Wetlands (3 page)

I grow avocado trees
. Besides fucking, it’s my only hobby. As a kid avocados were my favorite fruit or vegetable—whatever they are. Cut in half with a dollop of mayonnaise in the hole where the pit’s been removed. And a bunch of hot paprika powder sprinkled on top. I would play with the pits afterward. My mother would always say kids didn’t need toys—a rotten tomato or an avocado pit did just fine.

At first the pit is shiny and slimy from the avocado oil. I like to rub it on the backs of my hands and up and down my arms. Spread the slime all over. Then you have to dry the pit.

If you leave it on the radiator it only takes a few days. Once the moisture has dried, I run the soft, dark-brown pit across my lips. When they’re dry they feel so soft. I like to do it for minutes on end, with my eyes closed. It’s like when I would run my dry lips across the greasy leather cover of the pommel horse in the school gym—until someone would interrupt me. “Helen, what are you doing? Stop that.”

Or until the other kids would laugh at me. Then you spare yourself the embarrassment by doing it only during the
few moments you can sneak into the gym alone. It’s about as soft as my ladyfingers when they’re freshly shaved.

You’ve got to peel the brown shell off the pit. To do that I stick my thumbnail into the shell and keep cracking it. Just be careful not to let any pieces of the shell jab under your nail.

That hurts and it’s hard to get the pieces out even with a needle and tweezers. And trying to finish ripping open the shell with splinters under your nail hurts worse than the initial pain of them getting jammed in there in the first place. It’ll leave ugly bloody marks under your nail, too. The blood doesn’t stay red, either. It turns brown. It takes a long time for it to grow out. In the meantime your nail looks like a sheet of floating ice with a piece of driftwood frozen into it. Once the shell’s completely removed you can see the pleasant color of the pit—either light yellow or sometimes pale pink.

Then I hit it with a hammer. But not so hard that it crushes. After that I put it in the freezer for a few hours to simulate winter. Once you’ve had enough of winter, you pull it out and insert three toothpicks into the pit. Then you suspend it in water in a glass, using the toothpicks to hold it at the right height.

An avocado pit looks like an egg. It’s got a thick, round end and a more pointed end. The narrower end has to stay above the water. About a third in the air and two-thirds submerged. It’ll stay this way for a couple of months.

A slimy film grows on the part of the pit in the water. I find it very inviting. Sometimes I take the pit out of the water and put it inside me. I call it my organic dildo. Obviously I only use organic avocados for my starter pits. Otherwise I’d end up with toxic trees.

You definitely want to take the toothpicks out before you put it inside you. Thanks to my well-trained pelvic muscles I can shoot it back out afterward. Then it’s back into the water with the toothpicks stuck back in. And then you wait.

After a couple of months you’ll see a crack in the round end. It’ll get wider, a deep crevice in the pit. It looks as if it’s about to split in half; then a thick, white, taproot will start to grow out of the bottom. It curls into the bottom of the glass—there’s no other direction for it to grow. Once that gets pretty long, if you look closely at the crack on the top side of the pit, you’ll see a tiny green sprout starting to grow. Now’s the time to transfer it to a pot full of potting soil. Soon a stem grows with big, green leaves.

I’ll never get closer to giving birth than this. I looked after that first pit for months. Had it inside me, pushed it out. And I take perfect care of all the avocado trees I’ve started that way.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to have a child. There’s a recurring pattern in my family. My great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother, and me. All
first-born. All girls. All neurotic, deranged, and depressed. But I broke the cycle. This year I turned eighteen and I’ve been waiting for that moment. One day after my birthday—as soon as I didn’t need parental approval—I had myself sterilized. Since then the thing my mother says to me so often doesn’t sound so threatening: “How much do you want to bet that when you have your first child it’s a girl?” Because I’ll only be having avocado trees. Apparently you have to wait twenty-five years for a tree to bear fruit. Which is also about how long you have to wait to become a grandmother. These days.

While I’ve been lying here thinking happily about my avocado family, the pain has subsided. You always notice when it begins; but you don’t notice when it stops. That moment doesn’t grab your attention. But I realize the pain is completely gone now. I love painkillers and try to imagine what it would have been like to have been born in another era when there were no good painkillers. My head is free of pain and now there’s room for everything else. I take a few deep breaths and, exhausted, fall asleep. When I open my eyes I see mom leaning over me.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m covering you up. You’re lying here totally exposed.”

