effigies

Icelandic Pebbles Katya Kulik

On our way to the volunteer camp.

Late. Always late. Pants, gloves, sweaters hurled into the backpack.

Finally it is packed and oh, goodness! weighs about thirty pounds.

Hurry up! Dive into the underground. Stairs: twenty steps down.

Panting. Then forty minutes of the underground hubbub. Thirty steps up.

The din of the railroad station.

Good-bye, Moscow: an overnight train to Saint-Petersburg. Cacophony: clank, clank of the train lulls to sleep and the shrill voice of the neighbor brings back into consciousness.

Scanty sleep. Ragged dreams. And there it is: another railroad station.

Thirty pounds beside the uncomfortable seat. Wait for the friend to continue the journey together. In the waiting room of the station: people scurry about and shout into their cells, the loudspeaker announces another arrival, another departure. The buzz in my head.

The friend arrives. Panting. She adds to the trip thirty pounds of backpack weight, more than a hundred steps down and about seventy-five steps up, and an hour on the local train. Hurry up! There is an overnight bus to Helsinki.

No chance to sleep on the bus: cheesy music from the driver’s seat, and two passport and customs control stations to go through. Russian officers close the window five minutes before we arrive. Because they felt they needed an unscheduled break. Finnish officers do not let us into the country until midnight because there are several people on the bus whose visas become valid on the 2nd of August. We arrive to the station at 11:15 pm of the 1st of August.

Three o’clock in the morning finds us at the Helsinki International Airport. Dozing off in the sleeping bags in the arrivals area. Wrong choice Embodied Effigies | 127

Kulik

of the place: at 6 am people start coming out of the planes. Talking, laughing, dropping things.

Moving on. The plane to Copenhagen. Rushing to get two thirtypound bundles of joy off the luggage carousel. Dropping them off for the next flight. Hurrying to the underground: just ten hours and the desire to see as much Copenhagen as possible. Tourists, bicycles, children, sea-gulls: everything loud. In the street musicians play, performers entertain, and the dirty young punk breaks a glass bottle near the underground station. Back to the airport.

The final destination is near. A three-hour flight to Reykjavik. Fatigue is creeping in, but it is not the end yet. In Reykjavik airport five planes arrive at once. As a result, waiting for the backpacks takes forever. Afterwards—standing outside in the line to the bus which will take us from the airport to the city.

August midnight in Iceland is like late fall everywhere else. It was summer just several hours before in Copenhagen. Shivering. With dozens of other people who have packed in a hurry and put their warm clothes too far to be easily retrieved from their bags.

International noise. Babel. Icelanders are not in a hurry, but we are.

We have another plane to take at 8 in the morning, and the last time I slept properly was when? Two or three nights ago?

Hurry, hurry up from the bus station to the volunteers’ hostel, because it is chilly outside and we are losing the precious sleep time. Almost 2 am. Panting and shivering. In the hostel setting up the alarm clock to be woken up at 6 am and dropping dead to the place assigned to us.

7 am—the local airport is hard to find. We circle around the hotel which looks like the airport and wonder if the airport should look like a hotel. We ask a stranger where the airport is, and he calls us a taxi because if we walk, we would miss our flight. We arrive 30 minutes before the flight frustrated, expecting displeased faces of the airport staff and late registration fees.

No one is in a hurry in Iceland. It turns out that you can register even if you arrive five minutes before the plane leaves. No security checks, no screenings, no need to explain that your shampoo does not contain explosives. Just walk on the runway towards a small plane.

The drone of the plane and the safety instructions in three languages—Icelandic, English and German. Beautiful mountains below.

128 | Embodied Effigies

Icelandic Pebbles

Brown, gray, green. Forty minutes of flight: enough time to drink a cup of coffee slowly and then land—on the other side of the island.

Here the magic happens: when the bags are brought in (no baggage carrousel!), all other passengers disappear at once. There is just an airport clerk and us—two travelers. No longer panting: falling asleep whenever we sit down.

The question is how to get to the town.

“Is there a bus from the airport?” —we ask the clerk.

