Nothing

By J.R.

The feeling hit me as I watched an autopsy on T.V. In high school anatomy class, textbook illustrations portrayed organs as clearly identifiable, discrete strata; pink-bean kidneys, off-yellow sausage intestines, and any non test-worthy piece of anatomy absent from the little skeleton-man illustration. But on T.V., it was all shifting, indistinguishable viscera, chunks of slop and chips of bone. All, that is, except the human brain. With deep sagacious wrinkles, helpless obtuse shape and peculiar red-purple gloss, it seemed out of place from all the slosh. Even as the doctors removed the brain and dumped it onto a cold steel tray, the august nobility of this bizarre organ shown through, hinting at a vital purpose no longer served, stirring the same indignity one feels when coming across a dried-up beetle’s carapace: true biological marvels no longer needed, either under fine dust or uncaringly abandoned on a doctor’s tray.

As I sat, entranced and deeply, deeply repulsed, I could not avoid the obvious irony: my brain, the sole source of my body’s cognitive and subconscious reactions, responded with shock and disgust upon seeing an image of itself. This was clearly the Woody Allen of human organs. How weird.

Unlike most up-too-late internal bull sessions—which are usually caused by a potent mix of sleep deprivation, loneliness, and wrenching wistfulness for times past—this particular problem continued to vex me the next day. When night came again—when mental fixations are especially prone to taking root—my brain seemed eager to take up this cognitive cause as a respite from more traditional late-night yearnings.

Why do I get so disgusted upon seeing a human brain? The degree of meta-ness is too much to bear: a brain inhabiting a body, trying to reflect upon the body’s reaction to the brain.

*****

Last month, I was sick with a little stomach bug. Nothing too serious. But it became an excuse to go to the doctor to present my real concern: for the last month, it burned when I pissed. Not just a burn, something more irritating . . . more like a fluttering, as if a moth in my penis was oh-so-delicately trying to flap its way on out. To downplay the horror, I had convinced myself that I really just sought a routine full-body check, with my STD concern being just one dickered term on my bill of health inquiry.

The doctor had said that he would get back to me in a week about the “burny” sensation. The week waiting period was a weak week of public, external calm and internal, histrionic terror. I called my friends as if I was giving them my death bed confessional, ending the conversations on those longing yet vaguely ambiguous notes filmmakers use to show “there is hope for this character.” Still, I knew this was just a transparent attempt to trick myself into an affected quixotic optimism.

Fortunately, when the week passed, the good news came: I was clean and clear and under control. Just too much stress or pressure, the doctor said, or drinking too much water at night resulting in forceful pisses in the morning. Whatever. That’s not what was important.

The real question? Where the fuck was my brain on that one?

My brain--the central nervous system, this biological miracle, the information hub, the manager in charge of the whole operation--unable to tell me what caused the irritation. You'd think there would be some kind of evolutionary advantage to a brain that could keep a human adequately up-to-date on precisely what is happening to the body. Cancers form without your knowledge until your hands interrogate a lump; arteries artfully clog themselves up until your heart squeaks to a halt; parts of your eye imperceptibly drift apart until one day you put on your glasses and it’s like peering through a fishbowl. Yet still—-I am kept in the dark.

*****

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Nothing

By J.R.