My mother has been augmenting herself on the sly. She must be ten or
twelve feet tall now, with sturdy thick lower legs and wild arms that reach
the ground. She applied a bandage to the neighbor kid's knee the other day,
when he skinned it running, and he started crying because she hadn't leaned
over to do it. I can see his point even if it was damn ungrateful.
     I saw the initial equipment my mother ordered, but I believe that
recently--say, since the additions to her neck--she's done a better job of
hiding the augmentation gear. Some of it probably stays on the shelves at
the back of her beloved VW bus, and God knows I won't set foot in there.
She also, I imagine, doesn't pull out the big components until I'm safely
ensconced at the gallery for an opening. I realize this is all a small
price to pay for living at home. I could get my own space and not worry
about raspy wetsuit hands banging on my window to call me down to
breakfast. I could.

     My gallery handles religious art, mostly. This month every piece
includes the Sacred Heart as a primary visual element. Not a few visitors
report feeling cleansed of their sins after purchasing one piece or
another. I suppose I cannot object. The sooner those hearts are out of my
sight, the better.

     Mother's hair is throbbing. "You know, dear, I feel like I understand
you better these days." She taps her upper arm, as she is wont to do. I eat
my toast, slathered with peanut butter so that my mouth is always full. One
enormous leg tolls dully against her side of the table as she waits for me
to say something. It is Saturday. It is every Saturday.

     I lay on the gallery floor after the exhibit is gone. My head points
to the doorway. My right arm is the guestbook. My many toes are the windows
dotting the far wall. My left shoulder is the elevator up to the offices.
     And I just don't get it.

by Aaron for Libby known as Necessity * eVille, Tuesday, 2002

Libby was a friendly woman, somewhat older. When I looked at her words I got the sinking feeling that they were autobiographical, but resolved not to let myself be swayed too much by the connotations that she clearly accorded them. This isn't purely perversity -- if someone hands me a list of words with something specific in mind I'm a lot more likely to disappoint them by getting it slightly wrong than if I just go where I want to. Here the first step was looking at "growth" and avoiding the metaphorical sense of it, leading to another riff on my love/hate relationship with the idea of having a body at all. (I may also have been influenced by the Burning Man phenomenon of people designing costumes with stilts inside, leading to some beautifully-shaped humanoids gambolling around the playa.)

When I biked across the city to drop off the story on my last day in the desert, I ended up giving it to Libby's daughter, who had come to Burning Man with her and was sitting around their VW bus playing her guitar naked. I ended up apologizing profusely for how badly the mother and daughter in the story get along. I really hope they didn't take it personally.

The images in this story are a tiny bit too vivid for the space they're allotted. I was thinking maybe this could use some augmentation of its own when I get the chance. I also deeply regret some wandering verb tenses. I had something particular in mind when I did it but the results are uselessly jarring.

Partway through I remembered how much fun it is to consult other people for information while writing, so I did. Unfortunately, nobody knew exactly what that Catholic flaming-heart icon is called, so I went with something that I thought I might have heard once. I even found a guy whose mother was a former nun, to no avail.

I also enlisted someone off the street to give me a hand with the end of para 2. I wanted a material that's tough, like leather, but not actually made from skin (and thus a weird thing for the mother's hands to be). She named something and explained it was what wetsuits were made out of. Sounds good to me.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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