EVERY PERSON HAS A UNIQUE TONGUE PRINT

An interesting thing happened last weekend in Vegas (always a good starter sentence). I laughed more than I could remember, and I drank more than I care to admit. With all of the recent tragedies in the city and the crushing accumulation of personal events, it was a welcome vacation from reality.

You can spend a considerable amount of time pondering the appeal of Vegas (or for that matter, you can spend a considerable amount of time trying to remember your time in Vegas). But what struck me the most about my brief interlude there was a traveling exhibit. On my last day, a group of us went to see The Bodies Exhibit at The Tropicana Hotel on Las Vegas Blvd. I had read about the exhibit beforehand and it was something that didn’t really interests me, although I was the one to pioneer it.

Death is a difficult enough issue for me to grasp as it is, but for some reason I have always struggled with the defenselessness of death. Death has a vulnerability that unnerves me. It’s the inability of choice, regardless of what kind of air-tight directions you leave. Even as a child, I wrote wills with elaborate instructions, but still worried my parents would put me in a frilly dress, even though I specifically requested my Red Sox’s hat. Would they portray me as an angel though I (accidentally) burned down a lot, beat up the school bully, and got kicked off the floor hockey team for throwing my stick (twice) at the coach (he was making ludicrous calls, and I was the captain, after all)? And when I viewed the massive graves of Jew in the pages of the World War Two books I read, it put me in a complete state of panic. Not only was the senselessness of the death sickening to me, but the disrespect of the bodies was almost as worse.

As someone who routinely roots for the underdog, there is no one more deserving of a “rah rah” cheer than a corpse.
The first time I saw a dead body was when I was 16. How I got into that college-level biology class my junior year in high school was beyond me. Divine intervention? Probably a scheduling mistake by the nuns. This was evident when our biology teacher announced we were going on a field trip to see a cadaver at the local university and I was the only one in the class to clap. I am sure many attributed it to my infamous selective hearing – the words “field trip” spun around my head like a half-lit disco ball inside a dumpster. That was only partially true. To be honest, it was because I no idea what a cadaver actually was. I figured it was some kind of fossilized rock, or perhaps a new machine to measure bone density in mammals. I really couldn’t give a shit; I was getting off of the school grounds. I was consumed by my Scarlet O’Hara philosophy: “I’ll think about that tomorrow.” Of course, when tomorrow came and I was informed of the proper definition, my deadbeat doctrine quickly changed. I didn’t want to go. But faced with reality of being left behind in study hall by myself under the supervision of Sister Beatrice, who always said, “Deal with it, Missy,” and whose saggy arms could act as sails on a catamaran, I chose to see the dead body.

The day of the field trip, we all endured the “act like an adult” lecture and “this is a privilege” speech. I remember bouncing up and down on the bus I was so excited. Even being forced to wear my dreaded Catholic School uniform in public didn’t detour me from my exhilaration. I had been preparing myself for this day. All I had to do, I reasoned, was stand in the back of the room, stare off into space and think about other things. It would be just like any other day in biology class. I had survived dissecting a frog and fetal pig (barely – and that is another story) in that very same manner. It was a tactic that worked well for me. I learned it was quite easy to become lost in a sea of green and blue plaid skirts.

While I knew the lecture from our biology teacher was expected, I wasn’t prepared for the lecture from the college professor. I assumed it would be along the same lines as our teacher’s (minus the threats). It wasn’t. “The man you are going to see is named Phil,” he told us, slapping his clipboard against his thighs. “He’s 67 years old and his family donated his body to science because he loved the field so much.” He waved his clipboard in the air. “Follow me.”

Phil? I was much happier with “the cadaver” but now he had a name. Now he was someone. Now he had a family. Now he had breathed, lived, loved, had regrets. He walked, he danced (maybe poorly, but still) he lived. I wasn’t ready to be part of his end-story.