“Leave it the way it is. The sheet’s too heavy on my wounded ass, mom. It hurts. It doesn’t matter how it looks.

Do you think they haven’t seen it here a thousand times before?”

“Then stay that way. Good God.”

That reminds me.

“Can you please take down the crucifix over the door? It bugs me.”

“No, Helen, I won’t do that. Stop being so ridiculous.”

“Fine. If you won’t help me, I guess I’ll have to get up and do it myself.”

I start to move one leg off the bed, bluffing that I’m going to stand up, groaning with pain.

“Okay, Okay, I’ll do it. Please stay in bed.”

No problem.

She uses the lone chair in the room to reach the cross. As she’s climbing onto it, she speaks to me in an artificially friendly, sympathetic tone. I feel sorry for her. But it’s too late.

“How long have you had this condition?”

What is she talking about? Oh, right. The hemorrhoids.

“Always.”

“Not back when I used to bathe you.”

“So I got them sometime after I was too old for you to be bathing me.”

She climbs back down off the chair, holding the cross in her hand. She looks questioningly at me.

“Put it here in the drawer.” I point to the metal nightstand.

“You know, mom, hemorrhoids are hereditary. It’s just a question of who I got them from.”

She closes the drawer firmly.

“From your father. How was the operation?”

We learned in health class that divorced parents often try to manipulate their kids into taking their respective sides. One parent will bad-mouth the other in front of their kids.

What those bad-mouthing parents fail to realize, though, is that they are always insulting one half of the child. If you consider a child half the mother and half the father.

Children whose mothers constantly insult their fathers will eventually take revenge against their mothers. It all comes back like a boomerang.

So for years the mother has tried to get the child on her side only to have the opposite happen. She’s just pushed the child closer to the father.

Our teacher was right.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there—they used general anesthesia. They say it all went well. It hurts. Did you bring my avocado pits?”

“Yes, they’re over there.”

She points to the windowsill. Right next to the diaper container is a box with my beloved pits. Perfect. I can even reach them myself.

“Did you bring the camera?”

She pulls it out of her handbag and puts it on the nightstand.

“What do you need it for here in the hospital?”

“I don’t think you should record only the happy moments in life—like birthdays—but also the sad ones, like operations, illness, and death.”

“I’m sure it will be a joy for your children and grandchildren to look at an album of those pictures.”

I grin. If you only knew, mom.

I hope she’ll leave soon. So I can take care of my ass. The only situation in which I would want to spend more time with her would be if there was a legitimate hope of getting her together with dad. He’s not coming today. But tomorrow for sure. A hospital with your daughter in it is the perfect place for a family reconciliation. Tomorrow. Today: ass photos.

She says her good-bye and tells me she’s left pajamas in the wardrobe. Thanks. How am I supposed to get at them? It doesn’t matter—I’d rather lie here bare-bottomed anyway, with all those bandages. Air is good for the wound.

As soon as mom’s gone I ring for Robin.

Waiting, waiting. There are other patients, Helen, hard as that is for you to imagine. Here he comes.

“How can I help you, Ms. Memel?”

“I have a question for you. And please don’t say no right away.”

“Shoot.”

“Can you help me … actually, can you not call me Ms. Memel. It’s too formal for what I want to ask.”

“Sure. Happily.”

“You’re Robin and I’m Helen. Okay. Can you help me take a picture of my ass and the wound on it? I want to see what it looks like.”

“Um, let me think for a second—I don’t know if I’m allowed.”

“Please. Otherwise I’ll go crazy. There’s no other way for me to figure out what they did back there. You know, Dr. Notz can’t even explain it. And it’s my ass after all. Please. I can’t tell from feeling it. I’ve got to see it.”

“I understand. Interesting. Most patients don’t want to know. Okay. What do you want me to do?”

I go to the menu on the camera and set it to close-up. First try will be with no flash. It always looks better. I pull off the outer bandages and the plug of gauze. It takes a while. They’ve stuffed a lot of gauze in there. I carefully turn on to my other side, my face to the window, and hold my cheeks apart with both hands.

“Robin, now take a picture of the wound as close-up as possible. Hold it steady—the flash is off.”

I hear it click once and he shows me the test shot. You can’t make anything out. Robin doesn’t have a steady hand.
Other talents, though, I’m sure. We’ll have to use the flash. And repeat the whole thing.

