I know you asked me this earlier, but I haven’t told anyone yet that I have come to see you. It’s not that I’m ashamed but I prefer to tell people about things after they have happened. I like the inevitable. I will of course have to tell my parents, eventually, but, you know, my mother always wanted me to become a teacher—a lady teacher—and not someone who got fired from a third-rate admin job and spent a small fortune on a cock. So, this will be hard for her, and she will also wonder where I got the money from. And the wish to become a teacher was passed down from my grandmother, who could never become a teacher because, as with my mother, there was not enough money to let a woman study, and when my mother met my father and the washing machines, it was already too late. But then, life always gives you the option to trouble your children to make up for your own failures. Even if you haven’t achieved anything, you can always fuck someone and let your children get on with it, though my parents do of course have a romantic wedding picture to prove the sincerity of their emotions. I was not just the product of their own disappointment, or so they say. But I let them down anyway, and nothing makes me see the absurdity of my situation more clearly than when I try to imagine myself as one of those German lady teachers, proudly owning her breasts in front of a room full of teenagers who would have had to call me Frau Göring-Mengele, or Bormann-Speer, or simply Fräulein Adolf. Just imagining it makes me laugh—me in charge of educating the young, living a life that’s immediately understandable for everyone. It’s not that I don’t sometimes envy those people, Dr. Seligman; when I feel low I do wonder how much my little bit of freedom is really worth and whether there was no way I could have pulled myself together, made peace with my breasts, and made generations of children hate music and literature. I never had a brain for science. But there was no way I would have lasted, for if you decide to live such a life, you really have to live it, and if people get wind of the fact that you like to suck off strangers in public toilets, they will not trust you with their children anymore. And they will come after you with their pitchforks once they realise that it was their husband you had between your lips. As a woman I would have had to get married to not be a source of danger, and that was always out of the question for me. I have never dreamt that dream, Dr. Seligman, not even as a girl.
And still I believe that K would have found me anyway, and he wouldn’t have cared about a ring on my finger, and I wouldn’t have cared either. Nothing would have stopped us from playing our games, and he would have made me go back to those places regardless. It’s not that we could not afford the occasional hotel room, but it turned K on to play games in public. With everything K did, Dr. Seligman, he was always looking for exposure in safe spaces, and I have never met anyone less private than that man. His favourite game was to make me go with a man of his choosing and to listen at the door. You might be appalled by this, Dr. Seligman, but I trusted K from the first minute, and I loved being dominated in that way; and I also loved the thrill of never knowing whether we had just met up for a drink or whether he had other plans for me. And when I had been naughty, he would pick a particularly unattractive man for me, one of those who can only ever hope for a pity fuck. It’s surprisingly easy to offer oral sex to strangers; it’s almost like it doesn’t count because there is never the risk of making a baby, because it’s not really an encounter of two equal bodies but more the mouth as a source of relief. But I never minded any of that; I had become indifferent to this body and what happened to it, because I think by that point I had already taken my decision to come and see you, and my time with K was almost like the kind of party you celebrate in a house that you know will be demolished. It’s all without consequences. And I did enjoy those other games too, when he made me lie down on the floor of his studio and told me to masturbate whilst he was working, walking around, or taking phone calls, and I wasn’t allowed to stop until he told me to. I had never experienced such pleasure before, and yet it bothered me that for some of those games I always had to play the part of a woman. I understood that K could only pick straight men for our games, but I think it angered him when he saw me looking at those other men, those who made love to each other, because he wasn’t possessive when it came to things that he too could offer; he knew that he was good at it. But those other things—he didn’t like it when he could see me longing for them, Dr. Seligman, and when I realised that K was more than I thought he was, it was too late. When I realised that I had become precious to him, and that it’s not true that the reddest stars are always the coldest.
