Body Horror In Week Seven
This story starts out with me picking at a blister. So if that’s too much for you, stop now.
But the blister had been swelling on my stomach for three days, just underneath my ribcage and to the right of my belly button, and it was starting to really hurt. So I picked at it, and…
…a stitch popped out, like a meerkat poking its head out of a hole. I pulled at it gently, since my body is full of dissolvable stitches, and most of them have degenerated to the point where they pull away like wet cotton.
But no. This one was rooted deep in my belly; I could press down on the wound and see the stitch sliding back and forth in it, maybe three-quarters of an inch revealed, like a pillar being revealed as the tide went out. “Oh, just yank it out,” said Gini, reaching over to give it a good hard tug.
“No!” I yelped, slapping her hand away. And in bending over, the stitch slipped back into my body. And, sliding around under the skin, created another blister.
By the time I finally managed to pick it out of my body three days later, I was ready. I asked Gini to get me a pair of small scissors so I could at least cut the offending portion out – and when I did, I realized something chilling:
This wasn’t a stitch.
It was copper fucking wire. Clad in white plastic insulation.
“Uh, Gini,” I said. “I think that’s the wire they used to tie my ribs together after they cracked my chest open.”
Which didn’t make much sense, as I knew they had to use a lot of strength to seal my shattered chest back into place, and this wire was the size of – well, a small thread. But by the time I could investigate, the remaining bit had retreated into my body.
Gini, worrying that my insides were now wormed through with pointy bits of sharp copper wire, perforating my liver, instructed me to call the doctors. So I did. They were quite jolly.
“Oh, that’s not related to your ribs,” they said. “That’s a wire that leads to your heart.”
“What?”
“It’s the wire that we use to hook you up to a pacemaker during surgery, just in case something goes wrong. But the pericardium seals up quickly, and taking it out risks small bleeding. So we leave it in you. But you’ve lost thirty pounds since the operation, so it’s not a surprise it’s coming out.”
I remembered Gini, about to yank real hard on the wire, and felt sick.
“So… what would have happened if someone had pulled on it really hard?” I asked, envisioning something very much like this.
“It would have come out. Probably had a little internal bleeding. Nothing serious.”
“No, no, nothing serious at all about someone removing a wire attached to my still-beating heart,” I muttered.
“Say, when you cut the wire, did you sterilize the scissors? Because if that portion of the wire is back in your body again, we’re going to have to put you on a course of antibiotics….”
So now I’m on Keflex again, and inside me is a copper wire threaded through to my heart. If I lose more weight again, it might re-emerge, and then I can tug on it like a bell clapper – a route for me to poke my internal organs directly. Which is a thought that fills me with pure ick.
THE SICKBEARD IS DEAD
Before.
After.
I’m still frail in some ways. I need drugs to sleep. I can’t lift heavy things. I can’t… oh, you know the drill.
But I went to my barber, and he fixed up my face, and today I feel born anew. It is a glorious feeling. You can see it in my smile.
Don't Call Me An Expert At This
When I read essays about polyamory, a lot of people say, “Some so-called ‘polyamory experts’ tell you that you should do it this way…” And that always worries me, because I write a lot about polyamory and relationships and love.
But I will never claim to be an expert on polyamory.
It’s just too fucking complicated. It’s like claiming to be an expert on monogamy, which would be ludicrous, too. I write about *what works for me*, and if that resonates with you, then awesome, I’m happy. But there are tons of people who poly it up in ways that don’t make sense to me, and they appear to be pretty happy.
And I try not to make predictions, because of my mother.
I have to hand it to my Mom. I mean, her son spent his twenties in psychodramatic relationships, cheating constantly, swinging from dysfunctional affair to dysfunctional affair like some sort of priapic Tarzan. I know she shook her head. I know she despaired.
Then I called her up one day. “Hey, Mom!” I said brightly. “I met this really wonderful girl in a Star Wars chat room! Online! And I’m quitting my job to move to Alaska to help her raise her two children!”
Give my mother credit: she didn’t say a word. She just expressed happiness and hope. Even though, on paper, this relationship seemed sketchier than a XKCD cartoon.
Yet here we are, fourteen years later, happily married. Who knew? Christ, *I* wouldn’t have bet on me. Yet Gini and I have managed.
Truth is, love can win out in the wildest of places. And a lot of those polyamory experts, so-called or not, seem hell-bent on telling you what will inevitably cause doom. I don’t know that. I don’t think anyone does. And I think the number of ways that people can fall in love far outstrips my ability to become acquainted with them.
I’ll write about polyamory, and what works for me. And if you’re like me, or at least that particular writing is something we connect on, then awesome. I hope it’s good advice. I’m lucky enough that more than a few people seem to think that what I say approaches wisdom, and it may well do, for them.
But can I be an expert on polyamory? I don’t think you can be. I think you can cite some best practices that work for most people, and maybe cite some common problems, but polyamory is like programming and writing in that I could dedicate twelve hours a day to studying it, every day, for five decades, and at the end of it I suspect there would be still myriads of wonderful surprises.
Which is the good part. So don’t call me an expert. Call me what you will, ranging from “helpful” to “bloated asshole,” but an expert? Never. Couldn’t. Shan’t.