Short Story with MFA and Inverted Body

for Marianne, after the cadaver lab visit

Immediately after graduating from Purdue University with a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, I underwent a surgical procedure in order to invert my body in such a manner that most of my internal organs would be carried on the outside of my skin. The surgery was elective and I still didn’t have a job lined up, so I had to borrow a lot of money from my parents before they knew what I was spending it on. It wasn’t the most irrational thing I had ever done considering I had joined the Marine Corps during two active wars, but I had become a smart person since then.

When I came out of surgery, the doctors told me they were happy with the results, but I could barely look in the mirror after the nurses removed the bandages. The exposed organs decorated my torso like the medals pinned on my dress blues, like the laurels bordering my MFA diploma. Purple bubbles of tissue quivered and pulsated against my skin like a swarm of stranded jellyfish dying on a beach. I couldn’t name many of my organs, but I recognized the obvious ones. My beating heart was out along with my kidneys, my shitty liver, my shitty gray lungs. The nurses had fed me a banana an hour earlier. I watched my intestines constrict the chewed-up banana mush like fingers squeezing turds through a garden hose. Intestines are the garden hose of life, I thought. It made sense to me. I was smart now, so if it made sense to me then it didn’t matter if no one else understood. I would simply leave them behind. I had gone to grad school and now I knew how to write depressing but expertly crafted short stories. If no one wanted to give me any credit for that, then I would take charge of my life in a way they would at least notice. But first I had to move back home with my parents in Illinois.

“Son,” said my father when I walked into the house. His arms were crossed. “We love you,” he said. “But this.” He shook his head. “This is a lot. A lot.” My mother didn’t say anything and that was the end of addressing things out in the open. I didn’t feel bad for them though. They had everything they needed, plenty of money for starters. How could they ever relate to my feelings of desperation or helplessness? They thought millennials were so entitled, but what had they done with their lives other than hold cushy, professional-class jobs until retirement? If I wanted to fit in at home, I needed something like an MBA, a PharmD, or maybe a JD. A PhD was useless, they thought. And an MFA? Who knew what that was? I wanted them to understand, but they didn’t. My parents were nominally proud of my military service, but neither of them had performed a remotely comparable civic duty, nor did they have any university teaching experience or peer-reviewed publications inventoried on a CV. It was meaningless to them.

So I hid upstairs in my room all day. I locked the door and smoked marijuana and blew the smoke through the window and into the summer air. Why didn’t anyone understand that I could be objectively right about things because I held a terminal degree or care that I was talented because I could write fiction? I even knew how to do research, but nobody cared, even in the college town I’d called home. The local university I grew up cheering for wouldn’t hire me to take out the trash, let alone teach, and on top of that, most of the people I grew up with had moved on with their lives and left the Midwest entirely. I knew those remaining were the types to scoff at graduate degrees and literature, at least that’s what I thought. Being at home felt more alien than anything. There was nothing expansive about the cornfields and empty blue skies in my mind. They felt more like No Outlet signs as I was back to square one, literally in my childhood bedroom where I had first started. All of the adventures of my past, the overseas deployments, the academic conferences, the teaching awards, and I had nothing to show for it except a couple certificates. What would my digital rhetoric students think if they saw me now, I wondered. I was locked in a room spraying entire bottles of Febreze to mask the dank odor of self-medication. I divided time between submitting applications to jobs for which I was either under or overqualified as I worked on a revision of my graduate thesis in order to query literary agents and eventually publish it as my award-winning debut novel. Nobody cared about that either, but I was pleased with myself nonetheless. I knew my talents would get me out of here someday. I imagined looking back at my hometown from some coastal cosmopolitan city in the near future, wagging my finger at everyone who missed their chance to support me early on for my academic expertise or my external organs. 

June and July passed with no luck when finally, the Post Office emailed and offered me a job interview. I had submitted so many applications I could not remember applying for the job, but I was elated to engage with the Postal Service because no one else had contacted me yet. I showed up with my organs out and nothing to hide. The postmaster sized me up from head to toe and shrugged. I figured he must have really seen some stuff while working at the Post Office considering that most people had reacted to my appearance in one way or another up to this point. But he had also been in the Marines, he told me as we shook hands in his office, so maybe he had seen some stuff there too. 

“Semper Fi,” I said as I sat down across from him, which I hadn’t said to anyone in a long time. I hoped it would help me somehow that we both knew how to shoot rifles, conduct amphibious landings, and yell at people. I was interviewing to be something called a holiday clerk assistant, which I assumed correctly was many pay grades below his position. I thought about mentioning the VA and how they rejected my claim to cover the surgery. Maybe we could commiserate on how terrible the VA was, I first thought, but I left it alone and I also didn’t ask what his MOS had been. I didn’t want to be too obvious about distracting him from the interview.

