Alexandra Kleeman - You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

Right. Now. Oh. Eyes to the front, please, eyes to the front. I’m right over here, folks. In the center. By the podium. Right in front of you.

The voice came from all around, but I tried to turn away from it and look toward the light. Turning into my dizziness, I found the brightness of the outdoors, rectangled through large glass panels. A breeze swayed the long, faded burgundy curtains hanging in front of tall plate-glass windows, curtains that must once have looked expensive, important. Now they were nubby with lint and the glass behind them was dusty from the outside, which made the things you saw through it look fake. Birds looked like an echo of birds, fat white clouds looked as if they were there to sell you fabric softener or air travel or health insurance. And there at the middle of it all: a plain wooden podium with angled microphone, an averagely tall man covered in what looked like a standard-issue white sheet but was actually of a luxuriously high thread count. He shuffled in place — or maybe he was doing something more impressive, it was hard to tell beneath my covering. Besides a small patch of color below his eyeholes, an insignia that I had been told stood for his decision to renounce his mouth, he lacked obvious markers of authority. Even with his features and limbs hidden beneath loose white, he gave the impression of being overweight and soft, a body like a sofa. Great, okay, said the voice, which I understood originated in front of me but which seemed to come from all around, pushing from the outside in. Let’s begin. Greetings to all of our new recruits, and Welcome. Or should I say Unwelcome. I’ll explain that later. I’ll be your Regional Manager, reporting to the General Manager and by extension to the Grand Manager himself.

A few scattered claps that faded on their own.

You are all here because you have seen through the falsity of your everyday lives. You’ve seen that there is something real beyond the appearance of better and worse, buying and selling, brother, sister, husband, wife. You’ve seen that there is an arrangement of Darkness and Light that, like a shadow cast upon the wall, gives an illusory coherence to our lives and bodies. Or to put it in a friendlier way: You folks understand that there is more to life than life itself. Namely, there is Nothing.

Here, the speaker paused and I gathered that something was supposed to happen. I looked around me at other swiveling heads. Behind me, someone whispered a question. “Do they mean there isn’t anything, or that there is something and it is nothing, with a capital N?” they asked, and fell silent again. From the silence there rose the sound of a cough and a couple of people clapping experimentally toward the back of the room. He nodded at us. The applause swelled. Our speaker raised his hands to indicate that we should be quiet.

We are gathered here to begin a journey of self-discovery, that is to say discovering what is inside yourself. Is it good? Or is it a toxic sinkhole, poisoning those around you? We’ll find you out. Together. Here at the United Church of the Conjoined Eater, we believe that there is nothing more hazardous to yourself than being yourself. That burden should be shared. We believe that the quickest route to self-improvement is self-subtraction. Shed those unsightly remembrances. We believe that you contain a perfect being of radiant Light within you, a ghost that you were meant to become. You aren’t yourself, more and more: and we can help you achieve that. Any questions?

I looked all around me, pressing my hands to the sides of my head to hold my eyeholes on straight. I had questions. There were still some things that remained unclear to me. But scanning the room, I saw only nodding bodies, white lumps bobbing at the top ends of people who all seemed to understand what was happening. I looked back at the podium and nodded my own head in turn.

Great. That’s great. Let’s move on. There are only a few simple rules here, all designed to keep you folks safe. First rule: You show up at staff meetings on time and ready to participate. That means volunteer your own experiences, ask a good question, or just stand up and applaud someone who deserves it.

Second. There are no changes to your partner assignment. No way, no how. When you file out of the conference hall you’ll be given a room number. This is where you’ll be staying. There’ll be another person staying there with you. Perhaps they will be there when you show up, or perhaps you will be there for them. This person shall be your right hand for the rest of your time with us. Can you change your right hand? You cannot. For all you know, they might as well be you. Remember: Conjoined.

“HE WHO SITS NEXT TO ME, MAY WE EAT AS ONE!” shouted a fragile young female voice at the far right end of the room. More applause, and louder, one person whooping tentatively. I joined in, even though I could not say that I knew what I was clapping for, only that it seemed hopeful. In the midst of this new and mysterious information, I felt a confusion that was unlike my everyday confusion. It was the confusion of a newborn thing learning how to live.

The last rule I have for you today will probably be the most difficult one. In the life you left behind, you were asked to remember everything: your wife’s birthday, your husband’s preferred brand of soap, your best friend’s boyfriend’s name. Now we are asking you to unremember, as quickly as possible. This means unremembering not only your wife’s birthday, but your wife as well. This means unremembering what you used to do for a living, what you used to own or wear. Most of all, it means remembering only what we have here within the Church, objects and people of verified Brightness.

I felt my sheet jerk across my face, blocking my vision. Someone was tugging on it, trying to get my attention. I turned right, readjusting myself, to find my eyeholes exactly level with a pair of eyes, brown like my own. Height like my own, body like my own. I had a strange, excited feeling that I had found myself: I was real, I was really there. Then the voice of a full-grown man came muffled through the front fabric that was his face.

“What do they mean, ‘unremember’?” he asked, his voice urgent.

I pointed at the podium to say that he should listen, it would totally be explained.

“Do they mean forget?” he asked.

I shrugged from under my sheet and pointed again. Other sheeted people were glancing toward us now, swiveling their heads or tilting their bodies around.

“Because I don’t know how to try to do that,” he said, sounding increasingly upset. “I mean, I could stop talking about it, but I couldn’t stop knowing . I couldn’t do that. Nobody could do that.”

He grabbed my arm and I shook him off.

“You’re nothing like me,” I said to him loudly, so that everyone around us could hear. I wanted them to know: though we may have looked alike with our white sheets and brown eyes and same heights, I was made of a wholly different kind of material. He was in Darkness, groping around for what these rules might mean. Now that I was here, now that I had escaped myself, I would be Bright. I would do the rules to the letter, no question, and their meaning would become apparent as I saw what they made of me. In all my life, I had never known what life demanded of me. Now that I knew, I would do it even if I didn’t really understand what it was for.

It means unremembering the capitals of states and the denominations of currency and the nuclear power plant. All our troubles began with the power plant. It means unremembering anything made with chicken, which is a highly toxic Dark meat: even thinking about this substance can cause irreparable harm to yourself and to those around you. And most of all it means unremembering yourself: waking like an amnesiac to a world beauteous in its unassociations with pain, worry, strife. When the world is clean it shines Bright in its blankness. When the body is clean it rises ghostly into the Light.