Emelia Steenekamp
YOUR BODY HAS TO GO SOMEWHERE
And here is you, in this modern age, saying things like ‘good morning,’ and ‘so it goes,’ and ‘my back hurts.’ Here is you, standing in line to buy something that you think your mother might like. Here is you, probably in your late twenties, too old to be as stupid as you are.
In this modern world you have a job, and so you tell children things about the world according to a carefully curated selection of knowledge: it varies in temperature, it shuffles its parts around, and it’s been doing its thing for a while now. There are times, however, when you find yourself to be nothing more than an abstraction of memory, worry, and undefined aches, making you doubt the concept of pastness, making you doubt that anything at all could be confirmed. You are not convinced that you really are here, but you have no choice other than to operate as if you are. Giving up is harder than playing along, because your body will always force you to keep going even when that means as little as finding a place to put it. Your body has to go somewhere.
In this modern world you have a job, and so you write papers according to a carefully curated language that channels your ideas into places you don’t understand or agree with. Your holy mission is to articulate and substantiate your beliefs. But the modes and ideals of the institution shape them into products that feel foreign to you. Your work becomes smug and overdetermined. You always want to go home.
In this modern world you have a job, and so you film weddings according to a carefully curated selection of ideals concerning togetherness, community, and love. You document behaviour from strange lands and combine it with music to tether it to time and (some kind of purported) reality. On Saturday nights when you are tired you arrive home saturated with wedding songs and vicarious drunkenness, a dance floor and the onslaught of percussion that you did not like but could imagine liking in lighter air. Except for a few tiny insects and yourself, sitting on your bed with cold food and your shoes still on, the house is empty. The people you live with are elsewhere: in intimate situations, feeling their hands and hair move in newly alluring ways. You, on the other hand, are looking at people’s lives on the internet and fixating on the problem of your second virginity, a miracle bestowed on you not by the White American God, but by time. You have been virgined by four years of lugging an unacceptable body which you have to pretend to be at peace with.
‘Love your body,’ read captions to online pictures upon which others bestow all the hearts and hands at their disposal.
‘All bodies are beautiful!’ you concur.
‘It is a modern age,’ they say.
‘sluts are cool!’
‘assholes are fun!’
‘cum butter and so on.’
What they do not say is that everyone knows that you are faking it because your self-loathing exudes a smell of stale oil and bedsweat, making your true feelings impossible to hide. So despite them nodding when you say ‘all bodies are beautiful,’ or smiling when you wear things that are not made for people who look like you, they can smell you and what you really are, and they don't want to be near you in that way. You know how they feel and this knowledge exacerbates your odour and the sensation of live mincemeat under your skin. Whoever you are and however you might live, the thing about your life is that you try to get away from ugliness, only to find yourself relentlessly enveloped in it.
So you are a virgin again, and virginity is unacceptable for a person who claims emancipation. There has got to be someone who will have sex with you, who either believes it when they say ‘all bodies are beautiful,’ or who is lonely enough to betray themselves. You can find such people via the advanced sex relief application, as you are informed by an advertisement that features an attractive heterosexual couple shining in clean bohemian colours. Based on the things people say, as well as the part of the internet that’s all about agency and orgasms, you know that your meat would be less horrid if only someone would want your body. So you pay $$$ to sign up for the service, and make an appointment for the included assessment and portrait assembly.
On some morning soon after this, three doctors come in gloves and white-coated radiance to your house to set up your self-promotion portrait. They are to examine you in the bathroom. You stand on the toilet, one doctor works from inside the shower, and the other two are pressed against the wall. You are impressed by how well they manoeuvre their tools and bodies in this small space.
1. ‘Lift your arms.’ You lift your arms.
2. ‘Take off your clothes.’ You take off your clothes.
3. ‘Open your mouth.’ You open your mouth.
4. ‘Spread your legs.’ You spread your legs.
5. ‘Rub your clit.’ You rub your clit.