I don’t want to be mean again, and I know that in some strange way he could even be considered a distant colleague of yours, but I just remembered what I think was the most stupid question Jason ever asked me, Dr. Seligman. One day, after I had settled down into that delicate chair without a headrest that he thought appropriate for his patients and before I could go off on one of my mad tangents again, he asked me whether I thought that I’d been a good child. Not whether I had been a good child, but whether I thought I had been a good child; only someone who has grown up in Britain could ask such a question, don’t you think? As if your history was somehow up to you and your interpretation, like you had a say in it, like it was a happy situation. And it didn’t make me angry, but I suddenly grew so envious, because I realised that not everyone had grown up like me, that you could look back at things and be joyful. That facts could be flexible. I mean, I know that as Germans we can never get away from our past and simply start growing happy flowers in our front garden—our outlook will always be something that has been raked to death and closely resembles concrete. That’s just how it is, but Jason’s question not only made me realise that people here think that they have agency in their past but also that they are free from the troubles of guilt. That because they won a war, they can always claim to think that they were good. And they even have a Queen, and they always make it look like they only need to build memorials for themselves and not for the crimes they have committed elsewhere. I remember when I first moved here; it was so fascinating for me that soldiers could be heroes and that all that remained of an empire that spanned the globe was a love of the exotic—of sugar, rum, and spices—and the comfort of a universally spoken language. Can you imagine what it means to someone like me to imagine the luxury of a clean past, Dr. Seligman? It must be like finding an acceptable way to fuck puppies, to sink down in endless layers of fluff and to not feel anything upsetting ever again. And I wonder if someone should tell Mr. Shimada about this, that what people really want is oblivion and fluff and not a full-on robot fuck. I don’t actually remember what my reply to Jason was—I’m sure I found a way back to my usual disgraces without revealing anything too important, or maybe I pretended that I didn’t remember much of my past—but now that I think about it, another story comes to mind. And even though this process has long become normal, it still makes me feel a bit funny, like I am being dishonest whilst really it’s something else. Because the story I am thinking of and that I would now like to tell Jason is not my own but one of K’s stories, and you might think that would qualify as a lie, but to me that’s different, Dr. Seligman, because if I am honest, I cannot remember who I was before I met K.
Has that ever happened to you, Dr. Seligman, that someone has split you into two versions of yourself? Before and after. That every word you say suddenly feels a little strange because you have a vague sense that your tongue used to move in different ways before, but you have no way of knowing what they were? That you suddenly take a strange pride in your imperfections, and your movements seem to have adjusted to someone else’s reality? I never used to feel this sudden sadness, and I could swear that my nose used to be straight, that there was a symmetry before that distinguished my face from those of others. And I cannot understand why my eyes are suddenly so green. It’s almost like K poured some of his purple into my veins and bones, making sure that everyone could see the traces he left behind, that I belonged to him in a way that only lovers think they belong to each other. That
every sound that left my body would carry the ring of his voice and every move the reluctance of his fingers, once he had satisfied his needs. And I think that in a way that’s all we are: other people’s stories. There is no way we can ever be ourselves. I tried for so many years to be something they call genuine, but now I know that I am not one thing but the product of all the voices I have heard and all the colours I have seen, and that everything we do causes suffering somewhere else. And in a way, it doesn’t matter whose story it really is and looking back, I don’t think that K and I were ever separated along those lines. I know that he wouldn’t mind, that he would love for his past to be put on display, and I am sure that even you, Dr. Seligman, with your mysterious seven frames on your desk, are made up of other stories. You know, somehow, I am beginning to sense that there is another side to you, that maybe these frames don’t contain pictures of your children and grandchildren, that maybe they contain your seven favourite sins. With the changing light my head is getting a little dreamy—I think I can see the first snowflakes dancing outside your window—and I am starting to feel that you are capable of more than just loving one wife. And please don’t think that I would judge; if anything, I admire perversions and would love it if every morning, after having had breakfast with your wife, you come up here to masturbate to a different debauchery whilst waiting for your first patient. That this is how you’ve been able to smile at your wife through all these years. Or even when you are on the phone, if you ever answer it, or with a patient, you can always be charming and relaxed in the knowledge that you are not the person they think they are talking to. That their respectable Jewish doctor sometimes gets off on little pictures of our late Führer. Nothing would make me happier, Dr. Seligman, than if you had a different picture of a different Nazi for every day of the week, claiming what is so rightfully yours, coming onto their immovable little faces.
