X-Ray Dreams, 1963

September 19, 2002

Illustrated by Andi Olsen

Daddy Grilling, His Head a TV Set

The dream won’t stop arriving. Every night. At the office, too. In the evenings with Mother & Uncle Billy & Panzer after dinner watching My Three Sons. In the dream, I have a golden doughnut. Sometimes it’s called the garden, sometimes a hair pie, sometimes where the monkey sleeps. But it’s always the same. It’s always there, mulberry moist & swollen. It’s always a miracle, like trying to imagine what comes after time & space. I spent hours investigating, palpating lightly as milkweed umbels, sliding in my middle finger, thumb & forefinger & middle finger, whole hand, arm to elbow, extracting a wedding garter, an invisible cat that won’t quit purring, three pennies, a 1927 Babe Ruth baseball card, an orb of light with iridescent bluebird wings. Then I feel someone tapping my forehead & open my eyes to magpies making bloody jam of my frontal lobes.

Uncle Billy in a Dress, Daydreaming

Oh!–it’s simply the most beautiful thing, isn’t it, dobostort sweet knowledge, because you can feel it underneath your smart dress & know it’s always there… when you’re eating, say, or when you’re talking to the postman, unfolding the Castro Convertible for well-behaved guests, pouring a cup of new & improved Tide into the washing machine, because you know it’s there & that’s the most indescribably stunning thing, it makes you feel free to know, no matter what you’re doing, vacuuming or head lowered Sunday morning, because it’s existence proves everything will be absolutely scrumptious, & I could stand up & dance, stand up & gambol this very minute, like Julie Andrews across the Alpine meadow, hair cropped short as mine, black-&-white dress a-billow like a penguin in billowing grass, arms stretched wide to the ambient possibilities of music & to Disney executives at mahogany tables everywhere because, well, because I know I happen to look drop-dead gorgeous tonight in my carefully plucked eyebrows & tasteful, understated brooch that would make Jackie O. proud, neat as a just-turned-down bed: I could stand & dance while Nancy sweeps up her Kodak to capture this rich moment to share with the future, no matter what Robert is opening his filthy mouth to say, thinking you can’t see it but you can, opening his mouth to say across the room, lips parting, because what he says he says from darkhearted jealousy, never able to look as dreamboat perfect as me here, tonight, my spectacular secret alive between my meticulously shaven legs.

Mother Gagged in the Family Room

Commentary

The Clitoris is situated beneath the anterior commissure, partially hidden between the anterior extremities of the labia minora. The body is short and concealed beneath the labia; the free extremity, or glans clitoridis, is a small rounded tubercle, consisting of spongy erectile tissue, and highly sensitive. It is provided, like the penis, with a suspensory ligament. The clitoris consists of two corpora cavernosa, composed of erectile tissue enclosed in a dense layer of fibrous membrane, united by an incomplete fibrous pectiniform septum.

The Penis consists of a root, body, and highly sensitive extremity, the glans penis. It is composed, like the clitoris, of a mass of erectile tissue, and enclosed in three cylindrical fibrous compartments. Two, the corpora cavernosa, are placed side by side along the upper part of the organ; the third, or corpus spongiosum, encloses the urethra and is placed below. The septum between these is thick and complete behind, incomplete in front, and consists of vertical bands arranged like the teeth of a comb [L. pecten, -inis, comb, scallop].

Mother’s Hunchbacked Reflection, Daydreaming

The dream won’t stop arriving. Every night. Running errands, too. In the evenings with Father & Uncle Billy & Panzer after dinner watching The Donna Reed Show. In the dream, there is a cobblestone town square. The sky is chilly gray. A crowd has gathered to watch six clowns perform. The clowns ride unicycles while doing handstands. Play an accordion with their feet. Juggle flaming bowling pins. The crowd applauds. Afterwards, the clowns move among the onlookers with a shabby tophat, collecting. When they reach a group of small children standing in front of their festive parents, they proffer the hat. The children, thinking the goods inside are theirs, plunge their hands in. One pulls out, not the spare change people have been depositing, but a white rabbit in wire-rimmed glasses. Everyone cheers. The clowns simper & proffer the children the hat again. Dazzled, the children thrust in their hands & this time one extracts a huge, colorful, paper-flower bouquet. The crowd erupts in admiration. When the clowns proffer the children the hat a third time, the children, giggling & sputtering with merriment, jab in their hands & next one is holding a giant glistening purple-red clitoris with wet floppy labia. The crowd, baffled, goes still. The children open their mouths to scream. But then the giant sex bird begins flapping its fleshy wings, rising out of the astonished child’s palm, circling over the heads of the onlookers & then higher & higher over the town square, above the medieval rooftops, into the chilly gray sky, until it is a moist liver, until it is a black dot, until it is nothing at all.

Panzer Playing, Her Head a TV Set

I am the person who becomes you, like it or not. I am the person whom you can never become again. I am the person you can look at from the outside but never really understand. Knowing this cuts up your heart at least once every day, often when you least expect it, riding the subway home after work, opening the refrigerator door & reaching for a pint of ice cream. I am the person who recites the dreams my parents never had. I am the person who sticks so many thoughts into my uncle’s mind that his mind in the end becomes my mind. Because I had a sister who used to beat me, kick me off swings, clip my hair with gardening shears while I cried. Because my name isn’t Panzer. Because it never was. Because my father wouldn’t listen when I told him, over & over, & my mother said I’d have been a better person if I hadn’t been adopted. Because freaks are just like humans, only more so. Because one day when I was four, playing with my dolls in the family room, I somehow didn’t realize that 34 years late I would dream that I looked down at my arm & saw something slithering around underneath the skin, a little hard pea that reminded me of PacMan, & I began to scratch at it but it wouldn’t stop so I became terrified that beetles called the past were living in me subdermally, only then the skin over my right carpal tunnel unfolded like a fastforward orchid & a supernumerary clitoris surfaced & I gave it to my husband & he lay it on his tongue & played with it, nibbling & licking, for hours, & then he slipped it down his pants, & I grasped that everything was going to work out okay in the end.