30.11.08

The Invisible Woman

04/28/07

Just the thought of someone lying on an operating table, waiting with bated breath, counting backwards…
Ten…
And thinking about the pending events,
Nine…
And thinking—
“This is the last time I will ever look or feel this ugly.
Eight…
This is the last time I will ever hate myself.
Seven…
And when I wake up, I will start a whole new life. I will be reborn.
Six…
I will exit this womb of self-deprecation. I will no longer be the ugly ducking—this avian monster that people scoff at.
Five...
I will be a swan with long and elegant features, graceful in nature.
Four…
Cygnus Bellum.”
Three…
And I’m thinking about “the Desecration of Leda.”
And I’m shouting—
“Tuércele el cuello al cisne!”
Two…
And she’s thinking,
“I will no longer be ostracized!”
One…
“And people will want me.”
And…Dream.

And here I am, walking on the cold marble floor, observing the self-deprecators. I am analyzing them with my peripherals—women with emaciated lips, drowsy breasts, corpulent arms and weary cheeks—slight imperfections. These people, these monstrosities, give life to these deficiencies. They allow these insignificant, God-blessed flaws to control their lives. But I, Hayden Motherfucking Santiago, want to show them a life free of a scalpel’s fetters. I want to show them a life that they can truly have control over. They are all just taxis; they believe they are in control but really they are just taking the route the passenger chooses to betake them, never having power over their own life, while I am a bus, following a self-set route, controlling everyone else’s destinations, never allowing anyone to influence my expedition. I am my own compass. And this country talks of freedom as if it is something profound and real, as if it is something we have obtained. Slavery has always existed and it still does today, even (especially) in America. We have traded in this practice of exhaustive labor perpetuated through manual slavery for a contemporary version that has been birthed through our lack of individualism, our need for constraints and our lust for morals. We are all slaves. We are slaves to trends, to advertisements (business propaganda), to sententiousness and religion. We are slaves to our addictions. And freedom seems just as feasible, just as attainable, as salvation. What if God really does hate us? What if salvation is merely an incorporeal dowry that God refuses to endow us with? Oh, he really is quite the Karamazov. We are all just using democracy as a 21st century Moses. And here we are, wandering through the desert, building our own idols, contracting God-prescribed diseases, dying without ever knowing the true purpose of our journey. My slave name is Hayden Santiago, and I am a product of America.

As I look around the room I see surgeons—the Michelangelos of medicine who believe God is Picasso and they are merely realist painters sent to Earth to fix what he has wrecked—spending countless hours carving up their masterpieces. They take such unsightly things and transform them into something striking, something statuesque. A beautiful lie. These doctors allow people to externalize their self-hatred. I admire them for their control. Everyone is just looking for a quick fix. Instant Gratification. We are all junkies with our respective addictions.
It’s perfectly normal to want to be perfect.

And I’m observing the women in the waiting room.
The overweight.
They are depressed because they’re fat, and they’re fat because they are depressed—a vicious exchange. They experience delectation through delectables. They spend their nights finding solace in their friends, Ben and Jerry, wrist-deep in a pint of Chunky Munky, waiting by the phone, wondering why he won’t call them back. And they eat, and they heal. And every night, they look in the mirror and cry—“Why isn’t the diet working?” And one day, having saved up enough money, they will come to this office and schedule a liposuction operation, because that will make them happy. They figure having a few tubes shoved into them beats hovering over a toilet for the rest of their lives. And I guess they’re right.

And I’m observing the women in the waiting room.
The models.
They are upset because they didn’t get the cover of Maxim; it is because their boobs aren’t big enough; they want a size C (which is now the average in America). They spend their nights finding solace in some random prick, a phallus deep inside of them, waiting for him to come, asking him what he thinks of their breasts, never wondering if he’ll call back. And they screw, and they heal. And every night, they look in the mirror and cry—“Why can’t my boobs be bigger?” And one day, in between shoots, they will come to this office and schedule a breast augmentation, because that will make them happy. They figure having a tiny scar underneath their breasts beats living in a duplex in West New York for the rest of their lives. And I know they’re right.