“I don’t know,” —he says.

“Is it possible to get a taxi?” —we wonder.

“I don’t know,” —he answers. “Let me call them and see.”

We let. The phone call: lots of Icelandic syllables, and then, the answer: “Not in the next two hours. The two town taxi cars are busy.”

Whoa. Two. When I try to grasp the concept, my mind freezes.

Nothing else is left to us then, but walking to the town. Four miles in the cold drizzle and the wind that chills to the marrow. High flat-top mountains all around us. Not a single car to hitch a ride. A lagoon on one side of the road and the beginning of the fjord on the other. Dark gray water, dark gray skies, dark gray clouds. It is more than an hour walk.

And suddenly it gets me. No noise. All I can hear is the crunching of pebbles under our feet, and the splash of the waves on both sides of the road.

It is Icelandic silence. Probably as much silence as one can get in the world.

We are walking to the town.

We will get there when we get there.

Eg tala ekki Islenska.

Icelanders are never in a hurry. A proof of this is their language.

Most words in Icelandic are very long, with lots and lots of syllables. Only a very unhurried person can pronounce a word with ten-to-twelve syllables without swallowing a single one of them in the process.

What fun for my inner linguist it is to see how bustling Spanish or Italians are struggling to say Icelandic place-names. Their tongues are always in such a hurry that it is impossible for them to slow down and work Embodied Effigies | 129

Kulik

out every toss and turn of Icelandic umlauts and gutturals.

The village where our volunteer camp takes place is called Bolungarvik. Not so many syllables, right? But try saying it with the stress on the first one. Could do? All right then, try saying it with a preposition: “in Bolungarvik” will be “í Bolungarviku” in Icelandic — again, with the stress on the first syllable. Even I, a native-speaker of Russian, the language notorious for its polysyllabic words, do not stay smug for long, because when I am challenged to say “Umferðarmiðstöð” (which means the bus-station) I fail spectacularly.

Then imagine an attempt to comprehend this flood of syllables flowing at you. Patience is the quality one needs for that, and all Icelanders have it. The local supervisor of our camp is a twenty-year-old Baldur. He is tall and blond and strong as a sturdy Icelandic horse, and is definitely a man of few words.

“Hey, Baldur, what a nice day today, isn’t it?” we say to him when we get to the hill where we work.

“Yeah,” answers Baldur and falls silent.

“Baldur, do you think it will rain today?” someone asks.

“Maybe” he says and more silence follows.

We continue with more questions: “What are we going to do today?”

“Will you give us a lot of hard work, today, Baldur?”

“Are we still cutting the grass?”

“Do you know if they are going to bring more gravel for the path?”

“Baldur, do we have more gloves?”

“Yeah,” he drawls and smiles his wide white-toothed Viking smile.

Whereas Italians and Spanish are always saying something with rare breaks into silence which never last longer than thirty seconds and we, Russians, are able to keep silence for about five minutes, our inimitable Viking Baldur, named after the most heroic Icelandic god, stays silent for a quarter of an hour and then is ready to continue the conversation which we, fussy foreigners, finished some time ago.

Savez-vous plantes les choux?

It is the first time in my life that I happen to compare how different nationalities work. The most interesting thing I discover in the volunteer 130 | Embodied Effigies

Icelandic Pebbles

camp is that every nation lives up to its stereotype.

My Spanish and Italian colleagues start their working day with a slow stroll towards the hill where we are building a walking path—it takes them about half an hour, the distance I cover in five minutes. Then they proceed with a thirty-minute discussion with Baldur about what they are going to do today. This is by all means very important, especially since every day we do the same thing we did the day before—shovel pebbles and cut the grass. Then they set to work and do it with passion and amazing concentration for the next thirty, sometimes even forty minutes, and then voila! our team leader Carlos announces the break and insists on doing some meditation. After one more half hour slot it is time to discuss what is for lunch (sandwiches), and soon, the first half of the working day is over.

My friend Nastia sums it up perfectly for me: “If you want to avoid work, you’d better stick with the Spanish and Italians!”

