The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories (10 page)

The little dildo in daily use may seem like a distant relation of the ancient stone dildoes engraved with the names of dead kings that are still standing in parts of Abyssinia, but this range of uses and styles is intrinsic to the dildo. A dildo may be somber as a memorial statue, or playful and quick as a minnow. It may come together in an instant like a surprising sound and then dissolve. It may be made of pride, or compassion, or catgut, it may lace up or inflate. A tree stump used as a dildo will later sprout. A man’s parts make a fine dildo, as Pompon stiffly maintains, and Bonius the Jesuit concurs. A doll may be a dildo, or a pillar of salt; there are dildoes of wrought iron, of brick, of water, of stitched horsehide packed with straw, of knotted string, ink, and ice, of gears turned by a tiny water wheel, of hint or innuendo, tar, sugar, and sal ammoniac, of vanity, of lamb’s wool, of pig’s bladder, of giant blocks of sandstone smoothed by the passage of time, of stuffed tapirs, sundials, mirrors, or bridges. A dildo may be blown out of glass. A charm or a coin may be sealed inside; ask a glassblower how this is done. A model ship may be tweaked erect inside the dildo by means of threads. This signifies the voyage that is sex, and the
danger of capsizing. A memory of a lover is also a dildo, however fleeting. Be careful when you say the words
mildew, Bilbao, bibelot, billet-doux,
or even
peccadillo,
that you do not accidentally summon a dildo, for truly, you do not know what will answer your call.

dildo

Shortly after the printing of the first edition a warrant was issued for “Francis Basset, Stationer” for the publication of this “immoderate and deranged” work. Basset was imprisoned and lost his shop and two years of trade. It cost him some three hundred pounds before he was able to prove that he “had not any knowledge nor never heard of it, contributed to it, read it, nor delivered it out.”

Ever known an ugly girl who gets all the love she needs? I’m that girl. My coworkers at Adventurous Electrolysis call me the little tramp. It is true that I would look a bit like Charlie Chaplin if I wore a false mustache, and my walk is not unlike his. But they mean something different when they call me that.

I am one of those women who must know exactly in what ways she is presentable, in order to make the most of them, for they are few enough. I have a hooked nose and when I said I would need a false mustache to do Chaplin I did not mean to imply that I have no mustache of my own. At least, I would have, were it not for the perks of my place of gainful employ. All the same I have been called a handsome woman, with snapping black eyes. I have never liked the phrase. Handsome says to me that I have a magnificent bosom and a fine head of hair, but a big chin. I have none of the above, and if eyes snap it is an unseemly affair and I want no part of it. Furthermore, my eyes are hazel. But there you go. It is nice to be complimented at all.

Still, I know how to use the little I have, my flat stomach and
rather flatter chest, my slightly bowed, but strong and flexible legs. I produce plenty of phlegm. I have clever hands and a stare that could take the silvering off a mirror. Men flatter themselves they are original in admiring me. How confused they are when they find out they have competition. (There is no desperation like that of a lover who has decided to do you a favor, and finds himself waiting in line.)

I like the way they think of me at work. They ask my advice on molding and flow. I lie. They suck it up.

My coworkers think I am really in touch with my phlegm. Not true. In bed, yes, I know what to do. [See
Appendix 1
.] I produce my handful, the electrician makes his contribution, we tweak and probe and despite ourselves he and I (two homely, difficult specimens) make something I am not ashamed to keep on the mantelpiece. This, phlegming’s fabled peak, is easy for me. It’s the rest that baffles me, the how do you do, and can I offer you some kirsch?