To make a long story short (I have a feeling this entry will be dragging on for quite while) I marched into the room and ran smack into the table where a dead, clammy, naked Phil rested. I guess I had envisioned something out of Star Trek. The professor would push a button and Phil would descend from the ceiling. Or flip a switch and pop out of the wall. Or at least he’d have a white sheet covering him. Nope, there he was, in all of his unintentional immodesty on the table. And while I am proud to say that I did manage to maintain my composure for a few minutes, once they started poking around his body cavity and holding up various parts for examination, my composure quickly desengrated. “You don’t care about this man,” I hollered. “You have no feelings for him. Phil had a family and you don’t care. Why? Because you’re all a bunch of insensitive assholes.” I was quickly escorted from the room and was so traumatized from the whole affair that I was actually excused from school for the rest of the day. I can’t even begin to tell you what a rarity this was, having once attended school with a 101 temperature and hallucinations of Bugs Bunny driving a convertible.

So, this was all factored into my apprehension of viewing The Bodies Exhibit. Still, I was older and wiser (?).
The Bodies is an exhibit where human bodies are immersed in acetone, placed in a bath of silicone and sealed in a vacuum chamber. Perfectly preserved- like a dried apricot. The bodies are so stripped down and so depersonalized that you have to actually remind yourself that they were once humans. And I think that’s their intent. They had these humans in multiple poses to represent the way our muscles and bones work. They also had pieces of the body: healthy lungs vs. smoking lungs, parts of the heart, eyeballs, etc. The most difficult thing to view was the fetuses. It’s one thing to see a five-week old fetus in a textbook, it’s another thing to hold your pinky finger up to a glass case and measure it.

It’s my fault that I personalize situations; it’s a bad habit I have to take even the most detached circumstance and find some kind of sympathies. Looking at the “specimens” (as they called them) only made me revisit my recent feelings about violence and death.

What makes someone gun down a mother with sleep in her eyes? What possesses an individual to unload a clip into a car, not even caring if their intended hit is surrounded by innocents? These are basic questions everyone asks, and it’s almost embarrassing to recapitulate them. Thus far, I’ve been blessed that I have never intimately known anyone who was murdered (although I have known some suicides). But I have known people who have murdered.

When I first moved to New Orleans, I became friends with a dj in the bar where I worked. He was funny and odd, and when it was slow we would do crossword puzzles together. He let me keep my schoolbooks behind the dj booth and because I was punctual and sober for my shifts (something that would seem to be the most rudimentary of requirements, but apparently was something of an oddity) the management looked the other way and let me sit at the booth and read when it was slow. Sometimes I would give him my notes, and he would quiz me if I had an important test coming up. When I wasn’t studying, he was frequently telling me about his love life- either exalting it or bemoaning it. He couldn’t seem to exist without being in a relationship and it was almost scary how quickly one would end and another would begin “She’s the one,” he’d say, about a girl he had just met the night before in some bar. “I can feel it. I’m in love for the first time.” I didn’t try to analyze it; I just listened and thought about how different people can be in matters of the heart. How can anything that authentic occur with as much haphazardness as a wink? It reminded me of “The boy who cried wolf,” except he wasn’t consciously lying. He believed the authenticity of his proclamations, so I would sit and listen to his various dramas (and there were many).

The dj and I did not travel in the same circles. He was much more a part of the recreational, late-night, drug crowd, and I was more of the two-drink minimum. But still he would come over to my house sometimes for barbeques or parties and he knew not to offer me anything.

After I moved from the bar scene, I lost touch with him. Occasionally I ran into him in the Quarter with his newest girlfriend, and we always greeted each other warmly. I heard from friends that he had gotten even deeper into drugs and the nightlife. A few years ago, when I was returning from an art convention in Baltimore, there were various voice mails from one of my friends asking if I had heard the news. A stripper had been murdered by her boyfriend. Thinking I knew the stripper, I held my breath and called my friend. She asked me if I was sitting down. I didn’t know the stripper; I knew the boyfriend. It was my dj friend. In a drugged-up rage he beat his girlfriend to death, stuffed her in the back of her car, dumped her body in a swamp in Lafayette and took off for Chicago. She had a two-year old son. Her parents were immigrants who moved to this country when she was a teenager so they could give her and her sister a better life. And she ended up human luggage in the back of her own car with a body full of swamp water.