The French volunteer Cindy is beautiful: she has blonde hair, big blue eyes, and full lips, and she does everything beautifully. I have never seen anyone working with a shovel in a more graceful manner. I can watch her cut the grass for hours. The Quebecois Fred prefers to work separately from the others. Every time he returns back to the group, however, he entertains us with jokes and funny songs. The Korean girl Eunjin is way too delicate for any kind of physical work. On the first day she holds the shovel for half an hour and has blisters on her hands for the next two weeks. When she tries to lift a half-filled sack with grass, I want to pat her on the head and send her to pick flowers for bouquets. When I see her peel potatoes during our cooking shift, I want to cry. She emanates beautiful serenity and calm when she rests.

Nastia and I do not fail to uphold the stereotypes of our homeland either. Our working routines represent the divide which has been the root of so many social problems in Russia — the insurmountable split between intelligentsia and common folk. My first memory of visiting Nastia’s home as a child is that I was offered a knife and a fork to eat my dinner.

In my family our Sunday treat would be roasted sunflower seeds and my Dad would insist that everyone spat the sunflower shells on the floor. Nastia works obediently, with the full understanding of common good she is bringing to the world. But I also know that she would enjoy extolling the virtues of love to the locals or making artistic postcards with hearts much more.

The not-so-great descendent of the Ukrainian peasants and RusEmbodied Effigies | 131

Kulik

sian old-believers, I am the second generation to have a college degree in my family and certainly the first one with a foreign university degree. I teach English to computer science nerds at Moscow State University and basically to anyone who would pay me 30 bucks for a lesson. To earn at least the quarter of amount of money my office-inhabiting friends get, I also translate, edit, proofread and write propaganda articles for corporate magazines. I exert myself here in Bolungarvik with the desperation of a starved person. I shovel pebbles, I cut the grass, I break the hard stalks which the grass mower cannot cut, I carry heavy sacks, and oh boy, don’t I love it. I work so hard that one day Baldur asks me: “Back at home … are you a farmer?” and blushes a little.

Very soon I get tired of constant breaks to meditate or play or just chew shit, because I don’t need to lie on the cold ground to meditate. Hard physical labor is my meditation. As I rake the grass stalks that were just cut, then bend to pick an armful and carry it to the sack, and return to repeat and repeat the same thing until it is time to stop working, all the buzz of my neurotic urban life quiets down in my head. The thoughts that I am a failure, academic and writing-wise, that I still love a New York neurotic professor who stopped caring about me more than three years ago, that my mother is not satisfied with whatever I do unless I get married and pop out a bunch of grandchildren, that I hate working so hard for so little money, that I loathe Moscow and Muscovites as well as Russians and pretty much all the other humans in the world, that my friends grow distant as they settle down and consider me infantile and “not serious”, that I will never weigh 58 kilos again, because it was only possible when I was 19, and more, and more—one by one, these worries burst like bubbles, and I stand on top of the hill after having carried sacks of grass for three hours in a row with silence in my head.

Silence.

132 | Embodied Effigies

The Away Wedding Jennifer Leeney Adrian

There was a party bus beforehand, a disco ball and red laser lights pointed at our hearts. There was wine and hors d’oeuvres, cubed cheese and crackers that couldn’t stay put—something the groom himself was once accused of. There was a hotel bar waiting along with us morning, noon, and night and we sat inside its grey twilight making conversation with strangers, ready to like them because they had been chosen for this, as we had been chosen.

“Let them suffer with the rest of us!” The man was drunk, and we kept in grimaces. The groom was in earshot, and no one would be surprised if such a thing led him to flee.

They were secretive, our couple, as if to be divided meant being conquered, even on the bus. When they spoke, it was closely together, their noses almost brushing, and we could only imagine the nothings they said to each other, we hoped they told each other things they planned to do to each other once they were away from all of us, this mismatched herd they saddled themselves with.

The drunk one said, the same one as before, “Secrets don’t make friends.”

Sometimes we hated him for being honest, and other times we loved him, in a way we couldn’t help ourselves, the same way we did our bride and groom, simply for making themselves a spectacle.