“Take a few pictures from various angles. Up close and from farther away.”

Click, click, click, click. He won’t stop.

“That’ll do it, Robin, thanks.”

He carefully hands me the camera and says, “I’ve worked here in the proctology unit for ages and I’ve never been able to see the actual surgical work. So I thank you.”

“No, thank you. Can I look at these on my own? And would you do this for me again if it’s necessary?”

“Sure.”

“You’re really cool, Robin.”

“You, too, Helen.”

He walks out grinning. I stuff the gauze stopper back in.

I’m alone with the device
in which the pictures of my wound are saved. I have no idea what to expect. My pulse quickens and I start to sweat with anticipation.

I turn the little wheel mechanism next to the display to the “view pictures” option and hold the camera right in front of my face. It shows a photo of a bloody hole. The flash has cast light deep inside. My ass is wide open. There’s nothing to suggest the closure of a sphincter.

I can’t make out any crinkled, red-brown skin of a rosette. Actually, I can’t make out anything familiar at all. So this is what Notz meant by “wedge-shaped incision.” Poor description. I’m appalled at my own asshole—or rather, what’s left of it. More hole than ass.

So: I’ll never be an ass model. It’s just for private use now. Or am I holding the camera wrong? No, that can’t be possible—Robin would have held the camera the same way to take the picture.

Yikes. You can look right in. I feel much worse now that I’ve seen it. The pain comes back suddenly, too. Now that I know what I look like down there, I can’t believe the
pain will ever go away. There’s no skin at all around the entire opening, just red, naked flesh.

I have to let the skin grow back. How long will it take? Weeks? Months? What do you have to eat to help the skin of your ass grow? Mackerel?

Do they want me to push a dump past open flesh? No way. How many days and weeks can I hold it in? And if I do manage to hold it in for a long time, the crap will get really big and harden and hurt even worse when it has to pass. I’ll ask. They’ll have to give me something to cause constipation so the wound can heal. I push my SOS button.

Waiting. While I wait I look through the other shots Robin took. Not one makes the wound look any less gruesome. What is that beside the wound? All sorts of red pimples. What the hell is that? I feel around both ass cheeks with my fingertips. I can feel the bumps. I didn’t notice them before. My sense of touch is stunted compared to my sense of sight. I need to improve my sense of touch, this is no good. Where did these pimples come from? Allergies? Am I allergic to butt operations? I look at the photos again. Ah, now I know. It’s razor burn. They shave you before an operation. Obviously not too daintily. Chop-chop, run the blade across. The only thing that matters is to get the hair off as quickly as possible. Probably without water or shaving cream. Just run the blade over, dry, to rip the hair out.

They’re even more unceremonious about shaving than I am on my own. I used to not shave at all. I thought there were better ways to fritter away the time in the bathroom. And I found better ways. Until I met Kanell. He’s from Africa. Ethiopia to be precise. One Saturday he stopped at the fruit-and-vegetable stand where I work to earn a little spending money. I set the stand up at four in the morning and sell produce until afternoon. My boss, the farmer who owns the stand, is a racist. Which is hilarious. Because he thinks he needs to stock exotic fruits and vegetables. A gap in the market. But who besides people from Africa, India, South America, or China knows how to prepare dishes with pomelos, sunchokes, and taro root?

So my boss rants all day long about foreigners, about what an insult it is that they want to shop at his stand, and about their accents. This despite the fact that he’s attracting them because of what he’s selling. Kanell didn’t understand the farmer’s question: “That it?”

He had to ask the farmer what he meant. The farmer was so patronizing in his explanation that I slipped away from the stand afterward to apologize.

I ran along the rows of stalls looking for him. Finally, I was standing behind him. I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around. All out of breath, I said: “Hi. I’m sorry. I just wanted to say I was ashamed of the way my boss acted.”

“I could tell.”

“Good.”

We laughed together.

Then I got nervous and couldn’t think of anything better to say than: “I’m going back to the stand.”

“Are you shaved?”

“What?”

“I asked whether you were shaved.”

“No, why do you ask?”

“Because I’d love to shave you sometime. At my place.”

“When?”

“Right after work. Whenever the market closes.”

He writes his address down for me, folds the piece of paper up small, and pushes it into my dirty palm like a little present. This definitely qualifies as one of my most impulsive dates ever. I shove the note into the chest pocket of my green apron and walk proudly back to the racist’s stand.

