Bodies Exhibit

The Old West Gun Room in El Cerrito was ten minutes from my place in South Berkeley. The house that was ruining my life. I’d driven past a million times but this was my first time going in. The gun was only for the pictures, I promised myself that while handing my credit card to the cashier. Cashier feels too informal a title for the gravity of the transaction. Salesman? Gunman? Whatever. You get what I mean. 

When he spread the selection of bullets out on the counter, he adjusted them so they lined up perfectly. Full metal jacket, hollow point, soft point. They sounded like oysters. Like he was a server at some hipster seafood restaurant helping me decide between east coast and west coast. He kind of looked the part. As he explained the relative merits of each – something about target shooting, something about self-defense –  my mind glazed over. My eyes fixed on his too-groomed facial hair. The lines of his beard square and severe, carving a second, chiseled face out of his. 

“So? What do you think?” He asked like I’d left him hanging. 

“I think I’m okay for now.”

“Seriously? You’re gonna buy a gun and no bullets?” 

“I’ll come back for them,” I said and meant it, kind of. I’d read that for the majority of people, there was less than an hour between deciding to kill themselves and actually trying to. Putting an extra trip to El Cerrito between me and the option was a good insurance policy against myself.

I’d shot a gun once before when I was twelve and my uncle took me to the rifle range in Livermore. We lay on ratty old mattresses next to each other on our stomachs. He showed me how to breathe deep then hold it as I squeezed the trigger. “If you see stars, you’re doing it right,” he told me, although I doubted it. When we were done and I pulled the sling off, my wrist ached from propping the gun up and I had a headache from holding my breath. My ribs were sore from lying on my stomach, nothing but a couple inches of foam between me and the cold concrete. It seemed karmically right to me though that it would be uncomfortable to shoot a firearm. Even then, I knew it shouldn’t cost me nothing to send a bullet through space at 2,000 miles per hour. It should hurt a little bit. 

When I got my target back, bullet holes riddled the page with no discernible cluster around the bullseye. “Well, we’ve got room for improvement kiddo,” my uncle said. The next time he asked me to go with him, I said no.

This would be much different from a rifle though. A pistol at close range. There was no aim involved in turning it on myself, muzzle in mouth. Nothing skillful about that. And besides, it was just for the pictures. I repeated that part in my head on the drive home, like I myself still needed convincing that this was actually for art and not real life. 

It wasn’t my neighbor that I first noticed watching me. It was his iPhone, propped up against the windowsill outside his room, which looked directly into mine from across a couple feet of lawn. I was changing. Deciding what to wear to my classmate’s art opening. I didn’t want to go, but I knew I should, and I should try to look cute. She was one of the few girls in the art school I could actually see myself becoming friends with, and I was sick of being alone all the time. It had been months since I’d had anywhere I needed to pick a real outfit for and I could hardly remember what I used to wear to go out. A dress, a shirt, bra, no bra. I settled on a sundress and drew back the linen curtains, letting the afternoon light flood in. As I did, an arm reached out his bedroom window, pulling the phone inside. Pervert.

I came back home that night after the show, circling the block twice before I parked. Peered into his house with each lap to make sure he wasn’t still at the window. I ran up the steps and inside my front door, sticking to the interior rooms where I knew he couldn’t see me. I sunk down the wall, feeling sick.

It was impossible to fall asleep that night, knowing he was only steps away. I missed the safety of living with my ex. His warm body next to mine in bed, ready to be jostled awake at a moment’s notice. The easiness of sleep with him there. How small and insular he’d made my world, as I allowed the few friendships I’d actually made at Berkeley to wither and die. Lulled by the false sense that he alone was all I needed.

At three in the morning, still wide awake and scared shitless, I snuck out, locking the car doors faster than I ever had. All I took with me was a sleeping bag, a space heater, and a backpack full of clothes. I drove to campus and set myself up in my studio space. Lying on the concrete floor kept me up all night, but it was better than the feeling of being watched.

