Amputation Love

By Jesse Riggs

 

Misty picked me up after the train accident.  It wasn’t really a train accident, but it was on the tracks.  It wasn’t much of an accident, either.  Misty wore high-heeled leather boots that climbed to her thighs and gobbled up her fishnet pantyhose.  I bled all over her left leg while she helped me up the stairs to my apartment.  A mildewy smell swallowed up the building every time it rained.  Misty’s hair was plastered to her face; the dissolving spirit gum around her eyes gave in to the dampness and the latex sagged down the side of her nose.  I had called her away from a Halloween party.  She was supposed to be a cat in thigh-highs, and the latex had been a partial mask around her face, nose, and upper lip.  “God, Jerry,” she said, while her face peeled away, “I can feel it in my boots.  I think I’m going to vomit.” 

       I looked down and felt faint when I saw the gore running down our legs.  “I can get you a new pair,” I said, breathing like I had run a mile.

       “Oh, fuck,” she said, “You’re hyperventilating.”

       “No, I’m fine.”

       “No, Jerry.   You’re shaking.  Oh shit, oh shit.”

       “It’s,” I tried sucking back the bile in my throat, “It’s probably shock.”

       Misty panicked and lost her grip on my wrist.  My foot landed flat on the step and my knee locked.  I would have fallen backwards had Misty not snaked her tiny arm around my back and grabbed a fistful of flesh from my side.  I screamed, “Shit, Misty.”

       “I can’t, I can’t,” she began to cry, “I can’t do this.  Please, Jerry, let me take you to a hospital.”

       “No,” I said, panting, “Just get me to the third floor... and we can use the elevator.”  The elevator wouldn’t reach the lower floors of my complex.  The failsafe malfunctioned nine months ago and a man and his daughter were killed.  I knew him.  I didn’t know he had a daughter.  Apparently, she came in to see him on the weekends that she didn’t spend with her mother.  The super came in to fix it afterwards, but he overcompensated. 

       Miraculously, Misty’s tiny body hoisted mine into the elevator and to the thirteenth floor.  That’s where I lived. I wasn’t much help after that.

       “I can’t get you to the bed, Jerry,” Misty said, barely keeping it together, “You’re too heavy.”

       “Put me in the chair,” I said, feebly, my voice a notch above a whisper.

       I faded out for a while, minutely aware of Misty adjusting the recliner to lean back on a stool to elevate my leg. I’m surprised she had the presence of mind to do that.

       “Jerry,” I heard her say, I think a few inches above my face, “It won’t stop.”

       She had the breath of alcohol soured by adrenaline.  The tangy scent of latex rubber and smoke, wet hairspray, perfume.  It overwhelmed me.  “Get a shirt.  Tie it above the wound,” I said.

       “That won’t stop it.”

       “Go, Misty, for god’s sake,” I said so softly it must have sounded like my last breath.  She ran to my room and came back with my favorite purple Bowie t-shirt.  She fumbled at my belt buckle and unbuttoned my jeans.  Had it been any other day or time...   She tried a few yanks and resorted to scissors to finally remove them.  The denim, worn thin from acid washing, opened up like the skin of a dissected lab frog.  I couldn’t look at it.  I couldn’t even raise my head, but I got the feeling it was bad from Misty’s gagging and sobbing.  She followed my instructions, slipping the cloth beneath my leg, which at that point had lost all feeling, and tied it loosely over the wound.  I put out my hand, “No, above it.”  I reached down and touched the coldness in my thigh, the congealed blood that felt like fat in the bottom of a frying pan.   I pulled the shirt up my leg and motioned her to tie it. “Hard,” I said, “It won’t hurt.”

       She took either end of the cloth and pulled.  I was surprised.  It did hurt. 

       “I’m sorry,” she wailed, seeing my face contort.  She tried to loosen it but I flailed at her clumsily as I was starting to lose precision in my movements.  She may have thought I was angry.

       “Putter,” I said, pointing across the room.  A few desperately confused seconds passed until Misty saw it lying against the windowsill, partially illuminated by streetlights through closed Venetian blinds.  I didn’t have to talk anymore.