I don’t want to think too much over the next few hours about what to expect at his apartment. Otherwise I’ll get too anxious and might not even go. That would be a shame.

When I’m done for the day I shove my under-the-table wages in my pocket and head for the jotted-down address. I ring the bell labeled
Kanell
. Apparently it’s his last name. Or perhaps he’s got such a complicated name that, like some soccer players, he’s just picked out a pseudonym that stupid
Europeans can pronounce. He buzzes the door open and calls down the staircase: “Second floor.”

I step inside the entryway and the door closes hard behind me. It practically hits me and a cold breeze rustles my hair. The mechanical arm that closes the door is set too tight. There’s a screw someplace in it that you can loosen so the door closes more elegantly. My father taught me that. If I start coming here often, I’ll bring a screwdriver sometime and fix it.

I hike up my skirt and wriggle my hand into my underwear. I stick my middle finger deep into my pussy and leave it in the warmth for a moment before taking it back out. I open my mouth and stick my finger all the way in. I close my lips around my finger and pull it out slowly. I lick and suck as hard as I can in order to get as much of the taste of the slime on my tongue as possible.

There’s no way I can spread my legs for some guy—to get thoroughly eaten out, for instance—without knowing myself how everything looks, smells, and tastes down there.

In our bathroom are all kinds of useful mirrors that help me look at my own pussy from below. A woman looking down over her stomach at her pussy from above sees it from a completely different perspective than a man with his head hung between her legs in bed.

A woman sees just a tuft of hair sticking up and two bumps hinting at the outer labia.

A man sees a gaping, hungry mouth with knots of flesh all over it. I want to see everything on me the same way a man sees it; they see more of a woman than she does herself because everything down there is oddly hidden, just out of view. In the same way I want to be the first to know how my slime looks, smells, and tastes. And not just lie there and hope everything comes out alright.

Whenever I go to the bathroom I dip my finger into my pussy before I piss and do the same test. I dig around, scoop out as much slime as possible, and sniff it. For the most part it smells good—as long as I haven’t eaten a lot of garlic or Indian food.

The consistency varies a lot. Sometimes it’s like cottage cheese, other times like olive oil, depending on how long it’s been since I washed. And that depends on who I want to have sex with. Lots of guys prefer cottage cheese. You wouldn’t think so. But it’s true. I always ask in advance.

Then I suck it all off my finger and slurp it around in my mouth like a gourmand. Most of the time it tastes good. Except once in a while when the slime has a sour aftertaste. I haven’t figured out what causes that yet, but I will.

The test has to be conducted every time I go to the bathroom because I often run into the dilemma—or unexpected pleasure—of spontaneous sex. Even in those situations I want to be up-to-date on my pussy’s slime production. Helen leaves nothing to chance. Only when I know
exactly what’s going on with my beloved, precious slime can a man slurp it up with his tongue.

I’ve done the taste test and am happy. I’m ready to be looked at and tasted. The smegma has a bit of age to it, a truffle flavor, and that makes guys hot. Usually.

I climb the stairs. Not slowly, as if I do this all the time. No games. By walking up quickly, I show him how excited and curious I am. At the door he takes my hands in his and kisses me on the forehead. He leads me into the living room. It’s very warm. The radiator is boiling away. Someone could comfortably hang out naked here for a good, long time. It’s dark. The blinds are down. There’s just a little table lamp with a twenty-five-watt bulb. It illuminates a bowl of steaming water on the floor. Next to that is a folded washcloth and an old-fashioned men’s razor and a can of shaving cream. The entire couch is covered with big towels.

He quickly undresses me. The skirt is the only thing that gives him trouble—complicated clasp. Lifting it up isn’t good enough for him. It’s all got to go, the clothing. I help him. Then he lays me down at an angle on the couch. My head in the back corner, my butt on the front edge. I put a foot up on the arm to brace myself, so I’m lying there as if I’m at the gynecologist—Dr. Broekert position.

He undresses completely in front of me. I hadn’t expected that. I thought I’d get undressed and he’d stay clothed. All the better. His nipples are hard and he has a partial
erection. He has a very thin cock with an acorn-like tip, and it dangles to the left. That is, to my left.