I wouldn’t go back to Julia Street for three days. Couldn’t stop thinking about the video he had of me changing. It bugged me, not knowing what his face looked like. I wondered if he thought I looked good in the video. I wanted to watch it. See how I held my face, my body, under the illusion of total privacy. How my posture changed when I stepped in front of the mirror. If I could somehow get ahold of it, I wondered whether I’d delete it right away or send it to myself first.

On day three of my on-campus sojourn, I woke up to a scream. It took me a second to remember where I was and why a tatted up dude might be hovering over me with a bucket and a mop. Right. The night shift janitor. “You can’t be here,” he said, and blushed like he’d walked in on me on the toilet. He seemed embarrassed that I’d heard his voice go up an octave. I felt bad. He probably worked nights so he never had to deal with students like me. I ran my tongue across my teeth and fingers through my hair, still half asleep and not ready for human interaction. “I know, I’m sorry,” I said, and stuffed my sleeping bag into its sack, avoiding his eyes as I squeezed past him through the narrow studio door. It was four am by the time I got back to Julia Street, my heart pounding as I pulled into the driveway.

My phone battery had been dead since I left my place, my charger still in the wall where I’d left it. I prayed for the dopamine rush of a bunch of missed messages. Evidence that I existed in the world and I wasn’t just a character in my own sleep deprived paranoid delusion. I flicked on my bedside lamp to plug in my phone for the night. 

As if he’d been waiting at the window since the moment I left, the light in his room turned on, right on cue. He hadn’t been sleeping. I imagined him restless, waiting to jump out of bed at the sound of my car. I turned off my light hoping the darkness might protect me. My phone glowed to life as its battery ticked from 0 to 1%. No texts, no missed calls. It didn’t matter that I’d dropped off the map, my radio silence was finally being returned. There was only so long you could go ignoring people until they got a clue and gave up on you. In the mirror, I brought my hands to my face. Skin on skin, to prove I wasn’t just a hallucination.

The next morning, I lingered in the living room before stepping out the door for class. Voices outside his front door. Sweet feminine voices. A woman and a young girl, maybe eight or nine years old. His wife and daughter. The girl with her pink backpack, matching pink scooter. Mom in her geometric glasses, her flowy linen pants. A professor type. She wasn’t especially good looking, but was pulled together in the way that said she had better things to care about. Immediate relief – he was normal enough for a family – followed by a swell of disgust. 

I wondered if she knew what he was up to. Maybe she had no idea and he called himself a feminist in front of her friends while they nodded and commented on what a good guy she’d found. Or maybe she was in on it. She was a partner to her husband, not a sex object. He had to get his kicks where he could, she might’ve conceded long ago. Maybe it was their fetish, watching the videos together. Videos of me. Of Molly, the red headed folk musician girl I’d taken the apartment over from. Molly hadn’t mentioned the neighbor when I’d toured the place but then again, she wouldn’t have. She must’ve been desperate to get out of there. 

I considered stepping outside then and telling his wife what was going on, but my stomach flipped at the thought. If she didn’t already know, it could end their marriage. It could traumatize the little girl. It could take her daddy away.

I googled his address, and all the details of his life popped up right away. White. Male. 49 years old. His previous address, and the one before that. Confirmed. That was his wife, that was his child. I searched his full name and his website came up. A photographer. About Eric, Shattuck Gallery, Work. I clicked on About Eric and his picture popped up in black and white. A full beard, wire glasses, faded 49ers cap. He looked like off-brand Michael Moore. The picture might’ve been a few years out of date, but it matched the shadow I’d seen lurking in his window. 

I clicked the button Work, and there I was. My naked body silhouetted against the linen curtains hanging in my room. I moved across the top four frames, evaluating myself in the mirror, then bending over, then hands outstretched overhead, pulling on my shirt. For once, I didn’t hate the way I looked, the way I usually did in pictures. My ex always wanted to take sexy pics of me, and he’d get mad when I’d tell him they were all ugly. He’d insist they were hot, which made it even worse. Like he was telling me no, babe, this is as good as it’s gonna get. He took photos of me the way he saw me. All unflattering angles and ungenerous light. 

These were hot. I wanted to download them and text them to my ex. I wanted Eric to hang them up in Shattuck Gallery. Watch the look on my ex’s face as he walked by and recognized my body, more beautiful than how he’d left it.

