Laird Hunt - The Impossibly

Go home now. Digest. The boiled meat may cause problems, I am suspicious of it. I will have a strong antacid put in the medicine cabinet. Three weeks from tonight at 11 P.M. go to the southwest entrance to the public gardens. Wait.

Three weeks from that night, I went there and waited. Afterward, after I had stood waiting all night, I realized it was possible I’d been given a significant clue, one that might hold the answer or something like an answer, but at the time, having waited three weeks for that moment, and then being involved in that moment, to use the word “moment” in its more expansive sense, I was mostly just pissed off.

But in the meantime, there were those three weeks, and it occurs to me that it might be useful to give some account of them. After all, it was during this period that I learned the identity of the old woman and heard what she had to say about a key event in my life, although this isn’t to say that I believed her. Her account of that event was by no means the first I had heard, and, if you have followed any of what I have set out previously, you will no doubt have some sympathy for my attitude toward her revelations. If, in fact, you could call them that. I think it would be more accurate to call them opinions and interpretations, maybe even slander. After all, by her own account, she wasn’t in the room when it happened, when I received the punitive portion of my first disaffirmation. Which, incidentally, was nothing compared to the second in terms of sheer excruciation. They did several things to me before they threw me down the well, and, as one of them remarked after they sent the so-called spelunkers down to retrieve me, it was curious that I had not bled to death. So you can see why, among other reasons, certain of them might have felt obliged to treat the requests I made at my exit interview with extra attention, or at least why they pretended to have done so. I think she was definitely hands-on involved, the old woman I had known briefly as a young woman told me. And do you think she was the person I encountered some time later? Do you? she asked. I’m not sure. But you said you spent a fair amount of time with her. Most of it was in the dark, and before the lights came back on, the body, if it was hers, was wrapped in tape. Couldn’t you have exhumed the body? I had just buried it. So — you could have gone back later. I don’t want to talk about it. Fine, what do you want to talk about? I thought for a minute. Are you a prostitute — is that what you’re doing with your retirement? That’s what you want to talk about? Yes. Who says I’m retired? Well, I thought you must be. Just exactly how old do you think I am? I didn’t answer, as I wasn’t sure, not at all. So right now, talking to me, you’re on the job? I said. Is the blindfold too tight? she said. No, it’s fine, but why do we need the blindfold now — I know who you are. Have you gotten a good look at me? No. That’s why we need it. I don’t understand. And so on. I mean my interaction with her, once the cards, so to speak, were on the table. If there was a table, if there were any cards.

Also during those three weeks I had my body manipulated. I have taken, in recent years, to having this done occasionally. I found it helped greatly, following my fall down the well, to undergo the realignment process the procedure entails, and also to lie on the comfortable matting or padded table that is provided. I am not against the use of oils or scented candles either, although in general I prefer the sort of manipulation that occurs when my skin remains relatively unsmeared and my clothes stay on. Imagine me, a dilapidated older individual, glistening with oil, lying in my poorly filled briefs beneath a towel. Perhaps when I was younger and something of a fatty this image would have possessed some charm. I was not, in those days, against applying the occasional cream to my pleasantly taut (and so deliciously abundant) outer tegument and to ingesting any number of beneficial liquids and solids. My world was not, during that epoch, without several individuals who found corporeal configurations such as mine appealing. And it was really very lovely to present to them an exterior that was as well-maintained as it was abundant. But clearly I have, without particularly meaning to, left the subject far behind. I meant only to convey some sense of a particular manipulation, one that was conducted while I lay on a comfortable mat on the floor, fully clothed. One of the old men from the benches in the gardens had given me the manipulator’s name, describing her, as he did so, as highly capable. Extra to my desire to get some needed realignment, I have always, since my early days, been fascinated by individuals who are described by others as highly capable, which is exactly, one of my early keepers once told me as we were sitting in front of the television, what you are not. I did not disagree and in fact, quite interested, asked this particular individual to elaborate, which he / she did when a commercial came on. A highly capable person is one who is able to do whatever he / she wants to or is asked to or is required to by others. Which you, you fat little bastard, are not. And as I say, far from disagreeing with this assessment, I found it remarkably apt, and found the evocation of these mysterious, highly capable individuals extremely stimulating, and I have made it a point to avail myself of their company, in as much as they will have me, whenever they have been reliably identified. I don’t mean to say that I found the old man’s assessment entirely credible. I didn’t know him that well, and he had some rather suspect, or at least overwrought, ideas on, for example (I had brought up the subject), asbestos removal. There was a curious mechanism once, he had said, built in the shape of a great bull and made entirely out of burnished bronze and silver into which up to three individuals of normal size could be placed. A fire was then lit under the belly of the bull and the individuals were cooked. The interesting aspect of the mechanism was that an elaborate system of pipes channeled the screams of the individuals and converted them into a music that, while not exactly beautiful, was beautifully strange. I don’t think that ever existed, I said. It did, but, alas, I’m not sure where it would be possible to procure one, he said. Where did you hear about it? In a book I’ve just been reading about an unpleasant house. It was during our subsequent discussion of this unpleasant house, which apparently devoured the psyches of its inhabitants as it constantly realigned itself, that we came to the topic of manipulation and how I came to visit the individual he recommended, who indeed proved highly capable and left me utterly satisfied.

One was asked to take off one’s shoes and to lie on a mat fully clothed. Then one was asked to relax insofar as one was capable of doing so. Next, one was told that one would not have to do anything except follow simple instructions, which did, in fact, prove to be very simple, although I worried about carrying them out a little. I have a poor track record with simple instructions. But I did just fine, she said when I asked her, with these, which were of the roll over gently onto your stomach kind. It was the “gently” part that troubled me. And also the question of direction (which way to roll). Once or twice I had, so to speak, and with consequences — in one case a dull burbling sound — rolled the wrong way. And as for the interpretation of “gently,” I’ll just say that I was told, once, to handle someone “gently” and upon beginning, as I thought, to do so, was instructed that I had gotten it wrong. You’ve done everything right, now pay me and you can leave, she told me after I had lain wrapped in blankets for several minutes. I did leave. I felt much better. Then the three weeks were up.