Pinochio
Note: This was written on the flight from Paris back to Chicago, although the idea had been bouncing around in my head for a while. It’s had minimal proofing (basically a spell-check and quick once-over) but I do hope to refine it and come up with an actual ending, which it lacks for right now…
His name wasn’t actually Pinocchio His parents had named him with a true and proper name. They had placed ink on paper in record of his birth and, indeed, of his name. Over the years, as he grew up, he would now and again lodge a token protest against others calling him Pinocchio He would remind them that he did have a name, his own name, and that they could not deny him his name by calling him Pinocchio But the wizards and sorcerers of old were mistaken: your true name is not the name given to you by the gods or by loving parents. Children on the playground know to this day that your true name – whatever its source – is the name you respond to, whether in joy or in pain. His name wasn’t actually Pinocchio
But he was called Pinocchio all the same.
“Pinocchio, show us your strings!” Aaron yelled across the playground, taunting him the same as he had done every day. The boy mumbled into his chest, “I don’t have strings.” A crowd of children gathered to watch the fun, as they did every day. The follow up, “And my name’s not Pinocchio,” was lost in the jeers from the crowd. Aaron, too, cried out in laughter, “We all know your name is Pinocchio We all know you have strings.” The last word was spit out with venom, and the children eagerly looked to the boy to see the blow strike, as real and tangible as any physical punch or kick. All of the children watching in the crowd, along with Aaron and the boy, knew their part to play in this daily drama. They had their roles – Aaron as the aggressor and the boy as the victim – and there was rarely any deviation from the script.
The boy seethed with his anger and his shame. His thoughts boiled around the ease at which Aaron could name him Pinocchio and the safety and surety Aaron had in his own name. He looked up and, with deep breath screamed, “My name isn’t Pinocchio! Fuck you. Fuck you!” The last cry was to the crowd at large, and the his throat hurt with the pain of taxing your voice past its limit.
The boy began to push past Aaron and to find his way out of the circle, his only thought now on finding some refuge to sit and try not to cry. But the crowd had hushed, as the boy had performed veered sharply from the daily norm of his ritual humiliation. Aaron laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder as he pushed past, and spun him back into the circle.
Aaron looked at the boy, who was now sniffling and clearly trying not to cry. He spoke quietly, almost gently, and said, “Your name is what I say it is.” And Aaron punched the boy squarely in the nose, causing blood to spatter on the dry, packed earth of the playground.
The boy had been born with what was quickly called, in hushed tones, a “birth defect.” In a less civilized time he would have been called a horror or worse, and in times before that he would have been toured with a freak show (at best) or killed outright (at worst). As the doctor explained to the father in hushed tones, the he had been born with tendrils of flesh – even the doctor could not help calling them “strings” – coming from the back of each of his hands, from the caps of his knees, from the base of his neck, and from the top of his head. No one at the hospital had ever seen, or indeed heard, of anything like it, and they rushed the the him out of sight to decide what should be done.
All were in favor of cutting the strings. There was little argument about that. But they were truly part of his tiny body, coursing with blood and veins. They did not react to touch or seem to have any power of motion by themselves, but when pinched along their length he did begin to cry. At last, the doctor convinced the parents that the removal of the “growths” (another euphemism being tossed around the hospital like any other gossip) would be no worse than a circumcision, which had already been performed on the boy as a matter of course. He explained to the parents that, based on the boy’s otherwise stellar health, it was unlikely the strings’ removal would even leave scarring. The doctor prepared surgical scissors and made six quick snips. There was some bleeding, but that was to be expected. Afterwards, the boy maintained a slight fever for a few days, but no one thought anything of it. When the parents checked out of the hospital and brought home their new baby boy, they couldn’t have been happier.
Except it became clear, once the six scabs fell off, that the strings were growing back. (Soon, not even the parents could refrain from calling them “strings.”) And after repeated removal attempts, CAT scans, MRIs, exploratory surgery, and extensive dermatological testing, other things became clear: first, no one had any idea why the boy had strings of flesh growing out of his body, second (and more alarmingly), the strings would grow back after every attempt at removal and, finally (and perhaps worst of all), the boy became sicker and sicker with each attempted removal, only to spring back to good health when the strings began to grow again.
Humans are remarkable in their adaptability in the face of strangeness or newness. The parents began to modify all clothing for the boy, adding little pouches for the strings: gloves with enough space for the strings on his hands, shirts with a pouch at the back of the neck, pants with knee pouches, and had after hat to contain the string coming from his head. And they did all the things new parents do: child-proofing the house, decorating the boy’s room, taking him to the park and then to play dates, fretting over a late night cough, and pouring their love into him.