And I’m observing the women in the waiting room.
The elderly.
They’re upset because their husbands left them for some twenty-one year old bimbo, probably one of the models sitting in this very waiting room (they may have paid for the operation). And they want to look young again. They spend their nights holding elegant galas, dressed in ’50s Chanel, finding solace in a bottle of 78’ Montrachet, wrist-deep in their husbands’ pockets, waiting in a Temper-Pedic bed, watching Law & Order, wondering why their spouses are still at work at one in the morning. And they drink, and they heal. And every night, they look in the mirror and cry—“Why can’t I be young again?” And one day, while their husbands are away on business, they will come to this office and schedule a face-lift, and some Botox, because that will make them happy. They figure they have found a new definition of beauty in such meticulous destruction. The Puddle of Youth in a syringe. And it does not matter if they are right; they will not live long enough to regret this mistake.

And I am unconsciously stumbling into the recovery room, observing the casualties of this war on identity. I see a room full of lies, full of self-loathing, full of desperation. It reeks of it—this yearning to be loved.

The room is a heavenly white. The patients are divided by a single sheath—a cloud to shade the radiation, the truth, the epidemic.

As I swagger down the isles like a goddamn drunkard, I see this woman lying there, reading Sylvia Plath, desperately searching for some kind of verisimilitude in life. And I am hoping she only discovers pain. I hope she sees that everything she has experienced in her life is all that exists. There is nothing else. But, I can appreciate her avidity for reading literature; we live in a world where reality TV rapes our pupils every time we flip the channel. No one gives two slivers worth of pubic floss about reading anymore. No one wants to take the time to appreciate the divine intricacies that dress the pages of Flaubert, Pynchon, Dostoevsky and Nabokov. No one cares. These days, everyone just wants microwave entertainment.

And her face is shrouded in bandages, a conspicuous veil gurning with despicable truth. Mummified, she sits there, nose-deep in this book, and I am unable to tell whether or not she understands, but I will be happy to clear things up for her.

I approach her, in all my glorious splendor, and initiate a conversation, a sermon if you will. “Any good?” I ask, pretending as if our acquaintance is completely unprompted.
“Excuse me?” she says in utter confusion and complete surprise.
“Is the book any good?” I clarify. “You’ve been reading it incessantly for the last few days, so I assume it must be faintly compelling.”
“Um, do I know you?” she hesitates, guarding the emotional fortress built around her heart.
“Hayden Santiago,” I say, pausing for a moment to look at my own doppelganger. “I’m just here to comfort a friend who has also had some surgery done…I’m sorry; I just find this place to be a bit discomforting.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.”

She looks down at her book again, attempting to sever the ties at their source. She sees that I am still standing at the foot of her bed, then tries to rise for a drink of water unsuccessfully.
“Here, let me get that for you,” I say, displaying human characteristics—acting.

She looks at me with kind, limpid eyes—the only thing that still exists unscathed on her pillaged face—and thanks me. As she stands up, I examine her frame. She is tall, about 5’11, blonde hair, blue eyes, roughly a 36 C, with long, sleek legs and tiny feet. She vaguely reminds me of Diana. And that is when I know—this is my new objective.

Name: Aviya Simone
Age: 20
Height: 5’11
Weight: 120
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Blonde
Perfume of Choice: D&G Light Blue
Book of Choice: The Bell Jar

I am absolutely certain this matters.
We start talking about Flaubert and hopelessness, Hemingway and suicide, Salinger and innocence. And we’re talking about the accident.

“—My face has never fully recovered from the incident, and neither has my self esteem.”
And I visit her everyday and we talk intimately about everything.
“—And I’m bound by this constant—this constant desire to love...to be loved, but this is a face even a mother can’t love.”

And she has had facial reconstructive surgery, one of three. She knows she is hideous, but from the neck down, she is angelic. As she is talking, I am staring down at her perky breasts and her Barbie doll design. As of now she is merely the blueprint to a masterpiece, an unfinished tour de force.
And she speaks (reeks) of regret.

“You know—”And she pauses briefly, fighting tears back, speaking in a labored tone, “I spent—I spent my whole life in size two evening gowns and bathing suits? I lived beauty pageant to beauty pageant, standing on a stage, awaiting judgment, lights reflecting my every flaw. It was as if I had died and finally reached the gates of Heaven; I was waiting for God’s final fucking decision. Everything I had done until that time was to be evaluated objectively.”
Beatrice, what do you think?

