Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

I let myself sit down on the tile step.

Anyway, she says, what do you expect is going to change? Even if it takes. Even if it’s perfect. You think, what, you’ll be less divided , more yourself ? You’ll just be the same ball of questions as always. Believe me. I can tell. You don’t get that jolt out of being a congenital liar. Not like Martin. You’ll be a freak.

Julie, do you ever get tired of deciding what’s right for the world?

No, she says, wide-eyed. Don’t tell me. Don’t fucking tell me.

I mean it. Speaking, myself, as someone like you. A professional mind. An inquirer. A critic. Isn’t it ever tiring , to you, just a little, being an arbiter all the time? You know the joke about the French? It may work in practice, but will it work in theory?

What the hell does that mean?

You know what I’m talking about. The tingle of empty accusations. All this conspiratorial fault-finding. Hegemonic diagnostics. It’s all one big autoimmune condition, isn’t it? Look, maybe it works when you have tenure. Or cradle-to-grave health insurance. Or a rich dad who works for Samsung. But look, from my perspective, I’m out of a job.

It’s Daewoo, actually. And I thought you were on Martin’s payroll.

Oh, I am. For the time being. But I’m talking about real money for once. What’s wrong with that? Money that lets you make decisions.

It’s as if some rind, some slippery, rubbery substance, has detached from my gums; I find myself chewing at the words.

You know how they want you to make money? she says. Why they’re so desperate to make a Chinese connection? Tissue farming. What the fuck else? All those prisoners, all those no-name corpses. Hair. Skin. Retinas. Healthy teeth. Cartilage. You ready to get into that business, Kelly?

Speaking as someone who’s already in it?

She laughs.

Oh, you have no idea about me, she says. Don’t even bother to guess.

But isn’t that the point? It’s up to you. Shouldn’t we own up to that? White people that we are.

Don’t call me that.

Why? Isn’t that what you wanted, Julie-nah?

It was a project , she says, all but crying now. It was a provocation. I wanted to make myself into an instrument of my own desires. A demonstration of the emptiness of buying out—

I could have told you not to bother. You really think you need to tell people what they already know? After all, who’s to say I haven’t bought all of my identities? Not just this one. This, come to think of it, is the second time.

That’s cold, she says. You sure you want to go that far, Kelly? That’s really cold. It’s your wife we’re talking about. Your wife, your child .

Don’t tell me about my wife and child, I would have said to her, to anyone, ordinarily. My jaw seems to want to flap open.

Call it closure, I say. Closure comes in unexpected ways.

That’s sick.

Since I can’t have you, I want to say, I have to become you. Where did that phrase come from, all of a sudden? Though I don’t quite understand it, it seems to be all that needs to be said. Then why can’t I quite fit the words on my tongue?

I’m tired, I say to her. Speaking past her. I have an appointment with Silpa first thing. Can we continue this later? My door is always open.

Don’t be an ass.

To talk .

I’m through with talking, she says. Aren’t you? It’s time for decisions. And not waiting for a reply, or a question, she pivots and disappears.

On a dark screen six feet tall, a screen I could fall into, I watch life-sized, naked photographs of myself, one after another: frontal, profile, half-angles, close-ups on the chin, the nose, the eyes. It’s like a bizarre video installation, I’m thinking, a work of performance art, crossed with an initiation ritual. There are creases I never noticed under my chin, a constellation of moles beneath my left armpit. My eyes show the faint beginnings of crow’s feet. My penis is a strange dark color, sullen, almost bruised. A photograph like this, I’m thinking, is harsher than a mirror under bright light: something about its being preserved makes it harder to face.

But it won’t be preserved.

You’re making me self-conscious, I say. Maybe I should just get an ordinary facelift. A little liposuction.

Let’s get started, Silpa says, turned away from me, clicking away at the desktop monitor across the room. Begin by focusing on the face. For practical reasons, and aesthetic reasons, the principle here is to do as little as possible to achieve the desired effect. So we’re not talking a severe epicanthal single fold. Really the enlargement and adjustment of the eye socket will be quite small. The result will be like this. I’ll change the skin tone, too, to give you the full effect.

The new image spools down from the top, the same thinning hairline, the faint widow’s peak, slightly narrowed eyebrows. Only with the eyes does the face become someone else’s. I know those eyes, I’m thinking, I recognize those eyes. Someone I knew in Weiming, someone at Harvard? How many thirty-something Chinese men have I known? Stop! I say, a little louder than I intended.

What’s the problem?

That’s a photograph, right? That’s not me .

It’s not a photograph. It’s software. Didn’t I explain this? Predictive modeling. Those are your eyes, Kelly. Really, the change is very minor. It’s essentially just padding the eye socket a little around the edges. And then adding a slightly folded epicanthus. I’m surprised it startles you. To me the effect is almost not enough. I could make it much more pronounced. Should I continue?

When I don’t answer, he taps the keyboard again, and the rest of the face appears, centimeter by centimeter. A smaller nose. Slimmer lips. Narrower shoulders. He’s reducing me by ten percent. A flatter stomach, bonier hips. Even the knees are less pronounced, somehow. And the skin? Only when I look away and look back do I see it: a weakening of the light, a slightly sepia tone over my normal color.

This is crazy. What are you going to do, Silpa, shave down every part of my anatomy?

What do you mean? We’re only talking about alterations to the face. Plus skin tone, of course, which is chemical. No other surgery.

Then why do I look so different?

He laughs. It’s the eyes, he says. I see it all the time. Change the eyes, tweak the nose, and it’s a different person. Haven’t you heard the old saying about how a nose job takes off fifteen pounds?

No.

I suppose it’s a joke in the business.

Who is this man? I close my eyes and open them again, slowly, and again; I turn my face away and back; I get up from the stool, go out into the hallway, shut the door, open it, and reenter. Who are you? How are you? How did you come to be, sourceless human being, person from nowhere, person who has never existed, who should never exist? It’s a vertiginous feeling, a feeling that starts in the feet and gathers momentum in the thighs, as if I’ve leaned over a balcony railing, drawn by something I’ve seen fifteen stories down. A vertiginous feeling, that is, of having leaned against the natural settling order of one’s joints, but also a feeling that originates between the thighs. Arousal. Arousal out of something deeply wrong.

What this is, I think, without stopping to explain the thought, what this is, is a kind of incest. A violation of the natural process. A skipping ahead.

Let’s go through the next steps, Silpa says. I turn back to face him, and he folds his hands in his lap, retreating into doctor mode. First, we make up an agreement and sign it. It’s a formality, but we have to do it, because it’s a two-way financial transaction. Because by electing to pay for the operation, you become a shareholder in the company. Understood? Next, you write your RLTP plan. You’ve read Martin’s, right? In your case I think we have to forgo the actual period, because of the anatomical difficulties. But you need to have a full day of reflection before the surgery begins.