       Before I lost consciousness, I knew Misty had tried breaking the putter in two over her knee and I heard a loud pop.  It seemed like one instantaneous second after that; Misty beating the hell out of my kitchen counter, Misty gouging the twisted end of the broken putter under the shirt (taking some skin with it), Misty twisting it like she was shutting off a valve.  I remember taking hold of her face mask and tearing it off the moment before I went out.  I hadn’t had that sort of urge since I was four, peeling away the curling wallpaper from my parents’ bathroom.  I just reached up and ripped it off.

 

       “Jerry, Jerry,” I heard.  I heard pounding, threats, my heart, my head.  No, the door.  My name, “Jerry.” 

       I could tell it was morning, but I couldn’t really see the light.  I still held Misty’s face in my hand, and I had a horrible little shock until I saw her beside me with a nose, mouth and eyebrows.  She had a black outline where the cat mask adhered to her skin.  She kept saying it’s ok jerry, it’s ok, police are here it’s ok, I’m letting them in, it’s ok jerry.  I really wanted some ice cream.  But I couldn’t tell her.  She already ate it all.  I wanted my grandpa to give me watermelon and orange ice cream.  My breath felt like spider webs.  Spider eggs were hatching in my tongue, and I tried feeling it with my fingers, expecting little incubated bubbles but felt only a dead, fat piece of meat.  My fingers tasted like iron. 

       “What are his fingers doing in his mouth,” said the barber.  He looked like a barber, standing over my head with a gnarly little mustache and rat lips.  I still couldn’t talk, so I scratched my face to tell him I wanted a shave.  I left thick globs of spittle all over my beard.

       “Oh, god, that stinks,” the barber said and walked to the foot of the recliner.

       Misty used her sleeve to wipe my face, “Jerry stop it.”  Her voice had a neat trembling vibrato.  I’d never notice that before. 

“He looks like a barber, Misty.  Why is he here?”

“He’s not a barber.  He’s the police.  I’m sorry officer,” she said.

       The barber didn’t answer.  Maybe he was thinking of how to make my untamed, wiry horsehair into a neat little high and tight.  He looked like he’d be rough.  He probably didn’t bring any suckers with him either.  He rattled when he walked.  “Smells worse over here,” he said, scowling.  He lifted the edge of the afghan Misty covered me with and let it fall.  He turned away in disgust.  “I need an ambulance at 329 Condor Ave.,” he said.  He faced me again, holding a walkie-talkie to his mouth, and it looked like his gnarly little mustache had grown bulbous handlebars that arced crookedly across his rat lips.  He squeezed it when he talked, “Make it snappy.”

       “Make it snappy?” I laughed deliriously, “What is that?  Make it snappy.  Who says that?”  I tried lifting myself up one elbow at a time, the way a pregnant woman gets out of bed, suddenly wanting watermelon and orange ice cream. 

       “What is he talking about?” the barber asked, “His tongue’s hanging out of his mouth.”

       “He’s scared,” Misty said, apologetically, and tried coaxing me back down with her hands on my chest, “Stop trying to talk, Jerry.  We can’t understand you.”  Her voice rose to her head, clownishly, like pressure built up in a teapot.

       “You’ll rocket to the ceiling,” I said, mumbling like a mongoloid child, “Pull your ears.  It’ll let out the steam.”  I put my hands on either side of her head, trying to curl my fingers to grab her ears, but I couldn’t.  She looked stunned, as if I had shown her the greatest amount of tenderness.  She put her hands on mine:  Princess Leia of Alderaan.  Of, course.  She looked like Carrie Fisher, with beautiful buns on the side of her head.  How classically plain.  When she turned her head to look at the barber, she held my hands in place.  I felt a spike of desire, as if she were going to throw a chain around Jabba’s neck and dominate him.  I drew pictures of that scene, dirty, offensive pictorials that I stuffed in my sock drawer.  They smelled like dryer sheets.  I kept them separate from the rest of my photographs.

       The barber ripped off his mustache.  He left the ratty little sprigs that wouldn’t tear off.  He curled his lip, “Fucking biohazard.”

       Misty’s chin shook, “I couldn’t do anything about the smell.”  Her voice got wispy; I could see threads trailing after it from her lips.  It was cotton candy.  How it felt so fine when you touched it.  How it got hard and crusty if you spit on it.  I had always wondered if those lips were sweet. 