Things made of steel or plastic or wood are placed in your nostrils, ears, vagina, belly button, asshole, mouth. You worry that the doctors can smell your angry smell, so you try to distract them by complimenting their professionalism. ‘Thank you. We pride ourselves in conducting a thorough investigation of every client,’ they say. You think surely many of their clients smell worse than you do.
They ask if they may sit down to analyse the data, and you say of course! if they don’t mind sitting on your bed. They do mind but there are no other options, so they set up their computers on your duvet and pillows while you try to stop your bleeding and make jujube tea for everyone. You place the tea on the middle of the bed where the doctors are frowning together at something on a screen. They are unhappy about the screen but they like the tea. While frowning-smiling-sipping with thin erudite fingers, they tell you that your body produces too much black bile, which is why you are lazy. For [money] they could perform bloodletting therapy on you (sip). You say no thank you. Maybe next month. They ask if you want to make a video to introduce yourself to potential sex friends. It costs only E3,44₼. No thanks, you say, you cannot afford it.
Then you fill out a seventeen page questionnaire, indicating your preferences regarding colours and food, and answering questions like ‘where were you when you first realised that you will never get the things you want from life?’ and ‘have you ever been sexually attracted to a family member?’
The next step is to generate your bio and curate your photos. You have to provide the doctors with photos of yourself so that, with the help of carnal algorithms, they may select the ones most likely to entice a fellow sex-seeker.
You say that you need to check your garden's soil pH: ‘I will be right back.’ Outside, you take photos of your face, hoping to locate a part of yourself that isn’t hideous. You settle for a picture that doesn't feature your chin. Then you compile another 26 taken over the past two years, photos your friends claimed to like. Of these, the doctors choose only two, including one in which you are hiking on a hill in the distance, almost looking like a normal person. For the other obligatory photo slots they take two pictures of your cat. They feed the photos into their computers, who now need a few minutes to think. Worried that they are bored, you put on some music. ‘Do you like the carpenters?’ you ask, but they seem annoyed at this question as if it is too personal. You make another round of tea, and they announce that your portrait is ready. Your bio reads as follows:
anything, kinky non-belief or otherwise, natural sensual . off lick some the be for good humour .Have cynical, seem beautiful some relaxed. are are a interested in the fun , to lifestyle you brunettes blow You jungle wit is prefer in to where. very I anal steam white ,sense travel please..
The doctors look proud of their work. They say that you may publish the portrait online as soon as you are ready to do so. They tell you that as it stands your desirability index (DI) is 3.2., which is on the low side but not at all rock bottom. There will be plenty of suitable options for you. But if you want to improve your DI, they say, you should pay for the video or sign up for their liposuction treatment. They could offer you a reduced rate of ½4~7etc;). Thank you so much! but I can’t afford it, you say. Maybe next month. They smile politely and leave in a straight line, their coats glorious white birds of peace.
Now, at 9pm, you are alone, and still leaking blood here and there. You are contorted on a corner of your bed, which is covered in lipstick-marked tea cups and spilt sugar. Sucking on a spoon, you upload your portrait and begin to use the programme. There are pictures of people doing adventure sports and drinking colourful liquids from curvy glasses, and videos of them having orgasms or shooting animals.
♥
Person 1
S: licking white Stroke ass milk oily that sit flow on lips
You: we're die here. naughty all be.
B: anus me please with enjoy Friends your I please!!! Show benefits,
vagina sweet that, don't wine
You: but Your to yes no lack
Here is one, talking in a bar. When they laugh their eyes are too much for your eyes and you have to look away. You drink. Now they are on your bed with you and the teacups. She has an erection and you are both shaking a bit. Your own body is unyielding, so you sleep instead. In the early morning hours you are both awake. She cries and tells you about her father on a farm while you watch your cat making use of the litter box, waiting for the smell to reach the bed and wondering what it will do to the ghost of the father idling in the room.
♥
Person 2
You: hello please ja jou lekker sies
J: I'm open, bene vir kanne, while sexually dirty your are No as. to ladies! not into Sorry, might.
You: Drink shiny milk to three cans. The mountain is bad. The wolf is screaming. I love hiking in the chestnut valley. Bring vir my ietsie oulik van Frankryk af.