“So, why the postal service?” he asked from his side of the desk. He wore a white dress shirt and a purple tie. I wondered if he had tattoos under his shirtsleeves. “Can I ask why you applied for this job? You are aware it’s a temp position for extra help, right?”

“Yes,” I said, “I am aware.” But that was a lie. Despite the fact that the job posting had the word holiday right in the title, I had been too stupid or too stoned to put two and two together when I applied. I would never have done so had I known the job was temporary. I told the postmaster I was just looking for stability, even though the temporary nature of the job didn’t align at all with that particular goal. I didn’t know what else to say. The postmaster looked at papers fanned out on his desk.

“I’m working on a novel,” I finally said on the off chance that he read books. Most people told me they didn’t. It would be nice if I could finish reading a book too, I thought. I hadn’t finished one in weeks. 

“What was your score for the online test?” he asked without looking up. He slid one sheet of paper across the pile in front of him. I could see my initials written in blue pen and circled at the top corner of the page.

“Um,” I said, remembering nothing about any tests. “I’m not sure I took any test.”

“Yes you did,” the postmaster said. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.” He pointed at the paper in front of him as if I could read the words upside down from where I sat. “You had one of the top scores this round, John.”

“Oh,” I said. I looked down to break eye contact. I didn’t remember that at all. “Sorry, I guess I’m not really prepared for this.” My hands folded in my lap and my stomach made chugging noises as if someone were dumping a handle of whiskey into a bucket. 

“You know you’re qualified for better Post Office jobs,” said the postmaster. He raised an eyebrow with his hand flat on my resume. “Corporate level jobs.” But he didn’t say anything more about what that meant, nor did he comment directly on my education or anything else that led to his comment, which left me confused. The postmaster told me to keep checking the website, officially closing out my first job interview. It wasn’t a job I sincerely wanted, but I was still discouraged. 

I sat in the parking lot and smoked a cigarette in my sweltering car as I scrolled through people’s vacation pictures on social media. Everyone but me was having a summer to be proud of, half-submerged in resort swimming pools while posing for selfies. On my way home, I drove past a dead squirrel that had been flattened into a brownish-red smear across the asphalt. Dead squirrels are the job interviews of traffic, I thought. I closed the windows and turned on the AC.

I had gained no new social media followers since the surgery. If anything, I had fewer than before, and the few who remained engaged with me did so in every possible way other than to acknowledge my external organs or my imminent writing career. Strangers kept their distance from me in public, but those who I knew personally acted like nothing about me had changed. I wasn’t upset because only a few people were curious about me; I was upset because no one was curious. I was out of real friends, except Cynthia, my best friend from high school. She supported me as a friend, but said I was being the Fox News version of a liberal with this whole organ ownership thing, or whatever I was doing. 

We had only exchanged text messages before meeting up on a Friday night. She offered to pay for dinner, so I was on my third beer by the time our food showed up. I could tell she no longer wanted to look directly at me, especially not over dinner at Monical’s, the local pizza restaurant chain. I didn’t want to ruin her appetite, so I wore a t-shirt to cover the organs on my torso. For what it’s worth, I did feel that this choice defeated the purpose of my surgery, but the way my beating heart caused the t-shirt to flap around was a constant reminder of who I was. And also, my smart-person brain was still out in full view because I practiced proper etiquette by removing my hat at the dinner table. I figured Cynthia would care as much as everyone else about my book, so I didn’t bring it up.

“I don’t understand,” Cynthia said after I told her I was no longer listed on the state organ donor registry. She stopped eating and waited for me to answer.

“You can’t donate your organs after they’ve been on the outside,” I said. It made sense to me. I wasn’t sure how you could be expected to donate organs after they’d been directly exposed to all the toxicity of the world.

“I think it’s wasteful.”

“Wasteful? Why wouldn’t I need my own organs?”

“You can donate a kidney without dying.”

“Oh, so you’ve donated one?”

“Calm yourself,” Cynthia said. 

“These organs are functioning to keep me, your friend, alive,” I said. “Do you think it’s not worth their effort?”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” Cynthia said. She looked down at the pizza. 

“You own a house,” I said, incriminating her for having what I wanted but had as of yet failed to attain: Financial stability. A job with benefits. Maybe a life where I didn’t mind being sober once in a while. Cynthia had her shit together without ever having set foot in a graduate-level class. And I was jealous as hell. I busted my ass for years and couldn’t afford a one-bedroom apartment without a grad school stipend.  