       The barber snorted. “Take it easy, Hellouise,” he said, “I guess that was you who was scrubbing the stairs.  You did a slop job.  If you had a head you’d’a taken him to the ER.”  I didn’t like him anymore.  I could see him lick his filmy teeth while he talked.  They had inch wide gaps between them with squishy tongue sticking through.  It was about that time I believed he was policeman.  Only cops lick their teeth on a power trip. 

       I couldn’t move anymore, and I was beginning to lose my delirium.  Paralysis and sanity is a bad combination.  I could feel my tongue again, burning from the scrapes from my fingernails, so I could speak again.  My jaw was tightening, though.  I spoke stiffly to Misty, “Is it bad?”

       She looked down and pulled the afghan over my pitiful genitals that the cop had exposed, but left my leg uncovered.  I thought I saw her crying.  “It’s entirely black,” she said, “except for the wound.  It’s swollen and red and putrefied.  But it’s not bleeding anymore.”  Her body convulsed in sobs, chin jutting upwards like someone was flogging her from behind, “There’s still glass in it I think... I couldn’t get it.  I didn’t want to put my hands on it.”  She wrenched the afghan in her hands, “Jerry.  We were supposed to do this together.  This was our plan.  Why didn’t you wait?”

       I couldn’t say anything.  My jaw was locked.  And at that point, I began to fear my Death.  My Death was a fisherman with a waterproof wristwatch and hunter green life jacket.  And I saw my Death row up beside my recliner, in which I was about to expire, appropriately, and before casting his line he stuck his waterproof watch in my face and showed me all its snazzy little dials and hands.  He was proud of the stopwatch function, which he operated by twisting the watch face two clicks to the right and depressing the winding knob on the side to start and stop time.  He showed me that one twice.  He would have showed me three times, but I baited his hook for him myself, and he took the hint. 

 

       “Misty... Misty... Misty... Misty... Misty... Misty... Misty.”

       “What, Jerry, what the fuck?”  Misty walked in the room wearing a skirt hemmed to her toes.  She limped all the way to my recliner.

       “I need some needles,” I said.  I had been playing with my phantom limb the entire week.  In the hospital, I remembered a TV show in the 80’s, the Ray Bradbury Theatre, where a man with an amputated leg threw down his crutches and walked on his phantom one.  They say you can really feel it, and I really could.  The pain, especially above my ankle, was thrilling.  After flexing my toes four or five times, I tried kicking at bottles for a few hours, but the loss in weight really threw off my counterbalance.  You never realize how much the weight of your leg drives most of your kicking power.  Lately, I had been pinning my pant leg to the recliner seat.  There was no sensation like I’d hoped, but it kept me grinning. 

       “No more needles, Jerry,” she said.  I could feel her eyes rolling like bowling balls.  She must have thought I was a pinhead.  I’ve been cooking that one up for at least an hour, no stir. 

There was an embarrassed reserve in her voice that told me that someone was in the room with us.  She sat down on the stool she had used to prop me up, and a suited man followed her into the room, carrying a brown leather briefcase and an umbrella.  His hair was pulled back into a ponytail that fell halfway down his back, and his face was flat.  His chin was the only prominent part of him, with his weak shoulders and bony hips; his suit was way too tight, so they stuck way out.  He sat down on a futon I kept for guests, and he unlatched his briefcase. 

“Hi, Jerry,” he said.  The fucker thought he knew me.

“Hi, Douche,” I said to the shrink.  “What is this, Misty?  I don’t need these guys anymore, remember?” I said and pointed at the pins in my pant leg.

“What do you mean, Jerry,” asked the shrink, “You’ve maimed yourself.  You’re permanently disabled.”

“You mean mentally handicapped, don’t you?  I’m a nut.  Case closed.  Get out.”

“I’m not a shrink, Jerry.”

“Well, you’re shrinking at least one of my heads as you speak, so what else are you?”

“I’m a minister, Jerry,” he said as if I should have been pleased.

“Oh,” I said, “Misty.”

“He’s not a minister, Jerry,” she said hastily, “Well, he is, but not the kind you think he is.  He knows a lot about amputees.  He doesn’t want to save your soul or judge you.”