The night of the wedding we felt the deflation of relief. It didn’t matter that the wedding was outdoors and the weather unseasonably cold.

We walked through damp grass in sandals and dress shoes, feet and socks wet, ready for home. As the music started we looked for the sky to break, half wishing it would, in waiting for our bride. Then she came and she was ours, ours in waiting, in bearing witness, our girl-woman with hair of fire.

We felt tenderly for her and the white scar from ear to lip, eager for her to step into our world, to become one of us.

Embodied Effigies | 133

Adrian

Her groom stood before us resolute, older, balding, yet handsomer when she stood beside him, reached for his palm. Yes, we were sure, he had done well, the very best he could. The first drops of rain fell, shocking us for a moment, before we returned our focus to them and to the earnestness of their eyes, the texture of their vows; it tagged us in contagion, assured us what took place was real and rare.

134 | Embodied Effigies

These Clean Scars Catori Sarmiento

I I have a clean white scar where I made one of my first cuts. It starts just above my right wrist bone and down the middle towards the inside of my forearm then fades away near my veins. If I touch it now, it feels like a soft ridge popping up from the smooth skin around it. There is not much I remember about when or why I made such a deep cut. What I do recall vividly is a shiny silver blade and the ruby color of my flesh once my skin sliced open.

II My true virgin cut was when I was around five years old. In the middle of the day, the dull sun sits behind grey clouds and I can hear my mother in the kitchen washing pans. Sitting in front of the raised fireplace hearth, I’m playing with a plush bear that had once been white but had since turned a slight grey from wear—My Bear, I called her. Holding her two arms I make her dance on the cold stones. And then I see a Swiss army knife, the white shield and cross sticking out from the red cover and hidden silver tools. It belonged to Aaron, my older brother. It seemed that he’d left it out. I wasn’t allowed to touch knives, not even dinner knives, but if he could have one why couldn’t I? I hunch over it like it’s some secret puzzle, find the notch and pull open the main blade. When I look close enough I can see my small reflection in the metal. I put my right thumb alongside the blade. It doesn’t feel sharp until I swipe my finger across it and I feel a sting. There, a sliver of a cut. I might be able to hide it if I can put the blade back in and act like I didn’t know it was ever there “Marie!”

I jump and turn to see my mother standing a few feet away and I’m still Embodied Effigies | 135

Sarmiento

holding the pocket knife. She stomped over to me, her eyes wide, and snatched it from my hands.

“You could have hurt yourself. Wait until dad gets home.”

He’d pull off his leather belt or get one from his closet, a cowboy style belt with flowers embossed in the design and a metal belt buckle. He folded the belt in half and squeezed each end firmly then pushed each end to the center so that either side of it spread vertically to make the shape of an oval.

He would then pull and when he did there was a strong cracking sound that made me jump. When we were younger we would fight, hiding under the bed, in the closet, outside, anywhere. When dad caught us we would fight back until our bodies would give up from exhaustion and then he would use that stinging punishment anyway. Much better to face the wall, put our palms against it, and get it over with. First he spanked Aaron for leaving the knife out where his sister could find it, and then he spanked me for touching it.

III Make a cut where it can be hidden: on the foot, thigh, or a place on the hand that others will mistake for a paper cut—or else cover it with a band aid. I wasn’t as sly back then. I often made the cuts too deep and too noticeable, except that no one really did notice. “You’re too clumsy” my dad would say, not being able to see the difference between a deliberate wound and an accidental one. They notice when I wear a pin on my purse strap, a rainbow with the word “Pride” printed in the center.

“What are you doing with that?” dad asks.

At first I don’t know what he’s talking about until he uses the grabber tool to point at my purse. We’re both sitting in the living room, the television blaring the news in the background, waiting for my mom to get ready so that we can all go to the bookstore where dad will sit in the coffee shop reading newspapers and drinking refillable cups of black coffee and mom will do her best to read children’s books to my toddler brother until she passes him to me to take care of. I glance down at the pin where it sits at the bottom of the strap with eight others on top including one of a unicorn that 136 | Embodied Effigies

These Clean Scars

I won by beating a friend of mine at a game of speed during lunch time.