“Is it written in your will to donate your house to some stranger off the street when you die?” I asked, and then said, “I promise you there are plenty of people in need of a house.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Cynthia. “That’s not the same thing, like at all actually.” She laughed and said, “That’s a logical fallacy, John.”

“Ok,” I said. “Anyway.” I didn’t want to be called out on logical fallacies since I had taught the concept myself. I wanted to change the subject but couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. I couldn’t talk about books with Cynthia. She didn’t read poetry or literary fiction, which wasn’t unique amongst the people I grew up with, but on the other hand, she had never made me feel bad for applying to grad school to study fiction writing. I knew she didn’t agree with the decision to put my organs on the outside, but she was the one person making time for me. She was allowed to question me like that because she’d known me before I had joined the Marines and before I became a smart person.

I could feel the conversation finally escalating past the point of no return when Cynthia asked me why, if I truly was so destitute, didn’t I try donating plasma while I searched for jobs? I hadn’t thought of that and I felt cornered, so I gave her some bullshit answer about not having that kind of time on my hands between completing applications and editing my important novel. We didn’t say anything else until the waitress brought a box for the pizza we hadn’t finished. I asked for a second box, but one was fine with Cynthia. She didn’t want her half of the leftovers.

I tossed and turned in bed all night, and I was still awake on Saturday morning as the sun came up, just in time for the farmer’s market to open in downtown Urbana. I was too restless to sleep and I didn’t feel like sitting still to do any writing. I didn’t have the right energy for more job applications. I needed to walk around and be seen, and I figured the farmer’s market crowd would be socially progressive enough. They were a bunch of hippie farmers, weren’t they? They were into organic shit and being nice to people. And I thought if I could find something cheap to bring home to my parents then it might count toward making some contribution, however small, as I had not paid them any rent money or even begun to pay them back for my medical expenses. I didn’t want people to think I was a freeloader. I smoked a bowl and left.

It was a sunny morning. I parked on the street and walked over to the farmer’s market with my organs out. My parents weren’t into preserves or jam or anything like that, which I probably couldn’t afford anyway, so I kept my eyes open for fresh produce or anything five bucks or cheaper. I walked through rows of local vendors selling homemade items such as expensive, ornate dollhouses, and stringed instruments made of discarded objects such as old leather suitcases repurposed as guitars. If suitcases were pieces of writing, I thought, then suitcase guitars would be the final draft of luggage. I was feeling smart as the crowd gave me space and cleared a lane for me. The space was nice at first, but then I understood. They were repulsed. People recoiled when they noticed me heading toward them. Mothers covered the eyes of their children. There was a man pointing at me, a bald dad wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and Oakleys. He looked like an off-duty cop.

“You,” said the dad. His arms were outstretched in order to corral a small boy and a frightened woman I assumed was the boy’s mother. “Do not communicate with my son!” He ushered his family away, glaring at me as if he wanted to punch my eyeballs right back into their sockets. I wondered if he would have thanked me had he known I was a veteran. He seemed like the type to fly a flag on his pickup truck. Whatever, I thought. There was plenty of ground to cover, and I could hear bluegrass music somewhere nearby. It seemed early for live music. I decided to take a look, but my journey was cut short. Some kid in a red volunteer t-shirt stood between me and the sound. He held a walkie talkie up to his ear and nodded before speaking.

“Excuse me, sir?” he said. “Could you. I’m sorry, but would you um.”

“Yes?” I said.

“Well,” he said. “I’ve been told to ask you to leave, sir.” He was maybe twenty and terrified. 

“Why?” I asked. 

“My supervisors said you might be violating public health code.”

“So me leaving would be a favor to your boss,” I said. “Until they know for sure.” I knew the young volunteer hadn’t chosen to confront me. The other volunteers waited among the crowd behind him. They had sent their greenest member on the hapless errand to prove himself to the tribe. I sighed over the sound of the music.

“Whatever, fine,” I said. It didn’t seem like anything was going to fit my budget anyway. I turned away and started walking in the opposite direction. I could feel the other volunteers watching from the crowd, speaking secret messages to each other, relaying my coordinates to the farmer’s market command center as they followed. 

These people were just a bunch of cops like the dad, I thought. Like everyone else. The volunteers, the people buying their honey and squash, and the people selling it. They weren’t worth the time of someone as smart as me. Their disgust made me glad. I wanted to grab my intestines and squeeze them at these people, but I didn’t want to get arrested. The crowd parted again to let me walk back to my car. Good, I thought. Out of my way. But there was a woman waiting for me in the open lane. She wore a dark-colored tam and brown-framed glasses and looked up at me because I was much taller than she was. As I approached, I was more than surprised to see that it was the famous poet who had founded the graduate program at Purdue before I was born. 