He has a loaf of bread tattooed on his chest. The shape is more like a round sourdough than a loaf of rye or multi-grain bread. Gradually my breathing calms down. I get used to unusual situations quickly. I fold my arms behind my head and watch him. He’s readying everything and seems pleased. Looks like there’s nothing for me to do except lie back. We’ll see.

He leaves the room and returns with a miner’s lamp on his head. I have to laugh and tell him he looks like a Cyclops. We’ve just been reading about them in school. He laughs, too.

He puts a pillow on the floor and kneels on it, saying he doesn’t want to get calluses on his knees. Then he dunks both hands into the hot water and rubs it onto my legs. Aha. He starts all the way down at my ankles, moving upward.

Then he sprays shaving cream into his hand and spreads it on my legs. He dunks the razor in the hot water and tracks it down the entire length of the leg. Where he’s run the blade, the foam is gone. He makes one straight line after another. Like a lawnmower. After each razor run, he shakes the blade clean in the water. Hairs and foam are swimming on the surface. Fairly quickly, both legs are naked. He says I should have my armpits done the same way. Crap.

I was already looking forward to having my pussy shaved. If he’s even planning to do that.

He wets both pits with water and sprays in the shaving cream. He has a harder time under the arms because the hair is longer. He has to go over some of the same spots several times to get it all off. My armpits are also very deep, so he has to pull the skin tight in various directions in order to be able to shave across flat surfaces. He throws a circle of light on my skin with his miner’s light. When he gets close—to get a better view—the circle tightens and the light intensifies. When he pulls back, the lamp throws dim light on a wide area. The circle of light always illuminates the exact spot where he’s looking at any moment. And the intensity of the light tells how carefully he’s looking at the spot. I see the light fall frequently on my tits. More often on the right one, the one with the snake-tongue nipple. My face seems to hold little interest. Once everything is smooth, he ladles water from the bowl into my armpits to rinse away the shaving cream. Then he dries me off. And I dab myself with a towel, too. We smile at each other.

“And now,” I say, patting my hair-covered pussy.

“Hmm.”

He wets both hands and dampens the whole area. From my bellybutton down, left and right along my thighs, and then on down between my labia to my butthole and on to
the top of my ass crack. He looks closely at the cauliflower. A shaving obstacle course. Then he sprays shaving cream on all the dampened areas. It tingles on the labia. Zhhhh. He massages the foam into the skin a little and reaches for his razor. He starts on the thighs. The pubic hair growing down my legs is shaved away. He puts the blade just below my bellybutton and stops. He leans back to get an overview of the area and a crease appears on his brow.

He says: “I like that the hair grows up that far. There I’m going to leave everything. I’ll take a little off the sides so we’ll have a long, dark stripe down to the split. Then from there all the way back, everything is coming off.” He doesn’t look me in the eyes, but talks instead to my pussy.

It answers: “Understood.”

On the sides he mows the lawn down to a stripe. He tapers the stripe right to the point where the tops of the ladyfingers rise. Now he’s on to the labia. Finally. Finally. He puts his head between my legs. That’s the best way he can light up my pussy with his lamp. It must look like a hairy lantern. Glowing red inside. He carefully shaves my ladyfingers. Then he has to spread them because he wants to work on the inside edges, too. Again and again he makes his way through all the crevices. Until there’s no foam to be seen anywhere. I want him to fuck me. Which he obviously will after the shaving. Have a little patience, Helen. He says I should spread my legs wider but bring my knees
up closer to my body so he can get at my ass. He asks whether the bulges on my butt hurt.

“No, no, that’s just hemorrhoids that have worked their way out. If you’re gentle, I think you can shave right over them.”

There’s much less hair in back. He runs the razor up and down my butt crack a few times and once around the anus in a circle. Done. Once again I’m drizzled with what is now no longer hot water from the bowl. The shaving of my crack made my pussy produce a lot of slime. Now it mixes with the water and is dabbed dry by Kanell. But it oozes more immediately.

“Do you want to fuck me now?”

“No, you’re too young for me.”

Stay cool, Helen. Otherwise that nice feeling down below will disappear.

“Too bad. Do you mind if I fuck myself here then? Or do I have to wait until I get home to come?”

“Please go ahead. You are very welcome to do it here.”

“Give me the razor.”

I hold the blade end and shove the handle into my wet pussy. The handle’s not as cold as I expected. Kanell’s hands have warmed it up.