“A friend gave it to me.” The truth, but not the whole of it—admitting to gambling would bring me more trouble than I needed.

“Do you even know what that means?” he says it to me like I’m stupid.

“Yes.” “What does it mean then?”

“It’s about being equal.”

“It’s a gay pin. Take it off.”

“I’m not taking it off. It’s just a pin.”

He lets out a disappointed sigh.

“What happened to you?”

“What are you going to do, spank me?” I challenged, knowing he wouldn’t dare now that I was older, uncontrollable.

“I can if you keep up the back-talk. You still weren’t as bad as Aaron. Remember that time with the wooden spoon? It split in half from spanking him so hard.” He lets out a cackle and smiles, that wicked smile that makes me want to hit him—and sometimes I did, only to be hit back—a smile that showed his angled teeth tinted yellow from coffee mingled with ones of silver and gold. Mom sits at the end of the couch sewing, saying nothing against her husband, not even when dad stopped using wooden spatulas and moved on to metal ones. I still remember a night when Aaron was getting spanked with a thick belt. I ran to my room, shut the door, and hid myself under my bed covers, but his screams and sobbings were too loud for my blankets to muffle.

“They’re sick.” a whisper from the edge of the couch.

Embodied Effigies | 137

Sarmiento

My mother, her thick glasses slid down on her nose, eyes focused on the needle and thread.

“They’re not. They’re just people.”

“There’s something wrong in their heads,” she refuses to look at me, “they’re sick and need help.”

“What’s wrong with the way they are? Why‘d you treat them any different?”

“I wouldn’t. It’s ‘hate the sin, but love the sinner’. I’ll act the same but I don’t have to like what they’re doing.”

A rush of anger. There’s an admission on the edge of my lips. I bite the inside of my cheek, keeping it back.

“But you are treating them different,” I whisper.

The comment goes unnoticed by my parents.

IV When I cut myself I become warm, comfortable as if the world outside was just a dream. I cut when I wanted to have sex but my husband didn’t, but left my skin clean after I slept with someone else. I cut when I was upset and wine wasn’t enough to calm me or when I felt so sad that I didn’t want to do anything but stay in my bed in the darkness. I cut when I was seventeen and my gynecologist told me I had too many uterine polyps and not enough eggs and would never have children. I cut when I felt fat or when red spots erupted on my face from under my skin. Most of all, I cut when I’m lonely. Just before the sharp blade touches my skin my heart pumps strong, making my body numb and my brain fuzzy. I can’t feel any pain when I slice myself, knowing only that I’ve cut when I see the blood bubbling into red beads in the open slit. Sometimes I do more than one, hacking up the area with tiny lines until the stinging euphoria makes me forget about why I started. And then. Then, sleep comes easy.

138 | Embodied Effigies

These Clean Scars

V Dull yellow lights overhead saturate the pink bathroom tiles. A mirror is spread along the length and width of the adjacent wall, four white sinks in front. I’m standing in line, full bladder, waiting. Jangling draws my attention to the young woman in front of me. Her orange and pink beaded bracelets clap against each other on her left wrist as she fixes her high ponytail. She flicks her wrist back, towards me, revealing a pale forearm scratched with steady, horizontal white marks. From the inside of her elbow to her wrist lie varying lengths of deep and thin scars. Some are short, mere centimeters, while others extend from one side of the arm to the other. They are like carved growth notches on a door frame. The line moves. She goes in to one stall and I in another. We meet again at the sink. As I pull up my long sleeves to my elbows and wash my hands, I look up into the mirror at the dark circles under my eyes. In the reflection I see the woman’s head tilt, spying at my naked wrists. Looking back into the porcelain bowl, I flick the extra water from my hands, shutting off the faucet with the front of my left hand, purposefully showing my own scars. Something makes me pause and I look over to her. A wordless understanding passes between us as we glance at each others’ macabre trophies.