Children are equally remarkable as adults, if not more so. Some accepted the boy into their classrooms, played with him, sat with him at lunch, treated him like any other child. In groups where these types were the strongest voices, every other child fell into line and treated the boy no differently than they treated everyone else. But, more often, the strongest voice of the class was that of the bully, who would turn the class against the boy and drive him to seek solitude inside of school and out.
It should not be thought that he had no friends. The boy’s house had a large backyard that stretched into a forest and one neighbor, a boy about his own age, had a similar backyard that connected into the dense greenery. They would build forts together, hike and camp when the weather was good (and sometimes when it wasn’t so good), and retreat to one house or the other when they felt they’d had enough of being outside for one day.
Inevitably, the name Pinocchio followed him wherever he went. Even when it was not used to hurt, it was used by almost everyone in his life. He had even caught teachers using it at school, although they instantly apologized when he made a note of their error. He began to wonder why he had been given a name in the first place, or if he should just embrace ‘Pinocchio’ and get it over with.
In this way the boy grew into his teenage years and, while life was far from perfect, he had enough happiness to sustain him.
Most of the time.
He constantly dreamed and fantasized about life being different.
In one fantasy he dreamed of being able to cut of his strings. Of not being concerned about having them tucked away, of always having his special hat and special shirt and special gloves and special pants. He felt flush with embarrassment when anyone commented on them. In his mind, he tried to determine if the embarrassment was worse when it was someone who knew about his clothing making fun of him (or even not making fun of him) or when someone who didn’t know asked about it. Even stock responses, without going into the details of his medical history, were painful to bring out.
When he was thirteen, he enlisted a friend to measure his strings. They were different lengths, longer the further down on his body they grew. If he lay flat on the floor and positioned the strings, parallel to each other, out above his head, they all terminated six feet up. Over forty feet of flesh that made his skin crawl with resentment. Later that night, alone in his room, he tried to cut off one of his strings – the one coming from from the back of his left hand. He became so ill he had to be rushed to the hospital (his cries of pain had brought his parents to his room) and he remained out of school for a week. He was honestly shocked at his parents’ surprise that he might try to cut off the strings, or that he had cause to be unhappy.
The far more insidious fantasy, one he dared admit to no one, was to give in to the taunts and cries of “Pinocchio!” He dreamt that he was a marionette, controlled from above by an unseen puppeteer His body was near weightless – hanging from the strings was not a painful experience in his fantasy, as it undoubtedly would have been in reality – and he would allow this other entity to take over the control of his life.
Sometimes in this fantasy no one else would know about the puppeteer or the strings. He would become a passenger in his body, an observer but not a participant. Depending on how he felt at the moment, he might imagine that he could still control his eyes and could speak on his own, merely losing control of his body, and at others he might imagine that he had no control whatsoever At other times in this fantasy he would be on a stage, a literal marionette
This fantasy, whether about being on stage or off, and regardless of how much control he had over his body during his time as a marionette, inevitably turned sexual. In his mind’s eye, he was forced to perform sexual acts with men and with women, and allow sexual acts to be performed on him. He would masturbate, filled with self-loathing at what he had no doubt was an unhealthy perversion. His parents had not raised him to fear sex or to think it wrong or shameful, but he hated himself every time he orgasmed into a tissue, fantasizing about being a puppet on his own strings. He hated the way his thoughts and fantasies betrayed him. He swore he would stop masturbating to that fantasy, would stop masturbating all together. Sometimes he would last as long as a week before he gave in to his own temptations, and he never could stop himself in the end.
When he was older, and found willing sexual partners, they were inevitably fascinated with his strings, Some were fascinated with delight, some with revulsion, but they were all fascinated just the same. They would lie in bed together after sex, and the same question would always appear:
“Can I touch one?”
“I suppose. Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m just curious…”
A pause, then…
“Can you feel it when I touch them?”
“Yes”
“What does it feel like?”
“It feels like anything else? What does it feel like when I touch the back of your hand?”
“It feels like you’re touching the back of my hand…”
“Exactly.”
And yet, in college, he became known as a sexual star, always being able to bring exstactic pleasure whomever he was with. Some were drawn to the perceived exoticism of his strings, some drawn in spite of their disgust. He always knew which was which, but the fleeting warmth of lying next to another body was to great of a draw to resist even those who hated a part of him even while he brought them to an earth-shattering orgasm. And, in spite of his best efforts to prevent it, everyone called him Pinocchio
He wondered how he would be remembered if he died. How many people would come to his funeral, how many would cry, what people would say about him. A part of him expected to be remembered solely as Pinocchio but, though he would never admit it, he secretly hoped that would not be the case.
Themocracy
Wow.