Wetlands

by Charlotte Roche

  With my fingertips I’d always touch the stubs of the lashes. If mom’s Gypsy story were true, the lashes would have fallen out completely. But I can’t really pin it on mom, either, because I often blur the distinctions between reality, lies, and dreams. These days in particular I can’t keep things straight because of all the years I took drugs. The wildest party I ever had happened when my friend Corinna realized Michael, my drug-dealer boyfriend at the time, had forgotten his stash of drugs at her house. There was no occasion for a party. It’s just what you say you’re doing when you take drugs. Partying.

  Michael kept all his blotters and pills and packets of speed and coke in a fake soda can. It looked just like a normal can of cola, but you could screw the top off.

  Michael always tried to stuff enough drugs into it so it weighed exactly as much as a real can of cola would.

  Corinna said: “Check it out, Helen—Michael’s can. He wouldn’t mind, would he?”

  She grinned at me, wrinkling her nose in the process. That always means she’s genuinely excited.

  We blew off school, bought some red wine at a kiosk, and left a message for Michael on his answering machine: “If you’re looking for cola, we found a whole case in Corinna’s room. You won’t get pissed if we start drinking without you, will you?”

  We were big on using badly coded language over the phone. When you’re taking drugs you get paranoid and confuse yourself with Scarface. You think you’re being listened to and there’s about to be a raid, arrests, and a court proceeding during which the judge will say, “So, Helen Memel, what do the words ‘laundry detergent,’ ‘pizza,’ and ‘painting’ really mean? At no point during this time were you doing laundry, eating pizza, or painting. We didn’t just tap your phone; you were also under surveillance.”

  Then began our race against time. The idea was to take as many drugs as possible before the first one took effect and before Michael showed up. Anything we didn’t slurp down we’d have to give back. At nine in the morning we started taking two pills at a time, washing them down with wine. It didn’t seem right to snort speed and coke so early in the morning, so we made minigrenades out of toilet paper.

  Half a packet for each us—which is half a gram—poured onto a little piece of toilet paper, skillfully wrapped up, and gulped down with lots of wine. Maybe there was less than a gram per packet—Michael was a good businessman and he messed with everyone a little on the amounts. So he could earn more. One time I weighed something that was supposed to be a gram. Not even close. But people can’t exactly register a complaint with the police. That’s just the way it is on the black market. No consumer protection.

  Anyway, these paper grenades are very tough to get down. It takes practice. If it doesn’t get washed down your throat right away, the minigrenade opens up and the bitter powder sticks to your mouth and gums. You definitely don’t want that.

  I guess everything started to kick in. I can only remember the highlights. Corinna and I laughed the whole time and made up stories set in a fantasy land. At some point Michael came by to pick up his can and cursed us out. We giggled. He said if all the stuff we’d ingested didn’t kill us, we would have to pay him back. We just laughed.

  Later we puked. First Corinna, then me from the sound and smell of hers. In a big, white bucket. The puke looked like blood because of the red wine. But it took us a long time to figure out why it looked like that. And then we realized there were undigested pills floating around. This seemed like a terrible waste to us.

  I said: “Half and half?”

  Corinna said: “Okay, you first.”

  And so for the first time in my life I drank someone else’s puke. Mixed with my own. In big gulps. Taking turns. Until the bucket was empty.

  A lot of brain cells die on days like that. And this, along with other similar parties, definitely took a toll on my memory. There’s another memory that I’ve never been sure is even a memory. I come home one day from elementary school and call out hello. Nobody answers. So I think nobody’s home.

  Then I go into the kitchen and lying there on the floor are my mom and my brother. Hand in hand. They’re asleep. My brother’s head is resting on his Winnie the Pooh pillow and mom’s is on a folded-up, light-green dish towel.