Embodied Effigies | 139

Contributors’ Notes

Jennifer Leeney Adrian Jennifer has previously been published in The Coe Review, The Taproot Literary Review, and Broken Plate. She has completed coursework at The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and received a competitive mentorship at The Tin House Writers’ conference for her book-length work, The Kindness of Strangers. She has also been awarded residency placements at Hedgebrook and The Norman Mailer Writers’ Colony in Provincetown.

Brandy Bauer Brandy Bauer can’t decide whether she’s a poet or nonfiction writer (or nonfiction poet). Her day job is as an editor/writer for a nonprofit in Washington, DC. She’s had nonfiction published in Oregon Literary Review, Escape from America, and Offshore Wave. Brandy has an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato.

Morgan Bazilian Morgan Bazilian is a well-regarded short story writer. He has been a mountain guide, window washer, motorcycle racer and diplomat. He and his family have lived in Europe for the last decade.

J. Davis J. Davis recently finished a Language Arts Education degree at Cedarville University. Still sequestered in the tiny Midwestern village where her university is located, she is hoping to return to the life and landscape she loves best in Denver, Colorado. With too few publications to brag, you can check out her work in Heavy Feather Review, The Boiler Journal, Crack the Spine and a few others if you find the effort to look worthwhile, of course.

140 | Embodied Effigies

Iris Dorbian Iris Dorbian is a business and arts journalist whose articles have appeared in a wide number of publications that include Wall Street Journal, Playbill, Media Industry Newsletter, Mediapost’s OMMA, Live Design, DMNews, PR News, Backstage, Theatermania, Dance Teacher and Pilates Style. Her personal essays have appeared in B O D Y and Blue Lyra Review. She is currently working for Thomson Reuters’ peHUB, which covers private equity and venture capital. The author of “Great Producers: Visionaries of the American Theater,” (Allworth Press), Iris has a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Debra Fox Debra Fox’s poems have been accepted for publication in various haiku journals. In addition, her short stories and essays have been accepted for publication in in Hyperlexia Journal, Blue Lyra Review, Squalorly, and The Meadow. She is a lawyer, and the director of an adoption agency. In her spare time she loves to dance. She lives just outside Philadelphia with her family.

Brad Garber Brad has published poetry in Cream City Review, Alchemy, Fireweed, “gape seed” (an anthology published by Uphook Press), Front Range Review, theNewerYork Press, Taekwondo Times, Ray’s Road Review, Flowers & Vortexes (Promise of Light), Emerge Literary Journal, Generation Press, Penduline Press, Dead Flowers: A Poetry Rag, New Verse News, The Whirlwind Review, Gambling the Aisle, Dark Matter Journal, Sundog Lit, Diversion Press, Unshod Quills and Mercury. Nominee: 2013 Pushcart Prize for poem, “Where We May Be Found.” His essays have been published in Brainstorm NW, Naturally magazine and N, The Magazine of Naturist Living. He has also published erotica in Oysters & Chocolate, Clean Sheets and MindFuckFiction.

Kelsey Garmendia Kelsey Garmendia, 23, is an alumnus of the State University of New York at New Paltz. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Garmendia is featured in Embodied Effigies | 141

Midnight Screaming, Poydras Review, The Stonesthrow Review and Penduline Press. She also has a novel published through CreateSpace titled, Burn Our Houses Down.

Ginger Graziano Ginger Graziano has published poetry and short stories in Long Story Short, WNC Woman Magazine, Creations Magazine, and in the upcoming July issue of [the] Conium Review. She creates graphic designs for regional and national clients, as well as sculpting clay figures that tell her their stories. Her memoir, See, There He Is, a story of loss and renewal, will be debuting later this year. “Exact Change Speeds Trips” is an excerpt from this memoir. She likes to stir the many creative pots cooking on her stove.

Amber Hollinger Amber Dawn Hollinger is a southwestern Pennsylvania storyteller, with roots in many places. Of these two pieces, she says: “Each reflects a sense of ‘gain’ and ‘loss’ ever-present in this wild game of life.