And she takes a couple sips of water. She looks around for something to eat, grabs a cup of pudding and a spoon and stuffs her mouth through a small slit in her bandages. And she says, her mouth full of pudding, “At that exact moment, nothing else mattered. Not the fact that, immediately right after the pageant, I would binge eat for weeks, stuffing this emptiness with partially hydrogenated oils. Not the fact that I spent so much time striving for affection I eventually lost sight of those who truly loved me—loved me for the person I really am, not this polished stack of bullshit with a tiara and an impractical longing for world peace.” She puts the pudding down. She has light brown stains on her bandages that I find unremittingly distracting. And she continues, “I didn’t realize how truly unattractive—how truly ugly I was on the inside until I became hideous on the outside. I wear a visible, tangible mask now, but the truth is—I’ve been wearing this mask all my life. ”

And her eyes well up like grass in the morning, her tears like dew—beads of raindrops huddling politely upon her bandages.

I am looking for something comforting to say, but all I can come up with is, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will speak the truth."
“Joyce?” she asks, now curious and slightly comforted.
“No, Wilde.”
“Shit,” she laughs, “I should probably catch up on my reading.”

And I ask affectionately, “So, now that you’ve experienced this life-changing epiphany, why did you decide to have the surgery?”
“Because it just became too painful to bear, to look in the mirror and see that I gave up a large part of my life and have nothing to show for it.” And she looks up at the ceiling, trying desperately to capture the tears that huddle at the base of her eyes so that they stream back to their source, but cries, “You have to understand—the world is a lonely place, Hayden; it’s dreadfully lonely when you’re ugly.”
And we find truth in Pain.

“I agree the world is a lonely place, but we’re all monsters in our own way,” I say in a reassuring voice, desperately wanting her to feed, like a ravenous jackal, upon my lies. “We constantly try to hide it from the people we love, in fear that we might scare them away.” And, using calculated mannerisms, insincerely sincere eyes, and tight voice, I pitch, “But the thing is—the people we should care for the most are those who see behind the mask, those who stare the demon straight in the face and show no fear, no trepidation—the people who embrace our repulsiveness. Find yourself, or you’ll find yourself lost in your own lies, forlorn, in a recovery room, searching for the truth in novels and scalpels.”

“I understand but—but sometimes the monster inside of us is too...too terrifying for anyone to handle.”
And I know exactly what she means. But I still ask, playing the role, “How so?”

“You know, I’ve never told anyone this, but, I’m tired—” And she chokes on the tears that huddle in the back of her throat and continues, “I’m tired of the lies; I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night—in a cold sweat—reliving my past—” And she looks down now at her body—the only thing left intact, but also the thing she hates the most and persists, “Feeling his warm, damp hands touching my body.” And Shame fervently emits from her perforated bandages as she carries on, “You know…um…God—I can’t...I can't believe I’m telling you this, but I need to tell someone.”

I believe that life has a funny way of operating, of bringing people together. What she says next is the only thing I can truly identify with, for some reason; but I am not sure why.

“…When I was little, my father would...he would call me into his office. He was this beast of a man—tall for no reason. He was a cop. He had this resolute conception that he was God and made us aware of this every time he had the chance. And I would come in and I would sit on his lap. I remember his breath reeked of alcohol—Jack Daniels, he was a slave to fucking Jack Daniels—and he would tell me how beautiful I was, and how much he loved me. He would tell me that...when you love someone, you express it physically—uh, umm—sexually. He would tell me that this is the only true expression of love.”
As unorthodox as it may seem, I agree with her father. I live my life by that reality.

“…And he would rub my hair and twiddle my blonde locks between his fingers. And his hand would steadily go down, rubbing my shoulders, touching my nipples. And he would say how he wanted to give me perspective. Then…fuck…then—” And she wipes the dry tears from her bandages out of habit and persists, “Then he would reach down into my bottoms and he would…he would…feel me. He would reach deep inside me, and I would...cry. He would tell me to not make a sound, and I did. I did! I fucking did! I fucking did. I—”

And the lines on the electrocardiogram spike and fall, then spike and fall again. She begins to speak more fluidly, more maliciously, but eventually calms herself by gripping the paperback book using whatever strength her sylphlike hands can muster.