J: sugar to pussy. naai vir dag na netso in ok. chill.
You: IM STRAWBERRIES FOR WET YOU PASSION DO YOU UNDERSTAND
Here is one, talking in a bar. When they laugh their eye contact is too much for your eyes and you have to look at your hands. You drink something that makes your stomach hurt. Now they are on your bed with you and the teacups. You both know that you have to do the things. He puts his face on yours, and you fumble about together, dehydrated and disorganised, until you are dirty and raw and have essentially given up. Then you take some kind of drug together and talk about things like dead stars and war. The cat purrs at the window, you can hear it laughing as it plays with its tail.
♥
Person 3
You: 나를 더 사랑해줘
Person 3: 이제 산에 오르자 jou ma is hier :0
You: 지금 imagine jy voel 'n actual konneksie met 'n ander mens vir eens in jou lewe당장 정원 등을 정비하다
Person 3: 나는 진짜가 되지 않을in next for? TIETE
Here is one, talking in a bar. When they laugh their eye contact is too much for your eyes and you have to look at your drink. Now they are on your bed with you and the teacups. You wish you had replaced the cat litter. You lie looking at your hands, neither of you willing/able to do the things you came here to do. You are both trembling a little, sad, nothing to say. Neither of you understand what you want. You fall asleep holding each other.
While you sleep you have a headache. It hardens your skull so that nothing can come into it, the pain trapped like a discontented relative of the rest of your ugliness. So you have a dream in which you are free – bright yellow clothes mythical childhood etc. – but the freedom is on the outside of your head, circling your skull, finding no place to enter and eventually giving up and leaving in search of some other better skull.
After an unusual amount of time you wake up alone. You have menstruated on the sheets, the blood is cheerful in its fresh redness. You leave the sheets as they are, and pack your stomach medicine along with three changes of clothing. You walk outside and see hills appearing as you near them. After a while of nothing but semi-cubist landscape, you begin to pass ruins of factories, schools, prisons. You enter a building that used to house a printing press: rusted equipment abject and impotent; and you imagine the things that might have been printed there, what kind of allegiances they held, hoping that you would’ve liked them. There is something painfully sympathetic about rust and it seems rude to harbour ill will towards it even if it came to exist due to a terror of sorts. You walk up a flight of stairs to encounter a door that you are excited to open, but when you grab at the doorknob you hurt your nails against a wall, realising that the door has been printed onto it. Then you stand still for a while like a plant. Time passes and you realise that you are moving again, making your way back down the stairs and out of the building, where you continue to walk past further moments of corroded industry. A pile of shipping containers appeals to you, so you climb up and explore them one by one, finding medical supplies, canned food, expired condiments. In the topmost container you hear a foreign yelping sound coming from inside a cabinet. You touch the cabinet door and it opens to reveal a rhesus monkey. The monkey jumps out and clambers onto your breasts and tries to suckle. It is slightly delirious. There is a bottle of milk lying on the floor so you feed the monkey who, now satiated, climbs under your shirt and attaches itself to your belly. You hold it there and it falls asleep. Back on the ground you walk, monkey-under-shirt, towards the sounds of seagulls enjoying their freedom from gravity. Then the mountain stops. You see a beach below. After a few failed attempts you manage to safely hop down the cliff and onto the beach where the sound of the seagulls is loud even though can’t seem to see them. You walk towards the water, but when you try to step into the waves you cannot. You hop up and down against it, not really thinking that it will relent but, having been betrayed by a false promise, you are feeling too dejected for much else and dissenting in a way that doesn’t demand too much of you.
Then you discover yourself to be walking along the beach. The monkey has disappeared. A jagged hill is approaching. When it arrives, you see a small cave. You go inside and you find the monkey curled sweetly on a single bed. And now here is you, sobbing quietly in a little cave with white linen, a bookshelf, and a hole that lets you look at the sky. You and the monkey lie softly weaved together; you need the monkey as much as it needs you. Your needy limbs melt into one another until you become a blanket and you know that a blanket is the perfect thing to be and that you will never need anything but to be a blanket forever.