Anyway, the story that K told and that I would now like to tell Jason, Dr. Seligman, was a story about how as a child, K used to write letters to people he didn’t like, putting his parents in the most impossible situations, because of course most of these people happened to be their friends and neighbours. Back then everyone’s addresses could be found in the local phone book; things were much less private somehow. And then K would just write down all the things he found upsetting about them, and, given his talent for observation and how mean he could be, he probably didn’t spare them any details. Can you imagine doing such a thing at the age of eight or nine, Dr. Seligman? I didn’t even dare to undo my plaits without asking, and K just took a hammer and shattered his parents’ social life, because being the child he was, he included all the things his parents had said about them. Revealing what people always pretend they don’t know, that it’s unusual to actually like each other and that most of our social constructions are brought about by force or advantage. I can still imagine K doing this, just taking a pen and telling it as it is, which is why it’s probably for the best that he became an artist; nobody takes them seriously enough to cause a scandal. And yet I wonder why some people are born with such freedom, with the confidence to always eat the best bits first, whilst others like me need half their life and their grandfather’s inheritance to articulate their most passionate desire? You have no idea how long it took me to realise that my name was not my name, Dr. Seligman, that it wasn’t laziness when I didn’t react to it in the nursery but that I knew something by instinct then which I later forgot. That I simply couldn’t identify with that name, the name of a girl, a woman, a female, the name of someone with a vagina. That little beast that often felt like a slug between my legs. And until this day I wince when they address me as Frau or Mrs. or Miss, or even Ms. I never felt that any of those categories could describe who I really was, and I cannot wait for the day when you will have given me my beautiful cock, circumcised and all, and I can finally ask the world to call me by my real name, by the name they should have given me all those years ago. So, in a way, this is like a baptism, Dr. Seligman: you’re like the priest, welcoming me back to my long-lost kingdom.
That’s not at all a strange question to ask, Dr. Seligman, but I am not really angry with my parents. I mean, how were they supposed to know that they had given birth to a freak? They never had any other children, so maybe they did sense that something wasn’t right, but I don’t think it was a possibility they considered when they decided to have me; my mother was always far too vain for that. She was the kind of woman who never sees what’s in a shop window because she’s too busy checking her own reflection. She would never have considered that her child would be anything but perfect. I used to hate all that women’s stuff, the big bag with all the makeup, the hairspray in the bathroom that made my lungs go sticky, the immaculate clothes that never allowed for holes or stains, the way I could never walk in a dress. And the embarrassment I felt once my vagina started bleeding. The way my mother wouldn’t stop imposing her world on me, how I had to go and see a dermatologist for my spots and cover my legs in those horrible shiny tights. How I was at the same time her rival and her product, and how I was supposed to be fuckable in her stead once her own legs had grown too tired, like in a family of stray cats where someone has to do the deed to keep things going. It used to confuse me so much how she would try to parade me around in front of people, her friends and our so-called family, knowing full well that there was nothing worth parading. And the worst thing was when she used to take me shopping, Dr. Seligman, that most idiotic pursuit where people deliberately confuse means and purpose in order to get out of the house and pretend it’s possible to actually buy new trousers. And you know those mothers who go shopping with their daughters, looking almost identical? Those daughters who got it all right to a dot, who barely rubbed off that first layer of slime they were born with and allowed themselves to be broken into an exact replica of their creators? They scare me when I see them now, but back then I envied them, because my mother and I always looked like a chic lady with Quasimodo on a leash beside her—or at least that’s how I felt, because I never knew how to handle my hair or how to make her happy by looking like a girl in a dress. And she must have suffered from my embarrassment, from my inability to speak about what it was that was holding me back, why I didn’t have a crush on any of the boys in my school and would only use deodorant when forced to. I think her imagination might have stretched to worrying that I had turned out to be a trouser-loving lesbian, because not all girls wore