May we all play it well, and with love, compassion, courage, and honesty.” Her work has appeared with PoetrySuperHighway.com, S/tick, Rose Red Review, Foliate Oak, The Voices Project, Eternal Haunted Summer, Dead Flowers, Burial Day Books; forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal, The Soul Pitt, and others. She is working on new short stories, nonfiction pieces, and a novel.

Katya Kulik Katya Kulik is a graduate student in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Moscow State University and a master’s degree in English from Fordham University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in theNewerYork, Outside In Literary and Travel Magazine, Gravel Magazine, and So to Speak Journal.

Laura McCullough Laura McCullough’s books include Rigger Death & Hoist Another (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), Panic (Kinereth Gensler Award, Alice James Books), Speech Acts, and What Men Want. She is the editor of two anthologies: The Room and the World: Essays on the Poetry of Ste142 | Embodied Effigies

phen Dunn (Syracuse University Press, 2013) and A Sense of Regard: Essays on Poetry and Race (University of Georgia Press, 2014). Her website is-- http://lauramccullough.weebly.com/

Erin Olds Erin Fillmore Olds has always loved telling stories, but it wasn’t until third grade that she began to write them down. A teacher complimented an assignment and that was all it took. Olds cut her teeth on Nancy Drew-like fiction, but quickly expanded. Poetry, essays, and novels are all equal game. When she isn’t writing, she is arranging creative photo shoots, reading, or spending time with her wonderful husband. They and their two dogs live in Idaho. They are expecting their first child, a son, in October.

Danielle Palumbo Danielle Palumbo is an inspiring author of young adult fiction, currently working on her second novel. She resides in southern New Jersey with her husband and two children. She also hosts a parenting blog for her local newspaper, The Herald. Please check it out at-http://www.capemaycountyherald.com/blog/dpalumbo.

John Richmond John Richmond has “wandered” parts of North America for a good portion of his life. These “wanderings” have taken him from a small fishing village (population 400) to Chicago and New York City. Since then, John Richmond wandered to a small upstate New York town and has sequestered himself in his office where he divides his time between writing and discussing the state of the world with his coonhound buddy—Roma. Recently, he has appeared in ken*again, Black & White, SNReview, The Round, The Potomac, Syndic Literary Journal, Ygdrasil, Slow Trains and Forge Journal.

Catori Sarmiento Catori Sarmiento is an author who has contributed fiction to Nothing. No One. Nowhere. by Virgogrey Press, The Citron Review, Brick Rhetoric, Foliate Oak Magazine, and Crossed Out Magazine. Her poetry has been featured in Poetry Wall, Cactus Heart Press, and Dead Flowers Rag. She has also contributed nonfiction to Her Kind and Embodied Effigies | 143

This Boundless World and several academic essays published by Student Pulse. Professionally, she is an English and Writing Professor at Central Texas College, Pacific Far East Campus in Tokyo, Japan. Her author website is found at-- http://catorisarmiento.com.

Nicole St. Pierre Nicole St. Pierre was raised in rural New York, and currently lives just outside of Baltimore, where she writes fiction, nonfiction, and works for the stage. In 2011, two of her nonfiction essays appeared in Fine Print Literary Magazine at Elizabethtown College; that spring, she was awarded the Louise Baugher Black Award for Excellence in Nonfiction Writing. Several of her short plays have been held in staged reading or received productions at Millersville University and Elizabethtown College, both in Pennsylvania.

Candase Wenbin Tang Candase Wenbin Tang is a journalism student from Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China and earned her master’s degree in International Journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University. She has published articles in Chinese newspapers and magazines, but “Fortune Teller No. 35: A Master or a Saltimbanque?” is her first published article in English. Her favorite writer is Toni Morrison for her creative narrating magic.

Tina Vivian Tina Vivian is the costume designer for Alma College, a small liberal arts college in central Michigan. She has had essays accepted by Star 82 Review and Embodied Effigies. This summer Tina begins studies at The Vermont College of Fine Arts in their Writing For Children and Young Adults Program.

144 | Embodied Effigies