On Being a Prototype
Perhaps you, too, are a collection of mismatched parts?
‘Lo child,
It’s been a rough one. I haven’t been terribly productive this week, but I tell you what I have produced in abundance — excuses! You have no idea how much time and effort it takes to come up with a good excuse; it’s basically the same as accomplishing things.
So what I’m going to do is distract you from my inactivity with a related but ultimately pointless story. The singing, dancing, jazz-hands excuse this time is that your beloved Personality (as in “cult of”) has a number of surplus parts rattling around in the heap of rusty machinery we generously call my body. I have five wisdom teeth, for example — I have extra of a body part that humans are actively evolving away from having. Scholars have argued that this makes me less evolved, a Neanderthal of sorts. To this I can only say that I never claimed to be good at being a human.
The extra wisdom tooth isn’t great, but it doesn’t cause any particular problems that the standard four unnecessary teeth weren’t already causing. My other stowaway parts manage to provoke a lot more chaos amongst the crew.
Late in my 20s I started getting this recurrent muscle spasm in my left shoulder. Over the course of the months I spent hoping it would go away on its own, (my so-far bulletproof healthcare strategy, which can’t possibly go wrong) it got bad enough that I was no longer able to lie down in any position, and had to sleep sitting up. I decided to go to the goddamn doctor at last when the first two fingers and thumb on my left hand went completely numb, and stayed that way. I might not even have gone then, but I’m left-handed.
When my doctor arrived, I was sitting on the paper-covered table. She asked me to join her at her desk, and as I stood to make my way over, she cried out. “Holy cow, what’s wrong with your back? Is that why you came in today?” I told her it was, and she told me I was moving like a broken robot.
She referred me to a hospital for an X-ray, which I thought was stupid. I mean, it’s clearly a muscular problem, right? The soft bit of my shoulder behind the clavicle — there’s no bone there. What could an X-ray possibly show? But she’s the doctor, so I went.
The hospital was a lot nicer than my clinic, all comfy plush chairs and indirect lighting. I always find that interesting — the contrast of fancy hospital decor with the painful, awkward, gross things we’re subjected to in hospitals. Yes, you might have a camera three feet up your ass, but at least you can distract yourself with this knockoff Rothko. Poor people have to stare at dirty grout while they wait to find out if they can afford to go on living!
I’d been sitting in the waiting room for about ten minutes when I became aware, as one does, that someone was standing very nearby peering over my shoulder. I became aware in the same moment that this person was not wearing pants. She wasn’t wearing anything, actually. I skipped a few steps as I glanced up at her face and found a short brunette with vague eyes that weren’t, in fact, reading over my shoulder. She was just standing, perfectly still, perfectly naked, looking down the long, bright gallery of waiting areas with a bereft expression, as if hoping to recognize someone.
The larger crowd of waiting and wandering people, all fully clothed, strove to ignore her as completely as possible — I saw them glance at her and then turn their faces resolutely away. They probably felt the same uncertainty I did — should I ask her if she needs help? Should I let her be? I wanted to offer her a jacket or something, but it was summer, and all I had on was a black T-shirt that read, “If you can read this, I’m not in stealth mode.”
I felt awful for not being able to help, even more awful when I turned my attention back to my book. It felt as if I had more responsibility to react appropriately, somehow, because she had chosen to stand right by my chair. The plush lobby of the hospital felt incongruous with this kind of human misery and indignity — the kind that was supposed to stay behind the double doors, with the blood and the butt cameras. I didn’t know what to do, so I just sat, in agony, while she stood in unhappy confusion. The awkward bubble around us lasted about two minutes before a doctor and two orderlies rushed out to bundle her up in a robe.
Shortly after that, another orderly came out and read my name off a clipboard. When I approached, he grinned. “Oh, good, I came out here a couple minutes ago and I didn’t see you somehow!”
Pointing at my t-shirt, I said, “It’s not your fault, I was in stealth mode.” He laughed and led me back to put on the heavy smock.
A week later my doctor called me.
“We got your x-rays back, and it turns out that you have an extra rib.”
“…What?”
Yeah. So that’s a thing that can happen, apparently. Some people just have extra ribs growing out of their neck. Surprise! If you, like me, are wondering why you haven’t noticed people sprouting neck-ribs like Frankenstein bolts is that this extra rib is attached to the lower neck vertebrae and extends out into the hollow of my left shoulder. It’s buried in the meat, in other words. Right in that spot where no bone should be, stabbing into the softness behind the clavicle and above the shoulderblade, there’s a rib.
Most people who have extra ribs like this never even notice. But in some cases, like mine, the rib squashes nerves, muscles and blood vessels in that area, which is known as the thoracic outlet. The resulting pain and numbness is called thoracic outlet syndrome. It’s not lifethreatening, so most doctors will not operate to remove an extra rib like this — surgery in the thoracic outlet, where your heart connects to all those arteries and your brain connects to all those nerves, is incredibly risky. Instead, they sent me to physical therapy.
Anyone who’s been through physical therapy knows that it’s nightmarish, often more painful than whatever chronic issue it’s meant to treat. It’s devilishly effective, though. They did dry needling on me, which is like hardcore acupuncture with needles up to a foot long, and they taught me a few exercises that I still do every day, just to keep this under control. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes, no matter what I do, it flares up and then, like this past week, I can’t lie down long enough to sleep, or sit up long enough to draw.
So that’s my excuse! I did manage to paint a lil somethin’ somethin’ this week, another Beckoner from Jacob Lynch’s Malifaux crew, and this definitely counts as an act of veneration to our Lord and Savior Booty Ghost:
More of her on der Grammenstein.
This week’s Sermon
Isopods for Peace — www.gentlecult.com
This is the story of how I accidentally started an isopod peacenik cult.
