Auditing Session

The helmet has been placed on his head. He’s been attached to the machine.

Auditor: Please repeat why you are here today doctor. Our records indicate that you may be trying to deceive me. 

Subject: I am here because I want to be considered for acceptance into the Special Project Committee. 

Auditor: We will get back to the reasons why you feel the need to be accepted by a social club.  But first, I’d like to ask you again about your mother.

Subject: As I stated, my mother was extremely abusive to both my father and —

Auditor: Thank you. Can you recall murdering your mother? If not, why do you think that is?

Subject: I did not murder my mother. She is alive. We spoke two days ago.

Auditor: Given your sexual history I imagine you salivate like a dog when the phone rings. Now, please recall, and simply this time, the sexual encounter you had in the library.

Subject: I was working late in the library and was seduced by a cleaning woman of Eastern European extraction. Immediately I felt intense shame and fear. I thought about joining a monastic order. Afterwards I would see her in the library and she ignored me, causing me to question whether or not it had happened. I was overworked, tired —

Auditor: And you choked her because you could not achieve an erection. Am I correct in remembering this was the cause of your shame?

Subject: No.

Auditor. No, you’re right. You said you choked her when she would not give in a second time to your advances. I imagine that was rather enjoyable for you and you pleasure yourself to that memory often.

Subject: No. That did not happen.

Auditor: So then was raping a defenseless custodian your way of getting back at your mother? Is that why you crammed her mouth full of pages you tore out of a book, because she could hardly speak English?

Subject: I have never done those things.

Auditor: Of course you did, we have it all on record. But I’d like to know why you think that your sexual fantasies are always violent? 

Subject: They are not. 

Auditor: Please, keep your answers to a minimum or I will have no choice but to conclude the session and terminate your application for the Special Project Committee. Do you think it is because your father abandoned you?

Subject: He did not abandon me.

Auditor: Do you think he abandoned you because he was afraid of your violence? Your mother claims you threatened to rape him whenever you did not get your way. 

Subject: That is absurd and you know it. He died while I was still in high school. 

Auditor: You should have saved him but you were too busy playing with dolls and sniffing your mother’s shoes. His blood is on your hands and you know it. The more I learn about you the more I think you should be sterilized. Recall a different painful moment.

Subject: I found my rats all poisoned, not dead, but dying. There was nothing I could do. I watched them until the end. Then I buried them.

Auditor: You really are as sneaky as I’ve been warned. Our records show you tried to poison your stepfather because you were angry he humiliated you, which later you confessed, “enlightened you,” your words. 

Subject: Yes, but, no I didn’t poison him … He —

Auditor: Good. Now please recall the humiliation involving your stepfather that I am referring to. Please be brief and never again presume what I know or do not know. This is a final warning.

Subject:  I had my diary read aloud by the entire baseball team at lunch. They made copies and pasted them all over school. My stepdad was the coach and I think he must have given it to one of the players that would come over. And yes, in a sense the experience, brutal at the time, was enlightening. I saw what their malice was groping at and so I completely let go of whatever image I had had of myself … and this liberated an energy which formed a new —

Auditor: Stop. Was this sufficient motive to murder your stepfather? A sacrifice to your own enlightenment? Why did you set him up? Are you as insane as you sound?

Subject: I did not murder my stepfather. 

Auditor: But you admit you killed your father so that you could get a new one, one who didn’t know what you were capable of. One who didn’t know your secrets, like your attempts to impregnate rats through artificial insemination so you could make and eat a cheese that had your own DNA. It was your semen that killed your rats because your semen is toxic. And it was this same toxic semen that was found in the lungs of your father. It is my expert opinion that you are one sick fuck.

Subject: I never wanted him to leave! He was my best friend!

Auditor: We’ll return to this subject when you can behave rationally like a normal human being. In the meantime, tell us again about Dale. This time start at the end and work backwards. 

Years later the Auditor is reading the Subject’s “Field Notes”, the Subject still AWOL. 

What must thinks he the butcher, whom, after a long day of laboring returns home to his wife in the red of the evening and senses her rump, her shanks, her ribs, her tenders, her breasts, her loins, her skin?   

What must he be thinking, the uxorious husband, whom, after a long night of processing his wife, returns the next morning to the shop and saws the tits off a sow, the pink flesh on his finger bulges around wedding his ring? 

Day after night, after day, after night, before dinner, before lunch, before breakfast.

How long until the butcher brings a cleaver into the sanctity of the marriage slab, or performs his spousal duties on a lambkin? Meat senses time in the belly of need. The complications of desire and duty across time confuse the world into being.