I scrolled through his work. Pages and pages of creep shots. A baby nursing at a woman’s breast from a bench across the park. A teenage punk couple making out on the corner of what looked to be 16th and Valencia, his hand on her ass, her tongue in his mouth. Molly from Craigslist, scrolling on her laptop in bed through what was now my window, her ass fully out in a pink lace thong, a matching bralette.  

I checked his website constantly, refreshing the page several times each day. I felt him watching me even then, through the internet. Him recognizing my IP address, pinging his site. When he did post something, it almost felt as if he were posting just for me. Me getting out of my car, me blurry through the living room window, wrapped in a towel, my hair slick dripping down my back. 

If he left the house at all, it was while I was out. He’d either become a total recluse since his days as a street photographer in San Francisco, or he was monitoring my comings and goings, making sure we never came face to face, hauling groceries from the car or otherwise forced to make neighborly small talk as if he hadn’t already seen all of me. We both preferred to keep the relationship – whatever it was – behind glass.

It went on like this for three weeks, each of us getting bolder. My heart no longer pounded from fear knowing he was there, but from excitement. Eric didn’t bother pulling his phone off the ledge anymore when he caught me looking. I crossed the street to avoid his wife and daughter, no longer entertaining the thought of telling on him. I’d become complicit, and wasn’t gonna tattle on myself. I texted Molly to see if she’d ever met the neighbors but the number she gave me was no longer in service. She’d said something about touring in Europe but hadn’t given me any way of getting in touch. I turned on Amy Winehouse and danced naked around my room and downloaded the pictures he posted of me an hour later. It didn’t matter what I did anymore. He was the only one watching. 

I tested him. I needed to know how far I could go. 

By the time I got home from the Old West Gun Room, it was already dark. I pulled back the blackout curtains I’d bought and kept the linen ones drawn, turning on the lights in my room so I’d glow, backlit, the outline of me clear. I held the gun to my temple and paced my bedroom, giving a show of contemplation. The muzzle was cold against my head. The tension between my usually knitted eyebrows lifted. A somatic relief, as if my body knew that some kind of end was near. I waited until I was sure Eric had gotten his shot.

When I felt he had, I lowered the gun, half anticipating the cops to rush my front door. Nothing though. Just the lazy whir of the space heater in the corner of my room. When I stuck the barrel in my mouth, I was surprised at how awkwardly large it felt, like a fumbling and unsexy blowjob. Nobody ever told you that, how wide you had to open your jaw to accommodate a pistol. Again, I let Eric take his shots and set it down. Satisfied that he’d gotten what he needed. Pleased that he knew that I had a gun. Surprised to learn how far I could go without him intervening. Zero boundary between life and death and art.

***

For the final project of our semester, we were each supposed to hang a show in the studio space we’d been granted by the university. It was kind of a thing, among artsier circles in Berkeley, to come see the student shows. To hop from one studio to the next, nibbling cheese cubes and sipping two buck chuck. I’d hardly been back to my studio space since I’d gotten kicked out for sleeping there. Half out of shame, and half because my project hinged on me being home on Julia Street. 

For my show, I downloaded all the pictures of me on Eric’s site and took them to Copy World on University Avenue, blowing each of them up several times their original size. They needed to look grainy, like low quality surveillance footage. I wanted not to recognize myself. The way I always looked unfamiliar and vaguely criminal on CCTV footage, even though I wasn’t.

I could hardly make eye contact with the cashier as he passed me my poster tubes over the counter. He didn’t look at me, either. He didn’t need to. He’d already seen everything. The inside of my room. The inside of my car. My naked body. The way my eyes bulged slightly with a gun between my front teeth. 

I hung my entire show the same afternoon it was due. The Bodies Exhibit, I titled it, after the show my mom had dragged me to for my thirteenth birthday in Vegas. “The Bodies Exhibit!” My professor exclaimed as she walked through the door. “I remember that. Fun!” Her breath smelled like cheese cubes. I watched as she eyed my nudes. She studied my pixelated body in various states of undress. Me, fully clothed, walking down the sidewalk, glancing paranoid at  Eric’s house. The gun pointed at my brain, my lips wrapped around the gun. 