  The oven door is open. It smells like gas. What to do? I saw a movie once where somebody struck a match and the whole house blew up. So, nice and slow, I carefully creep over to the oven—there are people sleeping here—and turn off the gas. Then I open the windows and call the fire department. I can’t think of the number for the hospital in order to get an ambulance. Oh, both are on the way…yes, they’re still sleeping…I can ride with them. Two ambulances. A whole crew. Flashing blue lights. Sirens. They have their stomachs pumped at the hospital and dad comes directly from work.

  Nobody in the family has ever spoken about it. At least not with me. That’s why I’m not sure whether maybe I dreamed it or made it up and have just convinced myself it’s true over the years. It’s possible.

  Mom trained me to be a good liar. To such a degree that I believe most of my own lies. Sometimes it can be fun. Other times it can be maddening, as in this case. I guess I could just ask mom.

  “Mom, did you used to cut off my eyelashes out of jealousy? And another thing: Did you try to kill yourself along with my brother? And: Why didn’t you want to take me with you?”

  I never find the right moment.

  At some stage my eyelashes grew back and I always curled them and used mascara to make the best out of them—and to piss off my mother in case that memory is a genuine memory. Top and bottom, I want my real lashes to look like plastic false eyelashes from the sixties. I mix cheap and expensive mascara to make the ultimate lashes. The best way is to use the end of the brush, where the mascara accumulates, and just glob it onto the lashes. The goal is for people half a mile away to think: “Wow, she’s a walking set of lashes.”

  Mascara is always advertised as not being sticky, and the brush is always supposed to keep the lashes separate so there are no clumps. But for me those are reasons not to buy a mascara. When my relatives and neighbors figured out that I never remove the mascara and just put more on every day, a panic broke out.

  “If you don’t remove the mascara from your lashes, they never get any light or air—and then they’ll fall out.”

  I thought: It couldn’t be any worse than it used to be. And I thought up cool tricks to avoid water ever getting on my lashes. After putting so much money and effort into my lashes, I can’t just let them get ruined in the shower. And besides, when months’ worth of mascara slowly dissolves in hot water and runs into your eyes, it burns. You definitely don’t want that. So I shower in stages. First I wash my hair and wrap it in a towel so the water can’t get into my eyes. Then I do the rest of my body from the neck down. For a while I missed my neck and black, greasy smudges would accumulate in the three indentations at the base of it.

  When that happens, if you rub your neck, dark, sticky little rolls form that smell like pus. So you either have to wash from the face down or you have to rub these rolls off your neck regularly. But the important thing is that your face never comes in contact with water. I haven’t put my head underwater for years—not in the bathtub or in the school swimming pool. I have to climb into the pool by the stairs like a granny, and I can only swim the breaststroke because your face, or parts of it, go under water with any other stroke. If someone tries to dunk me, I turn into a fury and scream and beg and explain that it would ruin my lashes. That’s worked so far.

  For years I haven’t seen water from below the surface. Obviously that means I never wash my face either. I think it’s overrated anyway. When you take your makeup off with makeup remover and cotton balls you’re kind of washing your face. Just keep your distance from the eyelashes. That’s the way I’ve been doing it for years. Only one or two lashes have gotten stuck in the curler. And they grew back. So I’ve proved that your lashes don’t all fall out if you don’t remove your masc
ara every night.

  My ex-boyfriend Matt watched me curl my lashes once and asked me whether a row of eyelashes was the same length as the inner pussy lips.

  “Yeah. Approximately.”

  “And you have two of these curlers?”

  “Yep.”

  A gold one and a silver one.

  He laid me down on the bed. Spread my legs. Pushed aside the ladyfingers and gently clamped my dewlaps with the eyelash curlers. That way he could hold the inner labia away from the hole and look deep inside. A bit like when they force Malcolm McDowell’s eyes open in A Clockwork Orange. He asked me to hold the curlers and pull them as far apart as felt good. Matt wanted to fuck me immediately and cum on my stretched lips. But first he wanted to take a picture so I could see how pretty my pussy looked all stretched apart. We clapped our hands with joy. Well, he did. My hands were busy.