She had published a ton of books and had been my professor. In class, she expected us to record images from our lives in a small journal, and expected each of us to recall something we learned during the prior class meeting in front of her and our peers. I knew she was the reason that many individuals had been inspired to write poetry to begin with. Among the many things she taught me in poetry class was the concept of duende, which changed my outlook on art. 

“I thought that was you, John,” she said. She had been following me for longer than I knew. “You walk fast.”

“Sorry,” I said. “People are always telling me that.” I didn’t feel like a Marine Corps veteran around her, or a writer, or anything other than just me, but there was something creeping up on me that I couldn’t put my finger on.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Keeping up with you was good exercise.”

“So, I have to ask,” I said. “What are you doing here?” It was difficult with the music, but I heard her say she was in town to receive some type of alumni award from the U of I, where she had gone to college, but she forgot the time change coming from Indiana to Illinois and arrived an hour early for the scheduled luncheon and then came here to look around while killing some time. I forced a laugh at the details I could discern because it was an odd story and I felt awkward, expecting her to point at my organs and ask me what the hell was going on. 

“Well anyway,” I said. “They’re kicking me out of the farmer’s market.”

“Really? That doesn’t seem fair,” said the poet. She looked around for a moment, as if she could ask whomever made the decision to reconsider it.

“Well, it’s not worth questioning,” I said. “I mean, people don’t really surprise me anymore. So, whatever.” She looked hurt at the sound of that and I felt stupid saying it. If I wasn’t surprised about people being themselves, then why was I so pissed off about it? What did I deserve credit for if I hadn’t done what I said I was going to do, which was write? I had spent all summer being a writer, but I hadn’t come close to writing the first draft of anything new.

The poet said she would walk back to my car with me, and as we walked she said, “You look different. Right?”

“Yeah,” I said. 

“What did you need to do this for,” she said, pointing up and down at all of my organs. “Is everything alright?”

“Well. I mean, I didn’t need it, per se.” I cleared my throat. “I kind of did it because it was convenient. You know, because I still had insurance at the time, well, actually I mean no one covered anything. I guess I was just committed to it,” I said as if I had gotten a tattoo. And it was also a lie. My parents covered the surgery.

“How radical,” said the poet. “But good. I was worried there was something wrong.” 

Oh god, I thought. What wasn’t wrong? I didn’t want to tell her that during some of my weekends in grad school, I lay motionless on my cheap futon frozen by anxiety and depression, insecurity, impostor syndrome, due dates, stacks of papers needing to be graded, you name it. I realized little had changed since graduation. Military experience made some things later in life seem easier, but not grad school or its aftermath.

“No, I’m alright,” I said, shaking my head. My brain wobbled back and forth and I wanted to hide it from the poet. I was hoping she didn’t notice my heart jumping harder against my chest. We walked out of the farmer’s market and stopped at her car. I was still waiting for some type of judgment, or words of wisdom to put me in my place and leave everything in perspective. She took out her car keys and then turned toward me and smiled again.

“Have you been writing poetry?” she asked.

“No,” I said. It felt like the worst thing I had ever said. I wanted to curl up on the road next to the dead squirrel and let a bus run me over. 

“Don’t forget you’re a poet too,” she said, and then, “Do you mind if I touch one of your lungs? Is that weird?”

“Okay,” I said. I thought if there was anyone I would allow to touch one of my lungs it was someone who called me a poet. Maybe I’ll be a living cadaver in one of her poems, I thought. 

She lifted her hand up and I breathed in. I didn’t want her to leave. I wanted her to teach me something that would change my life again. I wanted to find Cynthia and tell her the truth about the organ donor registry, that I chose to be removed. She deserved to know that it wasn’t a requirement to leave the registry if your organs were on the outside. Then I thought about my parents, probably awake by now, wondering why I had left the house so early. I had nothing to give them. I had not given myself the chance to give them anything, as if my calling as a writer was to be full of gifts for the world, as if anyone who supported my writing did so because they thought they would be the one to get something out of it. I wanted people to need me to write, but they didn’t. I was the person asking for something from everyone else. I should have written a story about this instead, I thought. The music echoed from the farmer’s market and I held my breath as the hand moved toward my left lung, fingers fanned out. If bluegrass is the left lung of music, I thought, then all of my organs are music. I looked up and listened to the people and the music and my organs bubbled over the sound as if everyone I had ever known was sucking them up through a plastic straw.