As classmates and professors milled about the studio, I played the art critic John Berger’s voiceover on a loop off a Bluetooth speaker. His placid monologue on repeat. “Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.” 

When I got home that night, buzzed off red wine, I collapsed onto my bed. I reached under my bedside table where I’d left the gun. I wanted to feel the cold metal of the Beretta in my hand again. It wasn’t there. I ripped my room apart, in search of the pistol. It had to be there. I  hadn’t taken it out of the house. I tore through the entire place, throwing open kitchen cabinets, digging through piles of old makeup in bathroom drawers. I lifted all the pillows and the couch cushions, but nothing. It was nowhere. I ran back to the front door and double checked that I’d locked it. Back in my room, I pulled the curtains apart an inch to look across the way. There was Eric, in his room. His silhouette in the window, as it often was. I lifted my phone and hit record. Watched him through my little screen as he picked up the gun, and waited to see where he’d point it. 

Reap What You Sow

A beat-up truck bounced down the dirt road towards an old but sturdy farmhouse. Next to the house a legion of maize crops stood to attention. It wouldn’t be long until they would be ready for harvesting. That job belonged to Jessie. She had spent most of her living moments these last few months cultivating the corn field, each step of growth accompanied by care and dedication from the amateur farmer. When she was given the farm in her fathers will she expected to just sell off the farm and move away to live the cliché life of a country girl in the big city. 

But instead, she found herself incapable of leaving the farm. After selling most of the fields to nearby farms, she decided to keep the small field right next to the farm and try growing some corn. And so, using notes left by her father and online guides, she spent everyday contributing to the growth of the corn. Whenever she thought of the hard work she had put into the field of maize she welled up with pride and love for farming. On the rare occasion that she wasn’t in the field or the house, she was in the nearby town of Wolbach dipping into her savings to get some food and a book or two, to keep her entertained on the long nights. She had been on one such trip today.

The aging truck pulled up by the side of the house and outstepped Jessie. She couldn’t have worn a more stereotypical farmers outfit if she tried. Denim overalls and a faded t-shirt had become her standard uniform over the last few months. Jessie wasn’t complaining though, she enjoyed how she looked in the outfit with its pleasant combination of practicality and rugged beauty. Every time she looked in the mirror, a small rush of euphoria ran through her body. Her transition had been going well before she started on the farm, but the last few months had helped her find an inner peace she didn’t expect to discover. Despite this she still found herself unsure of her appearance at times, she had grown overly paranoid over her appearance, that somehow she wasn’t being the woman she was meant to be. Whenever these thoughts came to her she did her best to shove them down but they still lingered in mocking echoes in her head.

Back inside the house, she stored away her groceries and prepared herself a quick meal in the silence of the old house. A sense of loneliness crept into her. She may enjoy the toil of farming, but it left her little time for social interaction. She didn’t even have the time or energy to date. Part of her yearned for the intimate touch of another, but she managed to ignore the desire and went back outside to look over her hard work. As the sun entered its final descent in the horizon Jessie sat on the rocking chair on the porch. It used to be her dads spot, overlooking the fields he toiled in all day. Most of her thoughts of the old man centred around that chair. It was here that he told her about her family history, and it was here that she came out to him. Thankfully, both were pleasant memories. 

She felt much older than 26 while she rocked back and forth like an ancient woman about to dispense some prophetic wisdom on a passing traveller. But instead of vaguely understandable nuggets of wisdom, all she had was a book of escapist fantasy. The book told tales of creatures from the wildest fringes of the imagination brought to life, and the ways they lived with humans. Some brought destruction and decay, while others created beauty and love. 

Within minutes she was engrossed in this false world of fantastical creatures. She was so focused that she didn’t immediately hear the voices. Floating along the air, the sound of chatter emanated from the field of corn. Eventually Jessie managed to pull her gaze away from the book and towards it. Initially dismissing the voices as just being a few dogwalkers from Wolbach on a particularly long walk, she tried to focus back on her book. But the voices not only continued but actually grew in volume, demanding her attention. She looked up again, but rather than an empty landscape Jessie noticed movement in the fields. Right in the centre of the corn a silhouetted figure roamed as if daring the young farmer to remove it. The head of the figure appeared mishappen and hard to differentiate from the corn that surrounded it. An attempt at sternly shouting for the stranger to leave fell on deaf ears.