The other murder was closer to home. In November of 2005, I went home for my Grandma’s memorial. The last time I saw her was when I drove my cats from Colorado (where we evacuated) to my parents’ house shortly after Hurricane Katrina. I visited my grandma in her new retirement home. She was constantly being kicked out of homes for spontaneous outings (i.e. running away) and harassing other residents. She looked great; alert and spunky at age 92. The day after I left, her health dramatically plunged and she passed away a few days later.

When I came home for the memorial, I had been living in Post-Katrina New Orleans for about four weeks. I still didn’t have gas, phone, or cable. I boiled water for a shower, cooked on an electric grill, and slept in sweaters surrounded by space heaters. I still drove 25 minutes to buy a pack of fucking gum. And while I won’t go into all the emotions involving visiting a city that had all of its facilities and wasn’t surrounded by debris and destruction, I will say it was a massive culture shock.
The thing I was most looking forward to going home for was seeing my eldest niece, Erin. It had been awhile since we had been together. She had taken time off of work so she could drive down to see me. Being the youngest of four, I was always desperate for a little brother or sister and used to BEG my parents to give me one. They weren’t looking to add a fifth.

When Erin was born I was elated. Every show-and-tell in my third-grade class after that revolved around her: her favorite toy, her blanket, pictures, locks of her hair. The kids took to groaning out loud whenever it was my turn to present.

When Erin was 19, she began seeing LC and became pregnant. She gave birth to my great-niece, whom she named after me. My great-niece was a highly imaginative, somewhat bossy, and incredibly sassy little, redheaded, blue-eyed girl. I adored her. Shortly after my great-niece’s birth, Erin broke it off with LC. I was glad; I wasn’t too fond of him. He never made an effort. She married a nice guy and had two more children.

Erin remained close with LC’s mother, and would bring my great-niece over to visit with her. LC never held a job and was eventually diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, floating in and out of mental institutions. Erin had moved more than once because of his erratic behavior and threatening phone calls. LC moved back in with his mother and spent his days locked in his rooms playing video games and watching tv. The day before the memorial, LC’s mother called the local mental hospital. She was worried about her son because he had not been taking his medication and wanted him recommitted. A health care worker showed up at their door. LC became agitated, got a knife and stabbed the man to death. Then he went back to his room and continued watching tv. The man was 46 years old with a wife and children.

The murder caused a sensation in our community, since it was the first murder in over a dozen years. Every day I was home it was all over the news and papers. This tall, sullen boy who barely acknowledged anyone’s existence and was father to my great niece, stabbed a man to death while his mother screamed helplessly. Last month, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The man he killed helped the state pass a bill to require all health workers to have two people to respond to calls.
My great-niece is eight-years old and still ignorant about all of this. I can’t help but worry about her own mental health, since schizophrenia is hereditary. I think about hugging her every day.

I don’t even know where I am going with this. I’m not attempting a dues ex machina in my final paragraph.

One of my problems with Phil was this- did he actually think his life was going to end up with a bunch of school girls in saddle shoes and penny loafers surrounding him with plastic gloves and poking at his internal organs. Giggling at his slightly green-colored penis? Does anyone expect their life to turn out the way it does? Good or bad? Phil was supposed to make me understand the workings of my body better; instead he made me understand the workings of my mind better. He was just a reminder that at age 16, I was mortal, and it wasn’t something I wanted to be reminded of. And despite, my usual sunny disposition, while some of the girls joked about how they hoped they never married a man as stocky and portly as Phil, they seemed to take the stance – “Thank God, we’re not him,” or “Thank God, we will never be with someone like him.” I took it as, “Oh God, I am him.”

Looking at The Bodies made me feel almost the same way. I felt like a passenger of my own flesh and bone. It made me value breath and respect life even more. It made me mourn for those who, technically, could now be put on display. (Isn’t James Brown still in his living room?)

I don’t know what to say about the philosophical differences between a drug-hazed murder and a mentally ill murder. Or maybe, I just don’t want to address it. This has rambled on and in too many directions for too long.

Heraclitus, “The Dark One,” had these conclusions:

You can’t go home again.
Your childhood is lost.
The friends of your youth are gone.
Your present is slipping away from you.

But with this seemingly pessimistic view, it provides almost a comforting logic. It shows that life is not an arbitrary event; it’s an eventuality. It’s universal.

You control the things you can. And I guess that is what I am still trying to learn.


The Bodies