  When you stretch these crinkly flaps of skin all the way out, the total surface is as big as a postcard. At some point Matt drifted out of my life, but his good idea stayed with me.

  I like the feeling I get from stretching my lips with the lash curlers until they look from my perspective like bat wings. Actually, I wonder if that’s why they’re so big and peek out from the ladyfingers? No way. I’m sure they were always so big and long and frayed grayish pink along the edges. All of this goes through my head as I’m ignoring Dr. Notz. Now he wants to leave.

  But here comes Helen with the photos of her ass.

  He needs to tell me which side is up. I can’t make out an asshole anywhere. No matter which way I turn the camera.

  I look at him. He looks at the photos and quickly away again. He’s disgusted by the results of his own surgical work. No wonder he didn’t want to tell me beforehand what he had in mind.

  “At least tell me which way I need to hold it to see what it looks like down there.”

  “I can’t tell. In my opinion the photo was taken too close up. I can’t tell which way it goes, either.”

  He sounds angry. Is he crazy? He’s the one who did this to me. I didn’t mess around with his ass. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the victim and he’s the culprit.

  He keeps glancing at the photo and then looking immediately away again. Hopefully he’s able to keep his eyes on wounds for a bit longer when he’s in the operating room. What a sissy. Or does he enter another world in the operating room? Looks at everything closely in there and just can’t stand to be confronted with it afterward?

  Like somebody who always goes to a brothel and does the wildest, most intimate, filthy things with the same hooker, but who, if he runs into her on the street, looks away and would never say hello.

  He didn’t greet my asshole very nicely.

  He doesn’t want to see it again.

  I see panic in his eyes: Help! My little operating room asshole can speak, ask questions. It’s even taken photos of itself.

  There’s no point. He just doesn’t know how to communicate with the people attached to the asses he operates on.

  “Thanks a lot, Mr. Notz.” That’s supposed to signal that he should leave. I dropped his professional title. That does the trick. He walks out.

  After the operation and the explanation by the esteemed Dr. Notz, I should now be crapping merrily. One sentence in his long-winded talk caught my attention: I will be discharged from the hospital only after a successful bowel movement with no bleeding. That is the indicator that the operation’s been a success and that everything’s healing properly.

  From this point on, people who have never been introduced to me before come in every few minutes and ask whether I’ve had a bowel movement. Noooo, not yet! The fear of the pain is insurmountable. If I were to press a log of crap past that wound, my God, what would happen? It would rip me open.

  Since the operation I’ve had only granola and whole-grain bread. They tell me my granola shouldn’t sit in the milk too long before being consumed. It should make it into the stomach and intestines in a fairly dry state. That way it will absorb fluid in the body and swell, pushing against the intestinal walls from the inside and thus signaling that it wants out.

  The urge to crap should be greatly heightened that way. They’re chucking bombs in the top but down below I’m all cinched up with fear. I’m not going to crap for days. I’ll just do as my mother does—wait for everything to disintegrate inside.

  Can you eat pizza while you’re waiting to take a crap? I don’t ask anybody; I decide that it’s important for rectal healing to eat things you like. I call my favorite pizza delivery service, Marinara. I know the number by heart. It’s easy to remember, like those phone-sex lines. I’m really excited, but I don’t let it show. I try to sound as belligerent as possible: “One mushroom pizza. Two beers. Saint Mary’s Hospital, room 218. The name is Memel. And make it quick. It better not be cold when it gets here. Just go to the front desk and they’ll call me.”

  I hang up as quick as I can.

  There’s an urban legend that made the rounds a while ago; I think a lot about it. Two girls order a pizza. They wait and wait but the pizza never comes. They call the delivery service a few times and complain. Eventually the pizza shows up.

  It looks a little funny and tastes odd. By coincidence, one of the girls is the daughter of a food inspector, and instead of munching the rest they put it in a bag and take it to dad.

