LITMIR.BIZ

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but because of the friction from T-shirt sleeve edges, individual hairs stay under the skin and get infected.

      And so I come to one of my biggest hobbies. Popping zits. I’ve noticed a big blackhead in Robin’s ear. More precisely in the flat area just outside the ear hole. I’ve often seen people with exceptionally large, black things like that right in the same area. I think people just don’t tell each other and the blackhead then has years to fill itself with dirt and grease. Several times I’ve forgotten to ask people ahead of time and have just reached for their zit in order to pop it. I practically grabbed Robin’s ear. I could barely control myself. But a lot of people aren’t cool with that. When you just pop their zit without asking. They think it’s overstepping a boundary. I’ll ask Robin, though, once we know each other better. I’m sure we’ll get to know each other better. Not going to escape. The blackhead in Robin’s ear, I mean. That’s reserved for me. I clench the blackhead on my upper arm between the thumb and pointer finger of my left hand and, with a squeeze, out comes the worm.

      It goes directly from my thumb into my mouth.

      With that taken care of, I examine the little wound.

      There’s a drop of blood in the hole left behind by the blackhead.

      I wipe it off. It doesn’t disappear. It just smears.

      Just like on my legs when I’ve shaved them instead of Kanell. Fast and careless. Often I get goose bumps from the cold water and from standing around in the tub. When I shave over them, I tear open every bump. Then I think I looked better with hair because now there’s a pinpoint of blood where every hair was. At some point I put on a pair of nylons over my bleeding legs and discovered an interesting effect. The almost see-through, skin-color nylons smeared each speck of blood into a stripe as I pulled them up my legs. By the time I had them all the way up, they looked like an expensive pair of patterned nylons. I wear them that way a lot when I go out.

      Wearing nylons over my bloody legs has another advantage, too. I like to eat my scabs. At the end of a night out, when I take the nylons off again, they rip off the dried blood, and new scabs form. Then, once they’ve hardened, I can pick them off and eat them.

      Tastes almost as good as sleepy seeds. The snack brought by the sandman and left in the corner of your eye closest to your nose.

      When I treat my little wounds so poorly, eventually a pore or two will get sealed and keep a hair from coming out. The hair still grows, but it coils up beneath the skin. Like the roots of the avocado in the base of the glass. At some point it gets infected and then Helen enters the game. I’ve been very patient. Despite the fact that the whole time the hair was calling to me, “Get me out of here, I want to grow straight like the other hairs, in the fresh air,” I’ve kept my fingers off it. It’s difficult. But it’s worth the wait.

      First I stick a needle into the infected lump and squeeze out the pus. From my fingertip into my mouth with that. Then it’s the hair’s turn. I poke around in the wound as long as it takes to get at the hair. It always looks a bit stunted since it’s never seen the light of day and has had to grow in tight quarters. I grab it with tweezers and pull it slowly out with the infected root. Done. Often another little pleasure will grow in the same spot a few weeks later.

      A magpie is hopping across the shortly cropped hospital lawn. In children’s books magpies steal shiny objects like bottle stoppers, aluminum foil, and rings. In reality they steal eggs from small songbirds. They peck them open and slurp them out. I always try to picture just how a magpie hacks a hole in the shell of a songbird’s egg and then uses its beak as a straw to suck out the egg. Or do they do it completely differently? Jump on the egg until it breaks and slurp the puddle of goop off the ground?

      Eggs are a constant theme with me. Years ago kids would chant, “Go climb a pole, you egg hole.” For no reason; just because it rhymes. But I always read a lot into it.

      I told Kanell once what I thought it meant, and one afternoon we acted it out.

      The pussy was the hole, obviously.

      Into it an egg. For egg hole.

      At first we tried a raw egg. But it broke in Kanell’s hand at the entrance to the pussy. The pieces of shell didn’t cut me or anything. It’s just that everything was covered in goop, and it was cold.

      So then we discussed whether it had to be a raw egg. Actually it didn’t. So we boiled one. Hard. Eight minutes. Very hard.

      And inserted it. So I finally had the egg hole I’d always imagined from this playground rhyme.

      Since then it’s been our inside secret. In the most literal sense of the phrase.

      There’s one other thing I’d like to do with Kanell.

      I’ve always loved to play around with the lymph nodes in my groin. I slide them around under my skin. The same way you can move your kneecap around. Recently I’ve had the desire for Kanell to trace them with a Sharpie. To accentuate them. The same way you accentuate your eyes with makeup. Is that a sexual fantasy? Or just a new form of body art? It would only be a fantasy if thinking of it made me hot. And that it does. What would happen the first time the fantasy were realized? He’s good about exploring my fantasies, just as I’ve supported his with every fiber of my being, right from the start.

      Out on the lawn one magpie is fighting with another. Over what?

      We humans think of magpies as evil animals because they eat the young of other birds. But we eat the babies of almost every animal that appears on our menus. Lamb, veal, suckling pig.

      Outside, Robin is strolling with a female nurse. The magpies fly off. I look at the two of them, appalled. I’m jealous. No way. I feel a claim to him just because he’s taken a picture of my wounded ass and I gave him a titillating lecture about modifying my underwear. And because the nurse can walk and I can’t. Well, I can, but only very, very slowly. They’re both smoking. And laughing. What is there to laugh about?

      I want to be able to walk again. I’m going to walk right now—to the cafeteria. There is one here, right Helen? Yes. The candy striper said something about it. I’m going to slowly go to the cafeteria and get a cup of coffee. Good, Helen, do something normal. Don’t think anymore about Robin and his fuck-pie or about my parents in bed boning each other. I have plenty of time. Good idea. I should have been capable of thinking of it without the two strolling strangers. Coffee always makes me have to go to the bathroom. I’d like to secretly have a bowel movement, without telling anyone here. Just for me. Just so I know I still can and that I haven’t grown together and sealed shut. I won’t tell anyone. That way I can still use this venue to try to bring my parents together. That way the things that are supposed to be together will grow together.

      I roll onto my stomach and let my legs slowly drop to the floor. I grab a painkiller from my pill supply and slurp it down. I’ll get some use out of it along the way. Inside, I’m prepared for the long voyage. But not on the outside. I’m still wearing just this tree-top angel outfit, still gathered and knotted at the front. Nothing on the bottom. You can’t walk around like this, even in a hospital, Helen. Even as an ass patient. There are a lot of people running around the halls and in the cafeteria. I go at a snail’s pace to the space-saving, built-in wardrobe. Mom said she had left things for me in there. I open the door. Only pajama bottoms and T-shirts. I’ll never be able to manage that. To put on a pair of pajama bottoms you have to bend down and put in first one leg and then the other. Oh, man. That’ll stretch my ass too much. Mom didn’t think of a bathrobe or something simple like that. Now what, Helen? I walk slowly back to the bed and pull off the sheet. I wrap it around myself and tie it at the shoulder so I look like a Roman on the way to the public baths. This is fine for walking around a hospital. The two ass-piss stains could have been caused by something else. They could be the result of my drooling on the sheet while sucking on a Werther’s Original. Very believable, Helen. Nobody’s going to ask you about it. People aren’t like that. They don’t want to know.

      Off we go. To the door. I haven’t left this room in three days. Am I even allowed to wander around? Come on, I’m not going to get in trouble for walking. But am I allowed to walk in the hall

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