“And—and I would close my eyes and dream up something beautiful.” She looks favorably upon the ceiling, searching for salvation, for a way out, and says, “Cause in the dark —you can imagine anything. You can create your own manufactured perceptions.” And she closes her eyes, as if to recreate that darkness and persists, “And I would ignore those blind spots and dream I was in a field of daisies; I would pick them up and blow their pedals into the air, and the wind would take them away, up into the perfumed sky. I envied these pedals, their nomadic lifestyle, their transitory existence. I envied the very fact that they could just…expand into the air and leave the world they knew behind. And I would run into the bathroom and cry and take off my bloodied underwear. And this—” She pauses for a second, attempting to force the words past her lips. “This was Love.”
And this is truth.

“And I spent my teenage years fucking any guy I found mildly attractive because I believed that that was love. That son of a bitch—my Hitler—he had such control over me. And I don’t know, I just want to get that control back. I want to have power over my own life; I want to be able to control my events. Do you ever feel that way, Hayden?”
“Everyday,” I say affectionately.
And I’m thinking about Lincoln and how he was such a naïve fool.

And I visit her on her last day of recovery.
“So, are you excited to leave this medicated heaven?”
“I guess,” she replies, looking at nothing but herself.
“Well…what’s wrong?” I ask, feigning curiosity, but not really.
“Nothing…it’s just…nothing.”
“Come on, you know you can tell me anything.”
“I’m still...ugly, Hayden. Nothing’s changed. I’m going to leave this place and everyone will look at me. They will look at me and laugh; they’ll whisper things—mean things, Hayden. Or worse, they’ll look away, as if staring at me is something punishable by God. I just want to be loved, in a real way, not in this pseudo-pornographic one.”

“Do you want to get dinner sometime?” I interrupt, making light of things.
“What?” She asks, looking genuinely confused.
“Do you want to maybe, I dunno, go out and eat, with me?”
“No,” she responds using an acquired tendency.
“What?” I ask, now genuinely confused because I have yet to be refused.
“I mean, I just don’t think I’m ready to be put on display in such a public setting. I can’t just let everyone laugh at me as if I were some...some rodeo clown. I’m just not ready for that yet.”
That's how I like my girl—ripe with insecurity.

“We’ll, then, just come over my place and I’ll make you dinner.”
“Well—”
“Well…what?”
“Well, yea…I mean, yes, I’ll come over,” she says with those kind, lonely eyes that aren’t accompanied by any visible facial expression. “By the way…I’ve been meaning to ask you, what’s with the gloves?”
“I’m making a fashion statement,” I smile.
“You think gauze will ever be in fashion?”
“If you want, I’ll help you start that one as well.”
She laughs.

And I leave her there, wrapped up like leftovers, waiting for someone to remember that she exists, that she wants to be devoured. I exit that hospital-white recovery room and head home so I can prepare for tonight.

And I am at my dorm at NYU where the only conversations I attempt to have are within the comfort of my comforters. The only agreeable and admirable thing about NYU is that almost everyone who goes there is as intelligent or as opulent as you are. You don't have to worry about dumbing yourself down, or pretending you have a scholarship, or that you can't go on the Spring Break trip to Prague because you don't have the money. The only problem I have with NYU is that it is all about one-upping your peers; It is all about whose daddy has more money, or which season tickets you have, or who has the nicer BMW, or which part of the Hamptons you live in. Sometimes I wish I had gone to a liberal arts school like Vassar or Wesleyan. Then and only then could I dress like a fucking hippie bongo playing bum, talk analytically about how Dick and Bush are fucking up our country or whether Obama is the Daigen we need right now, drive a fifty-thousand dollar car with the top down while listening to Hop Along, Queen Ansleis or Wilco, and sex girls who are not interested in copulating again because they are probably manufactured lesbians who actually like dick, but as an act of non-conformity they pretend to munch rug because that is their way of sticking it to their bread givers, who are actually psychologists who don't really give a flying fuck and had actually done the same sort of things when they were burning bras and protesting in the middle of Washington Square Park forty years ago. We all think we are unique but really everything we are doing has been done before. So consider life just a grocery store of qualities or characters, if you want individuality all you have to do is walk down isle four and you will find it.
Yeah, I talk down to people...but it's only when I'm coppin' a beej.

