melissamorgans

"What the hell is wrong with you? Your sides are totally different! I've never seen anything so screwed up in my life! Where the hell are you from? Are you someone from Screwed up Island?! You're so disgusting... except for your forehead." Bertram: They even put his penis in a big jar. I mean why... why would they do that? Gwen: Well... you saw that penis; it wouldn't have fit in a little jar. Bertram: Dr. Prashar - you're from a... scary country, right? Dr. Prashar: I'm from India... Bertram: But, you're not... Christian, like us? [pause] Dr. Prashar: I'm a Hindu... Bertram: Yeah. So, um, how would you extract information from a hostile? Dr. Prashar: Well... as a... Hindu person... I would just... ask him... politely... "Her psychiatrist says pain is a language, one in which she’s become fluent. Autodidact by nature, she picked up on Pain as a second language in an intense emersion program. At age five she was showing signs of improvement in this difficult patois, but the evidence was quickly healed and soon forgotten. She had no idea she could speak it until one night, at age eleven, she found herself slamming a heavy solid brass pestle onto her knees. Wow, she thought, I had no idea I was so eloquent. Since then she has spent years transcribing Pain onto her skin in an easy to understand vernacular. See Julia, see Julia break, break Julia, break! That sure was easy class, let’s try it again… One day she discovered she had a novella. The lexicon of lines on her thighs is an excerpt; the most outrageous fragments from the tell-all within. But (but but but…) A change is taking place. There is a distancing from Pain after so many poems, letters to the editor, and experimental novels. There is a strange truth she has learned about the silent language of Pain. It makes noise. You have to listen carefully, and when you do, you may wish you hadn’t. It’s the smallest of sounds, the tearing… she can hear the cells parting, grainy. It’s something that will haunt her, more than the dictionary itself. And so she will warn you about this language. You see, there is a downside to Pain, besides… pain. It is that you cannot unlearn Pain, your carved confessions are there to stay, and you should have thought of that before you wanted to start swimming baby. You will slowly get hooked on these phonics, English will be harder everyday. Your family will be deeply saddened by your impressive new vocabulary, they would much rather read the magnetic poetry full of despair on the fridge than your forearms. You will have to carry your Pain-to-English epidermis with you at all times, everywhere. You will have to stand still as those close to you try valiantly to translate what you have done into words they can understand, and they can’t understand. You will realize one day that you don’t want to understand either."

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