After grabbing a baseball bat from inside the house, Jessie ventured into the corn field. In the sky the sun had been replaced by the moon, its light being much more meagre than that provided by the sun. Every part of her screamed for her to turn back around and just call the police, but her pride pushed her onwards. She’d worked so hard to grow this crop, she couldn’t let some inconsiderate stranger stamp all over it. Inside the field she still couldn’t see the intruder, but as she delved deeper into the rows of corn she felt whispers emanating from all around her, a chorus of dissonant voices. Slowly she approached the centre of the field, shadowed movements glimpsed between the tall reeds. Each glimpse watered a seed in her mind of the nature of the intruder. 

First she saw the legs, gangly yet swift. Then came a glimpse of thin and wide hands that brushed against the stalks. Hands attached to arms that threatened to embrace her and reach out across the short distance between the two field dwellers. And then there was the head, barely distinguishable among the ears of corn. It was narrower than heads should be, with regimented ridges barely perceptible under the shadows painted on the head. An image of the stranger pieced itself together in her mind, but the image didn’t make any sense to her. She could feel sweat collecting on her hands, loosening her grip on the baseball bat. Eventually she reached the centre of the field and halted, unsure of where to go next.

Corn stalks swayed in the wind. Crickets croaked their tunes into the night sky. All was peaceful. Except for the corn. Jessie couldn’t understand how, but she could feel, deep within her soul, that the corn felt different tonight. For a few minutes the whispers abated, but they still lurked in the distance of her hearing.

“Who’s out there?” she shouted, trying to hide the wobble in her voice.

And then slowly, nearly outside Jessies periphery, the entity emerged. With slow and deliberate steps it revealed itself. Despite elongated legs and arms, its chest was squashed with no room for the organs necessary for a human. And in the light of the moon, the appendages she was only granted a glimpse of earlier made themselves clear. She could see their flatness, with the legs only strengthened by twisting green muscles that wrapped themselves around stilt-like appendages. The arms featured no such practicality. Instead, wide figures in the visage of fingers erupted from the end of its arms. But it was the head that grabbed the farmers attention. She had seen many heads like it before, albeit not on people. All around her were similar such heads though, for it was a larger-than-average ear of corn that sat atop the intruders head. And when she dragged her eyes down across its body she saw that the body was made entirely out of corn plants. Its appendages were forged from the stalks, muscles constructed from roots, skin replaced by leaves. The stranger was only human in shape, and even that required a stretch in the farmers imagination.

At first it simply stood there, presenting itself to the farmer. It showed no malice towards her. While she examined its appearance she could hear the whispers return. But rather than the chorus that had been present before, they now all spoke as one unified voice. 

“Hello Creator, we have been waiting for you,” the whispers said, “Thank you for joining us tonight.”

Jessie had a look of severe confusion on her face.

“We have been waiting. For the right time. For our Avatar to be ready. And for you to be ready. You have toiled and dedicated yourself to us, and it is time that you are rewarded for this show of love.”

The Avatar approached Jessie slowly with an air of passivity.

“We wish to bring you satisfaction. Satisfaction of an intimate kind.”

The meaning of this slowly dawned on Jessie. Surprisingly, to her at least, she didn’t immediately reject it outright.

 “You may say no if you desire. You can return to your home with our words of thanks and nothing more. But if you wish, we can grant you a certain pleasure.”

The Avatar stopped a couple of steps away from her and stood to the side. Her house was behind him, where it had existed for the last few generations of her family. She could very easily walk past the maize being and into the warm light of her house. And for a second she considered it, but the prospect of staying and receiving her reward was much more alluring. She had worked hard, why not receive it?

“I… I want my reward. I’ll stay here. Please, give it to me,” she replied after a few seconds thought. A shake in her voice was very present. She dropped her baseball bat.