I get a knock on my door; it is the security guard. He hands me a package and leaves my presence without saying a word. The return address reads—The Meadowlands. I eagerly open the neat box and take notice of its viscus, which is carefully scarfed in transparent pink bubble wrap. I slowly unravel the object, blessing each moment with profound anxiety. As soon as the object is in my hands, I drop it; it crashes against the floor, bouncing in a mocking manner. I put on my infamous white gloves and pick up the object. I observe the human bone from all possible angles. It is too small to be Rosa's. I wipe my dewy eyes and curse perspective. This girl was just a victim to pubescent inanity. And I tell myself I am never doing shrooms again. I regain my composure and continue to prepare for my guest.

My dorm room, redolent of a Parisian restaurant, emits a potent stench of paprika, cloves and oregano. A collegiate feast.

The doorbell rings and the girl enters my room—King Tut from the neck-up, and Yasmin Bleeth from the bandages-down.

And she is aroused by the odor, the omnipresent scent of spices and sex. And she is wet. I place the food on my Ikea Sparkov table and let the glasses of wine accompany them. I take her to my full size mattress and provide her with a place to rest her hips.

And I am drunk as shit; I am drunker than the time I had an in-out with the tranny. Before Aviya came over, I had a fifth of Southern Comfort. And I am drunk. I am to the point that—if I were in a bar, I would find that girl in the corner of the saloon—the one that no one is talking to because there is something wrong with her. And I would go up and begin to flirt. But there is truly something epically wrong with her, you know, the type of girl who is missing an arm or an eye, and she has an eye patch. And I am just so inebriated that the eye patch is beginning to turn me on, to the point where I’m thinking—‘Arrrrgh, shiver me timbers!’ To the point where that eye patch is causing me to pitch a tent in my trousers. And I'm digging it. I want her to find my buried treasure.

But I forget about the paper bag, I forget about the Pathmark procured mask that I had picked up for her. And the only thing I am seeing is her beautiful, taut body. Her charismatic breasts and her fixed vagina. And I could give two fucks worth of jizz whether she’s a model or a soccer mom. But as I wrap myself around her casing, all I can see is her eyes. Her faultless blue eyes. Her model blue eyes. And I am entranced. I gaze between the gauze, the Peruvian stitched sheets, and I’m captivated. They stare at me with such impenitent force, such burning intensity. And I feel it burrow down into my spirit and it festers, and it manifests into a giant, glowing, vibrant fuck-of-a ball in the axis of my chest. And I’m spent. And the scarf that chokes my throat is woven with adjectives.

Then, I am lying on a grassy knoll, looking up at an ostentatious sun, breathing in this smug smog and feeling this withering of precocious thought and subversive deliberation. And I watch the pedals drift into the caustic air. And they divide like vines, only to collide and intertwine at the very instance where time is no longer a moment, but a sign. (I told you I like to rhyme when I am inebriated).

Yet, as I grab her breasts, her excited and agitated bosoms, I feel this instant connection, as if we have met before. It is a connection that manifests itself deep within the spirits of two helpless souls, desperately trying to find control, but realizing they are nothing more than a cog in this marketing machine: this endless apparatus that fucks itself into oblivion, this galvanized, eternal engine that processes shit into symbols and symptoms.
And we’re nothing more than nothing.
And we’re nothing more than a Nike sign glimmering in the sun.

My writing is in a constant, unwavering battle between realism and romanticism.

She is breathing hard, marathon hard, and awaiting the pending events. She wants to know whether or not I am going to love her in that pseudo-pornographic way. And I will. But she will love it because that is all she knows. She is going to beg for my forelimb on a platter because of the way I am going to indulge in her salaciousness. I am going to over-fuck her with appetizers and let her chew on them with such rhythmic mastication. Consider the foreplay, hors d'oeuvres, and sex, the main course—the fillet mignon. And she is dying of starvation.