skirts and dresses even back then, but nothing beyond that. And I wish I had understood that, Dr. Seligman; I wish I had known that she acted out of the insecurity most women are born with, that they are so scared of their bodies that they would do anything to look and smell acceptable, that they wear those silly little socks so their feet don’t smell in summer and that all the makeup my mother tried to smear on my face was a form of war paint, her way of trying to protect me from the world, because they all know what happens to those who rebel—they know that the witches’ stakes are still glimmering in the background. And a lot of the upset between us was down to some unnecessary performance anxiety imposed by a world trying to keep people without cocks in their place, and I wish we had both been wiser. But now, Dr. Seligman, for the first time in my life, I feel like I am being strong, for the two of us, like I have broken free from those chains of lipstick and perfect hair and can take pride in my worn feet and the hair around my nipples. And I know that one day we will go shopping together and she will finally be proud of this body we both used to hate so much. I’m sure of it, Dr. Seligman, because recently I have found it in my heart to forgive her. And because all of this is so very lonely sometimes, I have started to wear some of her old clothes, her cardigans and scarves—I was always too fat for everything else—and I think that’s a sign that I have started to miss her in that place where I should have loved so long ago. And I admire nothing more than people who have found a way to love their mothers; I think it’s the biggest challenge in life, the one thing that would make the world a better place.
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I think your assistant has fallen asleep, Dr. Seligman. Or do you have such exclusive opening hours that only special people get to leave a message? The phone has been ringing for ages. It almost makes me blush that you are spending so much time with me; you must be a good man, and I am sure you always kiss your wife goodbye. K wasn’t really someone who liked to hold hands much, or cuddle, or any of that other affection stuff. That wasn’t the kind of intimacy he sought, and for a long time I thought that he had reserved that kind of behaviour for his wife and children, that somehow it would have confused things if he had been tender with two people. And because infidelity is a matter of small movements, of those few seconds when we don’t pay attention and let go of the farce life has taught us to play. I didn’t really mind that distinction; I always felt like I was getting the good bits when K was spitting in my vagina instead of using lube, and the cool temperature of his saliva as he let it drip from his lips made me briefly forget how to hate my body. I simply couldn’t imagine that he did the same to his wife, but I also didn’t care, Dr. Seligman. You might find that hard to believe, but I never dreamt of being in her stead. I never wanted to know what he really looked like in the morning, and I was always sure of our situation and I hadn’t been raised on much affection myself, so I didn’t mind his coldness. But for K, it all must have meant something else. Because that day, when we were in a hotel room with no paint to signal the obvious end of our encounter, I found it strange to just start caressing him with clean fingers, and I just resorted to stroking his hair as a final gesture. Nothing more, Dr. Seligman, just a few strokes, when suddenly his body grew tense, like a wild animal contemplating whether or not to attack, like he was measuring the extent of his fear against the chances of leaving the hotel room the same person he was when he went in. Whether this would be the beginning or the end of his freedom. And I didn’t know what to do; wary of any sudden movements, I just paused and waited and before I could slowly remove my hand, K was shrinking on the bed in front of me, wearing nothing but a T-shirt, I suddenly looked at the crying child I told you about earlier. The little boy who can’t find his way out of the dark and is worn out by his body’s reactions to his fear. I don’t remember how long he cried for, but when I finally tried to hug him, I realised that there was still too much left for me to comfort, that my body was still so much smaller than his, and that all I could do was to watch him wander down those corridors from long ago, filled with those horrors only he could see. In our fear we all become animals, Dr. Seligman, closed off from the comfort of a common language; we are left alone with nothing but our instincts to defend us. And yet I think that it was those tears that bound K to me; it must have been such a relief for him to finally find someone he could cry in front of, and after that we started meeting in hotel rooms more often. Away from the colours in his studio, he was like a child that’s teaching itself to leave the house without its favourite toy.
The Appointment Page 6
