On Friday evening my wife and I went to see an exibit called Body Worlds 2. It is a show comprised of over 200 displays of dead, preserved, human anatomy. I held a real human brain in my hand and got up close and personal with more dead people than I can count. There were exploding heads, dead mothers with babies inside, fat guys cut into strips, cocks and vaginas pulled out and on tables, kidneys to play with, and livers to fondle. Everything was dead and it stunk like something - but I am not sure what. Most of the people had their skin pealed off - but some had it left on in special places like eyebrows, lips and genitals.
It was like walking through a human butcher shop. I look at a hand with all of its skin removed and then I look at my own hand and move it in front of my face. I swallow my spit and glance over at a tongue attached to a windpipe laying on a table. There is a man with his skeleton pulled out and it walks ahead of him - it looks like he is following it - trying to catch up to it - he doesn't have any skin and all of his guts are pulled out and hanging on a rack beside him.
He still has his eyebrows and toenails but his brain is missing. People have their kids here waking around and looking at the dead people's genitals determining if they are boys or girls - "Look mommy this one is a girl!" There is a skinless woman with a wig on. Her hands and feet are flat on the floor and she faces the ceiling looking like she is doing the crab-crawl. Her nipples and labia are left on. I get really close to them and look real hard at the insides and almost want to touch - I am touching them with my eyes I am looking so hard and intensely at them. I keep telling myself they are all fake but I know they are real. They could be me, and they are me.
Child skeletons hold onto skinless father's hands and they are posed in a casual way, like you might see them walking down the street. People don't say much - everyone just stares and stares in a subtle form of shock. Everything is macabre and very unpleasant to look at - it is as surreal as reality can get. At one point I want out. I wish I hadn't come to see this cavacade of torture and dismemberment but there is nowhere to run and my morbid fascination represses my desire to escape so I take a more clinical and educational attitude. - I push my emotions away and say wow - how fascinating.
That night I go home and dream that I have two human heads in pillow cases in bed with me. I am supposed to keep them with me because I know the people that are now just heads in pillow cases. I am supposed to take them to the show and put them up for everyone to see. In my dream I am killing people and taking their bodies to the show - I have to do it to show dead people with their skin on - we need to add that to make the show complete. The heads in the pillow cases are going to go on stands and I worry that they won't be smiling and will they scare the kids...
It has been three days and I still think about it - somehow it changed me and I am not sure yet. Something is different. Everything just seems a little less pleasing. It kind of reminds me of the day after you loose your virginity - you keep thinking about it and wonder what's left now that you have experienced it.
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