  They all think maybe the pizza’s gone bad or something. Instead it comes out in the lab analysis that there are five different people’s sperm on the pizza. This is how I picture it getting there: The guys at the delivery service are annoyed by the phone calls. Since the complaints are being made by girls, the delivery guys have rape fantasies. The usual. They talk about it, come up with a plan, and all whip out their cocks to jerk off on a pizza. The pizza baker sees all the other guys’ cocks. And not just in their normal state. Fully erect. Being jerked off and coming. That’s why I’m envious of men. I’d like to see the pussies of my friends and schoolmates. And the cocks of my friends and schoolmates. Especially when they’re all coming. But you hardly ever have the chance. And I don’t dare ask.

  I only get to see the cocks of men I’m fucking and the pussies of women I pay.

  I want to see more in life.

  That’s why I love to break into the public pool and go drunken skinny-dipping after a night out clubbing.

  The whole trespassing thing is a little problematic. But at least you get to see a few cocks and pussies.

  Anyway. I’m always extra mean whenever I order pizza. And I complain even when it doesn’t take long. I’d love to eat a pizza with sperm from five different guys on it.

  It would be like having sex with five strange men at the same time. Okay, maybe not exactly sex. But it would be like having five strange men blow their loads in my mouth at the same time. That would be something for the memory vault, right? To be able to say you’d done that: well done.

  I can’t even walk. So there’s no way I can pick up the pizza. Shit. Now I’m leaking. No way. I’ll have to ask someone to pick it up for me. There’s no way the receptionist is going to walk around passing out pizzas. Robin will have to do it. The emergency buzzer. Is that wrong? Oh, well.

  A different nurse comes in. His name tag says Peter. It makes me smile. I like the name Peter. I was with one once. I called him Piss Peter. He was really good at going down on me. He would do it for hours. He had quite a unique technique.

  He would clamp the dewlaps between his teeth and his tongue and then rub his tongue over them. Back and forth. Or with his tongue flattened out and a lot of spit he’d lick from my asshole up to my snail tail and back down. Pressing hard against all the folds.

  Both techniques were very good. I usually came multiple times. Once so hard that I pissed in his face. He was mad because he thought I had done it on purpose. It was a little humiliating—the way he was kneeling there and then that happened.

  I patted him dry and apologized. I thought he should be proud. Nobody else had ever accomplished that.
To make me come so hard that I lose control of my bladder. And I wasn’t drunk or anything.

  After a while he realized how impressive it was. I learned that day from Piss Peter that it burns when you get piss in your eye. How else could I have ever found that out?

  “Where’s Robin?”

  “Shift change. I’m the night shift.”

  Is it already that late? Do the days in a hospital go by that fast? Apparently. I’m losing my mind. Fine. It’s not so bad here, Helen. Time flies when you amuse yourself with your own thoughts.

  “How can I help you?”

  “I wanted to ask Robin a favor. I’m a little uncomfortable asking you. We don’t know each other.”

  “What was the favor?”

  “I ordered a pizza. It’s going to be delivered downstairs soon and I can’t go get it. I need someone who can walk and is willing to bring it up here.”

  Maybe a nurse like this isn’t interested in real nourishment, and this plan will fall flat.

  “Aren’t you supposed to eat high-fiber foods after the operation? Granola, whole-grain breads?”

  Shit.

  “Yes. I am. Doesn’t pizza have any fiber?”

  Super idea. Play dumb.

  “No. It’s actually counterproductive.”

  Counterproductive—against production. Everybody here thinks only about bowel movements. It’s my choice.

  “But it’s also important to eat things your stomach is accustomed to. Sudden changes in diet aren’t good, either, for encouraging bowel movement. Please.”

  The phone rings.

  I answer.

  “Is the pizza here?”

  I hold the phone to the side and smile at Peter, eyebrows raised in question marks.

  “I’ll go get it. We’ll see what happens,” he says, smiling handsomely as he leaves.

  “Nurse Peter will come get it. Don’t give it to anyone else. Thanks.”

  I’m lucking out with these male nurses. They’re much nicer than the female ones.