Lynne Tillman - American Genius - A Comedy

This morning, when I insensitively rushed past the two disconsolate young women, though they may not have noticed, since they were engrossed in their own lives and each other's happiness or misery, I noted that one of them, the skinnier of the two, was in her pajamas, which was unusual, and her image has now returned to me. People generally don't come to breakfast or dinner in pajamas. This signaled, in a small way, her distress, though it might also have indicated the lack of it and her contentment with herself, her indifference or even immunity to others' opinions. The other woman was dressed, and it looked as if they'd been talking all through the night, and immediately I wondered what they could have said to each other that would carry them from day to night to day. One of them has a selfish female lover, the other a narcissistic male lover who had recently returned home, and she has an eating disorder, as well as psoriasis, and now it is apparent that though in a long-term relationship with the man who recently left, she's enthralled by the tall balding man, who bends down farther each day, with bemusement, worry or despair, and it is his indefatigable anxiety and her anorexia and psoriasis that interest me, since she forces herself to move food around on her plate and take a few abject bites in his presence. The outbreak on her hands may have a subliminal effect upon him, but whether it will be one that marries him to her or causes a figurative divorce, time will tell, since time is abundant in certain ways, though its always an elusive guide, which gets shorter, and characteristically leaves people wanting or short, too.

Psoriasis is a common, chronic, recurrent, inflammatory disease of the skin, causing the formation of dry, scaly patches of various sizes, mostly on the elbows, hands, scalp, nails, the surfaces of the limbs, like shins, and the sacral region, and the patches increase in size, and then stop, and become hard at the centers; old patches may be thickened, tough and very scaly, so that they resemble the outside of an oyster shell. Its course is inconstant, but it usually begins on the scalp or the elbows, and remains in those areas and doesn't spread for a long period of time, or it might disappear. Or it might begin at the sacrum, but I don't know if the young woman has ever had psoriasis there. There is even psoriasis of the penis. One of the disease's chief features is its tendency to return. The skin actually grows too fast. The young woman's hands and elbows were sometimes free of the tough, scaly flesh, which, when present, was in flagrant contrast to the pallor of her cheeks, though they became flushed when she drank wine, which wasn't often, since she feared gaining weight, though she was painfully thin. She couldn't stand to feed herself, she courted weakness, and when the psoriasis struck, she took pains to hide it, as she did her reluctance to nourish herself. If an outbreak occurred on the bottoms of her feet, she wouldn't have to hide it. Psoriasis may occur on the soles of feet, but its onset is usually in middle-aged adults who have no history of psoriasis or any other skin trouble. There may have been focal infections of the tonsils, teeth, or sinuses, and there may have been a causal relationship through an internal usage of antibiotics. But there is no resemblance to psoriasis histologically, only the presence of large, unilocular pustules deep in the epidermis and very little inflammation. I've had difficult, inflammatory friendships with women and men, some of whom have eating disorders, like anorexia nervosa and bulimia, slipped discs, bleeding ulcers, migraines, colitis, pernicious anemia, or who have a variety of other illnesses and complaints, and who have been subject, like myself, to fainting spells, nausea, pneumonia, tooth decay, yeast infections, colds, a nonorganic pressure on the heart, sciatica, nervous stomach, pulled muscles, disturbed bowels, strep throat, infected cuts, flu, or viral infections, and others who have been subject to chronic backaches, recurrent acne, vision loss, cataracts, shingles, herpes complex and simplex, seasonal and other allergies, asthma, arthritis, hypertension and stroke, heart attacks, cancer, digestive disorders, memory loss, auto immune diseases, including AIDS, or gum inflammation, gum loss, heroin, cocaine, nicotine, amphetamine and other dependencies or addictions. About psoriasis, one of its friendly sufferers here once remarked, "Please, always remember to mention the heartbreak of psoriasis."

Sometimes I have been unaware of what happens, colloquially, within some of my friends and that doesn't manifest itself in signs on their bodies, since people can worry themselves into high blood pressure, tension headaches, and heart disease. But few can accept that their bodies also take orders from their psyches, as well as their environment and genetic make-up, and generally a sick mind is more cursed and embarrassing than a sick body. But when symptoms of a disorder appear on the skin, it's fortunate, as they may only be skin deep, or if the body has a greater problem, a reader of skin has warning, a danger signal, since a change in the shape or color of a mole can mean a melanoma. When the skin is red and itchy, most people want relief. Other physical disorderssnoring, heartburn, insomnia-might be considered unimportant, but these can also alert a person to problems which are not necessarily organic, though snoring often indicates blocked nasal passages and, less frequently, sleep apnea, which can be fatal. One friend couldn't sleep without pills. In the mornings, for several hours until she sloughed off their side effects, she was a fury, a monster, she'd say, until two cups of black coffee and a cold shower made her what she called human. During this time if anything occurred, when she wasn't fully herself or adequately awake, something which she had to manage, she couldn't do it, since she could barely speak without a rising ferocity, and instead she quelled the violence that coursed through her, which was frightening to witness, and twice I did, regrettably, later worried she'd turn it against me, which she did more subtly, and she is a person who couldn't survive in a war or a world changed drastically, if her pills weren't available to bring sleep. They didn't console her, they subdued her, because her mother had died when she was six and afterward she couldn't rest, since in dreams, I believe, she twisted into the monster who killed her mother. She became a mother later and insisted it was to he what she hadn't had, she hadn't been mothered, and convinced herself that, even though she could barely awaken in the morning, she could meet a child's needs. It was about this time she left the father of the child, to raise the child alone, and I haven't seen her in a long time, since after she gave birth, she abandoned all of her friends, to enter into a bond with her daughter, like surrendering to a nunnery, while also trying to kick barbiturates.

After pouring the soup into the toilet, I was concerned that it might clog the old john, but I'd been at a loss to figure out what else to do with the soup, unless I put on my shoes and walked into the forest and spilled the unsightly red concoction onto the ground or on the small plants that grow at the edge of forests, which might invite unwanted animals, like skunks, near my room for solitude. I like animals, but I don't like some, especially when they inconvenience me. There was a raccoon who would sit at my door when I lived in the South for a time, so I couldn't enter the cottage until it moved, since it frightened me. I had no idea of how to relate to a raccoon, if it was rabid or friendly, and sometimes it ran across the roof in the night and terrified me, and then I wanted it killed. Usually, I don't want animals killed, but sometimes I do, like my insane cat after he stalked and attacked me. His sharp claws gouged flesh from my left calf, tissue oozed from the fresh wounds and blood flowed down my leg, and I grabbed the cat and tore him from my calf, while another tenant, where I normally live, who had stopped by for some unimportant reason, watched in horror. There are four indentations on my calf from the expulsion and permanent loss of tissue, which force me to remember my insane cat and to doubt my own behavior toward him during his lifetime, when I tried several methods to quell his ferocious, apparent hatred of me, but could not, and which culminated in my ending his life, for which there is no record except my own, and the man I lived with, who rarely mentioned it then, but he does probably blame me, since he and the cat were friends.