Kathryn Maris

His superpower was that his testicles manufactured sperm with exclusively X chromosomes & that was ironic because not only was he a beast to women but his 40 baby girls grew up seeking men like the father they barely saw unless they went to his studio to be painted which wasn’t OK with their mothers who were not only jealous but guilty of giving birth to girls who were products of an X-chromosome-making monster & would soon suffer at the hands of other monsters with X- type sperm thereby assuring the continuation of suffering & meanwhile all the girls became writers who slouched from sitting at desks & being daughters & lovers of beasts.

It was a singles cruise but it wasn’t a singles cruise: each participant simulated detachment but none was actually single. Some, like the recently widowed, were attached to ghosts. Others were legally attached to a living person they once but no longer loved. A surprising number loved their partners profoundly while fearing said partners inhabited the category of those who loved them no longer. These participants, whose fears may or may not have been founded, attempted to self-protect by labeling themselves single. Soon a pattern emerged: those who feared abandonment developed around them a planetary-like orbit of potential new partners to whom they could not attach because they were already attached. Such orbits lasted, sometimes, for years. The orbiters went to self-help groups and/or analysts and/or wrote letters to advice columnists. Because they could not detach from their objects of unrequited affection, they became the predominant clientele for future singles cruises, unilaterally sustaining the singles cruise business.

While the Doormat asks neurotic questions about his ex, the Dream Girl looks at her watch if her man brings up the ex, and if the man ever says, “Everyone was in love with my ex,” a Dream Girl won’t ask for a photo, but if a photo of the ex is provided, the Dream Girl won’t demean the appearance of the ex because her man will likely rush to his ex’s defense. The lesson is that when a man considers his ex a prize looks have little to do with it, for when a woman acts like a prize a man can forget he’s with a battle axe. What should you say when he asks questions about your ex? Remember you’re a prize, so you needn’t report that your ex stole appliances or defaulted on child support or that your ex has a Mafioso brother doing time for racketeering or that your ex is “still stalking you” — because your man will not find these ex stories charming, if he’s classy, so what you say about your ex is simply, “We wanted different things,” or, alternatively, “My ex and I went separate ways.” It’s none of his business: your ex and all the vicissitudes of your past, like the jewelry your ex gave you which you pawned, or your violent fantasies about your ex because inquiring minds don’t need to know. Did you know that exes are a common conversation topic among men: “You remember my ex, the one who snapped ... ?” they might say, referring to the “terrible” ex who was “possessed by demons,” thus causing the inevitable ex- tramarital affair? Of course he never had anything to do with his ex’s transformation, he was a perfect angel, but lo and behold, the ex- orcist was suddenly required! Women believe these narratives and ex- coriate themselves if they’re Doormats, but love is beset by variables, and Dream Girls must take control in this world of unknowns.

When two sane persons are together one expects that A will recognize B to be more or less the person B takes himself to be, and vice versa. — R.D. Laing, “The Divided Self” The woman in the attic did not have visitors. The man in the basement gave parties that were popular. The woman in the attic had mononucleosis. The man in the basement had type 1 diabetes. The woman in the attic listened to audiobooks which the man in the basement held in disdain. The door to the attic swelled in some weathers; in order to shut, it had to be slammed. “There is a way in which” was a way in which the man opened sentences, as in “There is a way in which to close a door so it doesn’t slam.” The woman in the attic took cautious walks to build her strength. The man in the basement pointedly said, “Some of us have ailments which are not manufactured.” The man in the basement wrote stories about heroin. The woman in the attic read stories with heroines. The woman in the attic noticed a bruise that ran from the top to the base of her thigh. The bruise looked like Europe. The man in the basement was in love with the sister of the secretive man who loved him more. He whooped at the woman, “You killed your student?” To himself he wept, “I killed my father.” The man in the basement, recently divorced, was left with literally two possessions. The woman in the attic purchased books on psychopathology. The man in the basement produced fecal matter that blocked the pipes in both attic and basement. The woman in the attic produced nothing at all. The woman in the attic was a waste of space. The man in the basement had sex almost daily. The woman in the attic had panic attacks. The man in the basement had only one rule: the woman in the attic was banned from his bedroom. But once she stole in and lay on his bed in his absence (or perhaps he was absent because she was there). The man in the basement moved to the West Coast; the woman in the attic crossed the Atlantic, whereas the house with the attic and basement saw states of fumigation, exorcism, detoxification, and rehabitation.

Identification is a highly important factor in the mechanism of hysterical symptoms; by this means patients are enabled in their symptoms to represent not merely their own experiences, but the experiences of a great number of other persons, and can suffer, as it were, for a whole mass of people, and fill all the parts of a drama by means of their own personalities alone. — Sigmund Freud Anne identified with Cate until it became a bona fide illness, for Boris had left Cate, resulting not only in psychic estrangement but an unconscious stream of hostility directed not at Boris, but at his new woman, Anne, whom Cate viewed as her rival. Cate remained excessively tender with Boris, though Cate, for him, had been a “totem animal” from which he gained power by “eating.” Whereas Boris was the patriarch, Anne was the ego alien; and whereas Cate was Anne’s fixation, Anne was no one’s obsession, so she was admitted to a psychiatric ward with the unbidden associations she could not be induced to abandon. On the rare occasions she slept, the manifest and latent content of her dreams was the dance of abandonment between Boris and Cate, which Anne, in her waking hours, projected onto the walls, as though screening a silent film. She could not be induced to abandon this footage; she could not be induced to abandon her object love of Boris (whose own object choice was his ego-libido); or her identification with Cate, who felt no friendship towards Anne. Soon Anne drew a mental triangle on every surface she saw, be it phallic or concave, and sometimes this triangle was isosceles, sometimes it was equilateral, and often it was right.