Free The Melancholy of Anatomy: Stories by Shelley Jackson Page A

around. How I laughed!
    “Now I regret the bow ties and aprons. What an impertinence. The poor things were in agony. They were just alive enough to feel pain. A knot of appetite and no insulation. An erect twinge, a stitch on tiptoe.
    “They waltzed, after a fashion, holding each other up so as little of them as possible touched the ground. Then they fizzed, smoked, fell over and ‘died.’ ‘Boo hoo!’ I cried, ‘Boo hoo!’ and held little funerals. That was my favorite part.”
    Not that pain is the worst thing in the universe. Interesting things happen when you adopt pain for your own. This thing you were prepared to spend your life flinching from is suddenly just another piece of information.
    George began to feel that his own comfort was an affront. Sitting on the toilet, he squeezed the rolls of fat around his middle,cupped his breasts, measuring. Somewhere inside George was another George: spiderlike, avid, flexile. Like grammar, but physical. George wanted to make himself into this other George so that he would be more like his lover and by being like him, possess him again. So he ate less and less and during lunch at the warehouse he picked up some fibers and played cat’s cradle with himself. When he could not help himself but eat, when it was someone’s birthday and everyone sang and there were cupcakes with candles on them, he learned how to make himself vomit up the sweet sludge before it stuck.
    Cat’s cradle used to be a game for priests and princes. It retains a whiff of the sacred. You are playing a game with string, then you are in the milieu of the miraculous.
    Every once in a while, through luck or incredible skill, a figure is actually perfect. An instant is long enough: the cat’s cradle kindles. Flames run along the fibers. A glyph of fire stands in the air. It goes out a second later; all that’s left is a blue smoke, a weird smell, a fading cicatrix on your retina. Your hands fall away.
    “Everything perfect burns itself up,” George told his therapist. “A perfect thing does not have to hang around, it has satisfied all the requirements of existing. That’s what Deja says. Or maybe a perfect thing can’t hang around, because perfection has no place in our world, which is a world of approximates. Existence
is
approximation; we are because of a kind of blurring of the material world. All attempts at perfection are destructive, therefore.”
    “Want to talk about this diet you’re on?” said his therapist.
    …
     
    French designer Deja, one of George’s best customers, had made the front-page news worldwide when his electric dresses burst into flames on the runway and disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving two of his models naked and innocent of body hair.
    “Well,” shrugged Deja in newsprint, “it simply means I achieved a perfect form. Perfection cannot last.” One model later revealed that she had not had any body hair to begin with. This had not stopped Deja, next spring, from bringing out a triumphant new line of depilatory dresses for ladies, depilatory culottes and tunics
pour l’homme.
“All have sold sensationally in Europe, but American customs officials have refused to allow them in the country. Yes, they are dangerous—so is
l’amour,
which recognizes no boundaries!”
    George read the article to his therapist. “As yet, France is the only country where you may attend the opera with your head in flames, but American scene-makers were seen passing a petition at the Paris and Milan shows, so we may see a relaxation of the policy yet.
    “Buyers have conveyed to Deja their customers’ requests for depilatory panties that can be worn to work. ‘Our customers love the idea of depilatory clothes, but are afraid to go to the office in a dress that may go poof,’ they say. ‘Many of our customers are successful women in high-paying jobs and must maintain a professional demeanor,’ they insist. ‘Unfortunately, naked says unprofessional to these women.’ So far