I have always felt that everyone else knows something I don’t about phlegm. (Maybe if Mother had been around to explain, things would have been different.) Everyone else feels no qualms about sharing their phlegm with all and sundry, comparing textures and quantities, describing the changes it goes through as it ages and the best ways to groom it and skim off dust and insects; they vie to confess their doubts about their ability to produce the best phlegm, or keep producing phlegm, or produce it in sufficient quantities, or at the right time; they talk about molding and shaping it, whether it is acceptable to use cookie cutters, whether free-form modeling is more creative than strict formal arrangements. Every mail brings sticky little sentimental cards and gooey care packages from back
home; turn on the TV and you’ll see politicians holding up their gummy fingers, triumphant sports stars stretching a translucent cord between their raised fists, picture-perfect parents leaning over a crib with improbably large bubbles of phlegm hanging from their faces; in the tabloids pale starlets battle through green maelstroms to make Opening Night, phlegm dripping between their D-cups. You would think our economy ran on phlegm, which while private seems to belong to everyone, such that phlegm-withholding between husband and wife is considered a crime in some states, and at least a social blunder between friends and business associates, while the phlegm-challenged are everywhere pitied and also mocked. And yet it nauseates me.

After the thumb incident, the nursing home wanted nothing to do with Father. What could I do? I took him home. Every morning I hoist him out of bed. (He’s not helpless, but he forgets what he is doing, and he is stubborn.) When he is dressed and has his bib on, we make the slow voyage to the kitchen. He greets his chair. He sits in his chair. All day, he sits and looks out the kitchen window. At night, back we go.

My father bangs his glass on the table and demands kirsch. “Kirsch!” It is all he will drink. My father was a swinging exercise instructor in the seventies. In the hall there is a photograph of him in leotards and a lab coat, the leotards for ease of movement, the lab coat to underline the medical soundness of his procedures. He has hair. He has his thumb inside a woman’s mouth. She has a large behind.

What is he doing? He is applying pressure to the roof of the mouth to ease sinus pressure, nosebleeds, headaches, and hiccups.
Every morning he shuffles past this picture, stops, turns back, and peers at it, as if he does not know what it represents. Who is that darkly handsome mustached man, and what is he after in there? Every morning he tells me, “I used to receive kiss-o-grams from grateful whatchamacallits, clients, ladies with large keisters. They liked the cut of my jib.” Then he weeps. Every morning the grief is brand-new. He does not remember the grief of the day before. He remembers the kiss-o-grams, however.

One morning he dressed himself in his leotards. It was a sorry sight. His jib is shrunken and wobbly. Now all he wears is that damned kirtle. And the bib.

My father has dribbled kirsch on his bib, but there is no point in changing it now, so close to dinnertime. I pluck the stew meat from the pot. I put it in the grinder. Father can bite, but his hinder teeth are too rotten to chew, and I will not buy him baby food, not yet. So I make him his dinner: a sort of paste of meat and vegetables. Grout, I call it. I smear it on his teeth and he sucks it off. He does not thank me.

Father is dry, though I have always suspected he keeps back his phlegm on purpose, in habitual, petty ill will. My own flow has always been steady. However, my phlegm does not come for Father. Even when he is at his best, with his nose wiped and a glass in his hand, looking quietly out the window, my heart is hard against him. When he is most to be pitied, I stiffen, as if against a hand raised to strike. I have no more than the usual reasons to hate him; I should not begrudge him his little trumped-up self-congratulations now that he can be congratulated for so little. The traits for which my mother left him I
know now were nothing special. His demands, his cries—well, I too once cried, once demanded. But still I have no phlegm for him. Not that he wants any. He wants for nothing.

Almost nothing. There is that touchy issue about the thumbs.

My boss is low-phlegm, but he works with it. He’s slick at palming a prepared blob of phlegm (or
FLEM!
™) and pressing it into a new client’s hand, to jump-start the camaraderie. Studies have shown this works even when you’re conscious of the deception, so sophisticated types (he likes to think he is one) use colored and scented phlegm to make an impact while drawing attention ironically to the artifice. [See
Appendix 2
.]

“God knows phlegm production is not the be-all and end-all here at Adventurous Electrolysis. We’re a reputable business. God knows we hired you in that you are highly skilled and not for your pretty face.”