“That’s good,” I said, “Because I don’t feel like dropping my pants and getting my junk appraised, you know what I mean?  So if that’s what you had in mind, pal, you’d better jet.”  I pointed to the door with my thumb.

“My name is Howard, Jerry,” he said, extending his hand over his briefcase, not bothering to get up out of his seat, “I’m youth pastor at Portland First Lutheran.  I also have a ministry set up to counsel amputees and quadriplegics.  It started out originally as a ministry for disabled veterans but I expanded it to include all individuals.”

“Great,” I said, “Guy comes in acting like the world’s cocksucker and expects a disabled man to walk to his chair to greet him.  Now believe me, Howard, I’m not giving in to self pity.  In fact, I’m in fucking heaven, so I don’t need it to be sold to me.  But if you want me to shake that hand you’re gonna have to bring it to me.”

“Jerry,” he said, “I don’t expect anything from you except an open mind, which is exactly what I offer you.  No judgment, no strings.  I extend my hand not to make physical contact with you but as an introductory exercise to train your psyche to extend itself and make spiritual contact.  Sort of as compensation.”

“Compensation? I’m incredulous, Howard.  I’ve compensated all my life for every shortcoming I’ve ever had.  It may be hard to believe, but I consider this... ,” I said, pointing at the deflated pant leg, “... as my life’s achievement.”

“Not at all, Jerry.  In fact, I’m familiar with this sort of sentiment.  You suffer from a psychological disorder known as apotemnophilia.”

“Wrong, Howard.  You’re wrong for several reasons,” I said, poising my index finger to begin counting on my left hand, “Number one:  I don’t suffer; I celebrate.  It may not have been how I had planned, but I’ve been working toward this for most of my life.  Number Second: I’m not an apotemnophile.  Apotemnophiles are people who want amputations to get off.”

“Misty tells me you’re a pornographer, Jerry,” said Howard the Minister, “But she wouldn’t tell me in what kind of pornography you trafficked.”

“Absolutely, I’m a pornographer, Howard.  Of course, the police have confiscated most of my collection, but I have a sample for you if you’d like to see it.”  I leaned to one side and started fishing under the cushions of my recliner.  “The cops cleaned me out; my apartment is almost as clean as the Pope’s, which was the entire reason I didn’t want to go to the hospital in the first place.  I’m not a registered sex offender, but a hardcore pornographer is just as bad in the eyes of law enforcement.  The police confiscate my books as evidence, scour them under the pretense of looking for kiddie porn and whack it with three lines of blow in their noses.  Assholes,” I pulled out a magazine with a tattered cover, folded in the middle to make it fit stuffed in a closed space, “Here it is,” I said, handing him an early copy of Naked Amputees, “Vintage, and I mean vintage.”

“I see,” said Howard, flipping through pages, sometimes two at a time, not flinching at the images of stump fornication, “This isn’t anything I haven’t seen before, Jerry.” 

“Look at the cover,” I suggested, “It won an award.  I shot it myself.”  The cover depicted a nude man and woman lying side by side.  They both had amputated legs AK (that means Above Knee): the woman’s right and the man’s left.  Together they looked like a large H. “They said it showed a definite humanistic aspect to the industry.   Get it, H for Human.  I say H for Happy, as in not miserable, Howard.”

“Very nice,” Howard said, “Very artistic.  But this only shows me that your self-inflicted maiming was sexually motivated.  Not the opposite.”  He set the magazine aside neutrally, but held a smirk of satisfaction on his face.

“I was formerly an acrotomophile; I got off to people with amputations.  There’s a difference,” I held out my hand to get my magazine back, but Howard the Minister didn’t make a move.  Misty finally got up and handed it to me, gimping the whole way to my seat.  I had forgotten she was even there.  I rolled it up and kept it in my hand, “Anyway, I figured out way back that I might actually want to have an amputation myself.  Up until this happened, I thought it was apotemnophilia.  I got turned on thinking about it.  But that passed.  It wasn’t until the night I stabbed myself that I realized I have what Misty has.”

“BIID,” Misty said, “Body Integrity Identity Disorder.  It’s the kind without the sexual part.”

“I know what it is, thank you, Misty,” said Howard, “But I’m not convinced that this is the same disorder Jerry suffers from.”