With this confirmation of consent given to the corn, the Avatar of its spirit closed the gap between them. The whispers quietened again. The Avatar reached for one of the straps of her dungarees but halted millimetres away. Jessie noticed this and nodded at the corn creature, intent on receiving her reward. She pressed the leaf fingers down gently and let them undo the straps. When both straps were undone she shook slightly and let them fall with a heavy sigh. Her exposed legs felt cold in the breeze, but her face flushed with heat. 

The leaf appendages traced her curves, shooting sensations of pleasure through her body, before resting on her hips and pulling her closer to it. Slowly, one drifted away from Jessies hip and towards her crotch, where a bulge had steadily grown. Her breath quickened but she nodded once more. 

A single utterance of “please…” escaped from her lips.

With surprising gracefulness for a creature made of plants the Avatar of the corn pulled down her panties. Out flopped her cock, standing half erect in the moonlight. As the Avatars fingers softly gripped it, the whispers of the corn around her gradually returned. At first a couple simply thanked her for her hard work but overtime more spoke out, praising and complimenting her body. The Avatar matched the increasing amount of praise by stroking her cock. With each pump it grew stiffer until it was as hard as it could possibly ever be. Drops of pre-cum leaked out, extracted with as much ease as her moans. Her legs grew weaker with every stroke. It wasn’t just the physical stimulation that weakened her, however, it was the praising choir of whispers that was the most exciting for her. By now they were praising every intimate part of her and calling her things she would have been embarrassed to hear at any other time. Her mind was swimming in pleasure, nearly every part of her stimulated in ways that she hadn’t experienced in far too long. For a time it seemed like it couldn’t get any better. But then the Avatars hand drifted upwards.

The gentle grabbing of her breast took Jessie by surprise. She unintentionally let out a high pitch yelp. The Avatar recoiled away from her breast and for a second Jessie could have sworn that somehow a look of concern appeared on the corn creatures head. Hurriedly she apologised for the yelp and with a blushing face asked for the hand to return to her breast. At first the hand tentatively circled around them, as if worrying that a mere touch would break them. But overtime the Avatar became braver in its expeditions, until it was squeezing and grabbing her tits with no shame. Clinging to the squashed chest of the Avatar, Jessie could barely withstand the continuous pleasure anymore. The Avatars gentle but assured touching sent shockwaves of pleasure throughout her, but it was the encouragement and praise of the voices that made this an outstanding reward for her. Every compliment of her body and every acclaim of her dedication to nurturing the field of corn brought a low moan from her lips. 

Worship. That’s what it was. Pure, devout worship whipping masses into a frenzy. The breeze through the field carried the hymns of the worshippers and mixed them with her breathy moans into a toxic cocktail. Beautiful. Gorgeous. Rugged. Even handsome, something that made her cringe a few years ago, lit sparks in her. Its hands brushed her biceps and reached down to the faint outline of her abs. Soft seedling kisses peppered her midriff while the creature wrapped its gangly limbs hung softly around her broad shoulders. In every movement, every small act of earthly prayer, a thousand bursts of euphoria detonated in her. How glorious she was, caught in pleasurable rapture with this nightmarish being. Its tendrils navigated the lengths of her body taking advantage of every weakness to expose her more and more. And that was all she wanted.

Jessie wasn’t aware of how long it took until the end neared, but she certainly recognised the feeling. Just as a tidal wave slowly builds up until it becomes an unstoppable force, so too did her orgasm. She clung to the Avatar as the pressure built up inside her. She couldn’t tell if it recognised what was about to happen, but it didn’t seem to react to the sudden embrace. Within seconds she reached her breaking point and a few clear drops of cum leaked out of her cock. What she lacked in cum she more than made up for in noise. Her screams of pleasure rung out into the night until they weakened into murmuring whimpers. To the corn she barely seemed conscious. The Avatar, his duty nearly discharged, picked up the exhausted farmer and carried her back to the farmhouse. It lowered her into the porch rocking chair and covered her in a blanket before leaving her in peace, rewarded and loved by her field.

***

The next morning Jessie awoke slowly, the memories of the night in the field gradually returning to her. She didn’t believe it happened, at least not until she noticed a crumpled pile of corn plants just outside the field and found her baseball bat in the centre. She certainly did feel less lonely now though.