I am forgetting the whole reason for the objective. I am finding myself dick-deep inside of her, screaming for redemption, waiting to see whether or not she wants to know if her boobs are too small.
And we fuck, and we heal.

And I am putting my heart and soul into it; I am putting myself into it. But there is only so much you can ease your way into. There is only so much you can infiltrate. And I graze her inner lining with my outer protrusion. I await her screams, her vocal beauty.

And mid-thrust it dawns on me; I want to see her face. I’m drunk as shit, I’m near oral ejection, and I’m about to spew my night's worth onto her frame—I’m smashed. But I want to see her face. I want her to know that I can witness what is behind the iron mask; I can stare the demon straight in the eyes and smile.
I live the life of an undertaker; I spend my days banking on other people's misery.

And what is behind her wraps is her monster, is my monster.
I unravel her gauze and realize—
Everyone is connected, unified.

In a world where MySpace and Facebook, emails and instant messaging, texting and BBMs plague the very sanctity of privacy, we cannot help but establish this connection. It can no longer be created through the very intimacies found through sexual incisions. No, it is now defined by a few words of text and tagged photos. And “poke me” no longer holds any sexual relevance.
There is nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but news feeds or wall posts. If you can't see or hear or touch a person, it's best to let them go.

So I experience her repulsiveness; I know that feeling, that coveting of affection, of appreciation. 'I just want to be loved,' her soul cries.
Don’t we all darling?

I finally see who she is, and I see that we are all connected, unified. And I am thinking of Diana, of the accident, of our accident. And at that moment I recognize that beautifully horrific face. That castrated, pillaged destruction she calls a face.

I say, “Three years ago, New Jersey Turnpike, 92’ Ford Pickup, do you remember that?”
And confusion interrupts her muffled screams. “What?”

I reiterate sharply, “Three years ago, New Jersey Turnpike, 92’ Ford Pickup, there was an accident during a thunderstorm…a girl died. Do you remember that?”
And the pain wells up at the base of her eyes; I want to kiss them away before they can well up at their source, but, for Diana's sake, I do not, and she persists, “I’ll never forget it. I will never forget that car or that highway or that girl,” she says, never opening her eyes, trying desperately to rise into that perfumed sky.

“And neither will I. You see—” And in between thrusts, I say, “I know exactly who you are, and I have known for the last week. And just now, I realized—”And I pause for a few brief moments—for dramatic effect. “I control you. I represent everything you’ve lost. I am your lack of beauty. I am your incessant shortage of confidence.” Still thrusting, still breathing heavily, I persist, “Right now, I am your scarcity of ambition. I am your continually diminishing self-esteem. I am everything you hate about yourself. I am your facial reconstructive surgery." I steadily slow down until I am suspended at the deepest pit of her canal. I stare at the very soul of her eyes and say, "I own you…I am you.”

But she just gapes at me with those smoldering blue eyes, those fiery sapphire pupils. And tears form—little phoenixes that flap their self-deprecating wings down her shell-torched cheeks and dissolve into the misty air, only to be reborn at the very flame of her eyes. And I devour her psyche.
“Love me…Want me…Consume me.”

And she keeps fighting, keeps fucking. But I don’t know who or what she is really screwing. Maybe she is raping her own father. Maybe she is showing him what love really is. Maybe she is fucking me, never allowing me that testicle to penis satisfaction I am so desperately trying to acquire. She doesn’t want me to blast a hole into forever. It is really a hole into nothingness, a fissure in the abyss. No matter how much I fill this hole, I cannot fill the void, that vacant mosque of a soul, an elegy to nihilism, her spirit’s requiem. And our bodies clash, creating nothing—a Big Bang, annulled.

She screams silently—a scream that rivals a whisper, yet is loud enough to shatter glass.
And I collapse.

And she’s reborn, a beautiful swan. Cygnus Bellum.
And I find perspective.

“You know, I’m writing a book.”
And in between bated breaths, she utters, “About…”
“About perspective…about my sexual experiences…about this incessant desire to control everything.”
“Well…am I going to be included in it?”
“That depends…do you want to be in it? Do you want people to know your story, to know what you’ve had to go through, what you want out of life?”
And she whispers, “I want them to know everything.”
A whisper that rivals a scream.
And I sleep.