“I told you I don’t suffer,” I was starting to raise my voice.

“Why don’t you tell me, Jerry,” said Howard, trying to calm me down, “About the night at the railroad tracks.”

“Shit,” I said, “If I haven’t talked about that enough.”

“For my benefit, at least,” said Howard.

“And if not for him then for me,” said Misty.  She could always turn me around like that.  In the three years since we met, she never missed a chance to make me do something against my will.  I think it gave her the kind of satisfaction she couldn’t get walking on two sound legs.  But who am I to say that?

“Well, you’ll get the abridged version, Howard.  I woke up that morning feeling shitty.  Misty wasn’t talking to me; she and I had this deal worked out about doing our legs in through the legitimate circuit.  We couldn’t find a doctor to do it locally; there was a guy in Scotland who would, but we didn’t have the money, so we started a bank account together to save for it.  Well, I fucked that up.

“So Misty and I have pretty much parted ways, I’m shit broke because I closed out our account (that’s another story), and it’s Halloween.  So I get shit-faced at noon and keep going till that evening.  I get so depressed that I start going around pawnshops, seeing if they have any chainsaws or shotguns, but they’re not open.  So I keep getting shit faced.  I’m calling Misty all night, leaving her some dirty messages.  I get all worked up till I get sick of myself and buy one last bottle of Wild Turkey.

“I get this idea to go the railroad tracks.  I heard some people had pulled it off pretty successfully.  So I go to the tracks, away from the hoboes but in hindsight I would have needed them to drag me out to the road so I could catch a ride to the hospital.  But I was shit-faced.  I put myself on the tracks and waited.  There are hardly any trains going through Portland anyway, so I was lucky when I heard the whistle an hour and a half later.  It took me a few minutes to position myself the way I wanted: five centimeters AK.  That was hard.  I had to pull my left leg under me to make sure I got a clean slice on the right.  But the train was coming and I heard it whistling, and I got scared and got off the tracks.

“It was far away too.  It wasn’t like a last second roll to the side Jimmy Dean maneuver.  The fucking train was a quarter mile away, and I stood with my Wild Turkey in my hand, waiting for it to pass by.  It was an empty, desperate feeling, knowing I had blown my chance, that that train might be the only one blowing through Portland that night.  Next thing I know I’ve got a broken bottle of Wild Turkey in my hand, digging the flesh out of my thigh like a kid in a sandbox.  After that, I can’t recall much besides calling Misty from a phone booth.  I’m not sure how I got there, though.”

“I’ll spare you the details,” Misty said to Howard, “It was awful.” 

“I’m sure,” said Howard, “It must have been a more traumatic experience for Misty than for you, Jerry.”

“And now we’ve all learned a lesson and we can go to sleep with candy cane smiles and gumdrop eyeyballs,” I said, “Thank you, Howard.  This has been a most therapeutic session of ministering.  Do I get an evaluation card to fill out?”

“Certainly,” Howard said, opening his briefcase and procuring a stapled set of yellow paper sheets, “but it’s actually more of a survey.  I’m trying to compile a database for my dissertation.  Here’s one for you too, Misty.”

Misty thanked him, showed him to the door, and started filling out the questionnaire.  And I couldn’t believe it.  This guy was panhandling me; who was he anyway: youth pastor, therapist, scholar?  I threw the questionnaire across the room, angry because I let the creep use me for his own ends, but more in frustration that Misty was doing this to me in the spirit of helping.  In reality, my reality, anyway, she couldn’t stand the fact that I had succeeded, and she was still trying to save money, money which I owed her by the bankload, but still.  Maybe the guy was right.  I’d never thought of Misty being damaged by the whole experience.  She practically broke her kneecap to save me.  It took love to do that.  She was an innocent wannabe amputee, not a fucked up mess like me.  God, if that bastard was right about me.

I looked at Misty, watching her skinny little hands scratching little checkmarks on Yes and No boxes, trying to hide her ankles beneath her skirt.  I unrolled my copy of Naked Amputees and stared at the naked couple, a picture I thought had once symbolized a special unity, more significant than a marriage.  All I could see was a giant H.  H for Howard.  God damn it. 

__________________________________________________________________________

end