By: Magdalena Mihaylova
Fiction
I could have been an athlete. In high school, when my body finally relented to the imposition of puberty, testosterone helped shape my previously boyish scrawniness into the lean musculature of someone meant to run the length of a track in five minutes or last 90 minutes on a field. But it was not only my physical changes that would have made me the star quarterback –or at least the revered point guard, I admittedly wasn’t that tall– but also my attitude, one I carefully cultivated over the years, but was also naturally given a headstart on. I was likeable. I knew how to make women feel insecure enough in my presence so they would do just about anything for my validation, but had enough perfectly-calculated self-deprecation so that I didn’t alienate myself from my fellow male counterparts. In other words: I knew how to make the right people feel comfortable or uncomfortable, according to what I needed from them. In a way, this translated into athletic prowess, and I spent most of high school exchanging captain’s armbands on variations of courts and fields –a wide-smiled girlfriend waiting in the parking lot with my parents after each game– interspersed with the off-season marathon of basement parties with girls from the neighboring towns who were happy to offer the back seat of the car their parents had so innocently offered them for the night.
Those were different times. Now I look at my son –who has the same stature as I did but neither the desire nor the attitude to reap its benefits– and wonder why he spends so much time hunched over a book instead of hunched over a willing underclassman. It’s all the same to me, in any regard, as long as I get what I need. And since the summer he turned 15 –when his body began to shape itself in the way mine did so many years ago– he hasn’t faltered in providing it to me.
He’s 21 now, and next year I turn 53. My wife is a few years younger than me; we married just after our college graduation, when the emptiness of a studio apartment seemed too daunting after four years with fraternity brothers, when not only economic stability, but also an emotional one, helped lure me into settling down in the suburbs of Boston. We have an older child –also a boy– but I don’t consider him my son after his betrayal. One of the problems in this generation is the inability to respect natural hierarchies, to understand one’s role in the dynamics of life, death, sickness, health. Now that I’m older, I realize how much I took for granted the body I used to have, its abilities, its virilities. I thank God for the new Administration, for their focus on social progression through the marriage of methodical scientific research and the free market, the seductive and efficient application of cutting-age technology. Up until now, conservatism was all about conserving the wrong aspects of our society –the ineffective, yet romantic traditional values that brought me and my wife a sense of superiority in suburbia– but this Administration finally found a way to make the future seem sexy. And indeed, after every new Session I can feel the effects, literally and figuratively, of the Utopia that they promised us –that they promised me– on the eve of my 50th birthday.
Suddenly the porch door slides open, and in comes my son, a gust of unnaturally balmy fall air floating in with him like a protective cloak. I notice that his eyes are more sunken than the were after the first two years; at first, I’m concerned as a father, and then, the uglier thought pushes its way through –what if it doesn’t work anymore?
“Just came in to get some juice,” He says, making his way across the room and pulling the metallic fridge door open. I can’t help but notice how his feet drag lethargically across the cherry wooden floors.
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” I say, and it comes out more guilty than I expected. I clear my throat and shift my body to be facing his. I notice that while he slumps over the glass of freshly-pressed celery and ginger, my back stands erect and wide. It's almost as if I can feel his youth pulsing through my blood, up and down my arms, pulsing with potential.
“Don’t I,” He responds, and I’m not sure if it’s more of a comment or a question or a reprisal, but he leaves the room quietly and quickly enough that the doubt hangs in the air for a moment too long. I follow his silhouette out through the porch door until he is out of view, leaving me alone with my own reflection in the glass.
***
“It is the duty of those who God has gifted with power, strength –and let’s face it, sex appeal–” The Leader pauses for comedic effect; the crowd loves it. “To share their gifts with those who no longer boast them. To make sure that our fathers, those men who came before us and paved the way for the future we have today, who provided us with beautiful mothers and sisters, who showed us what real power means –to make sure that they can keep being respected in their own home! That is what this Administration stands for!”
As the Leader continues with his speech –one in the many of discourses he delivers at the end of each Day of Sessions– I notice a nurse exhale just a little too loudly before furiously typing away on her phone keyboard. Stupid bitch, I think. Why would she work Sessions if she is so against the professions of the Leader? The fact of the matter is, at the end of the day women will forgo any sense of morals if it means money is involved, and the Sessions pay good money. Hypocrite, I think as she comes over to ask my son if he is feeling alright, if he’d like another juice.
“He’s fine,” I say sharply, using my son’s vacuous expression as an excuse to put her in her place. “If he wanted something else, he would have pressed the button. That’s what the button is for, isn’t it? Otherwise there would be no buttons. Don’t you think so?”
There is a flash of some vaguely familiar expression in the nurse’s face, one that reminds me of a time before Sessions, before even the new Administration, but I can’t remember what exactly it was meant to convey.
“Yes, sir, I totally agree with you,” She replies, her face stretching wide, so wide, with a bright smile. “Although, I like to still have some sense of human contact with my patients. In the face of so much technology, there’s nothing like a warm smile from a woman. Don’t you think so?
As she speaks, still smiling, she checks the needle in the nook of my son’s arm and pats me lightly on the cheek in a maneuver so subtle and recognizable that I almost feel warmth both in my eyes and between my legs. I suddenly remember that expression from all those years ago, back when women and men were equal, or at least trying to be; back when my son played in the tall weeds behind the house, his childlike limbs not yet ripe for replication. My wife barefoot on the patio, a cold beer in my hand. The look on her face as I spoke to her about –it doesn’t even matter what about, just that look, that look that a woman gives you when she already knows what you are going to say and why, when she pities you but in a loving way, because she sees how small you are in this world that keeps growing, and how you desperately grab for things to make yourself big, because you can’t bear to disappear when you have always been visible, even if that means that the closest reachable thing is your son.
“You’re next, sir,” I blink as a new nurse, her face blank as a desert sky in comparison to her coworker, hands me a robe and signals me to follow her. I look at the seat next to mine, which is suddenly empty. Where is my son? I think I say this out loud. It’s not until we’re halfway down the hallway when I feel another haunt of the past deep in my gut, a feeling I had done without since the Administration established the monthly Sessions.
“Where is my son?” I ask, a bit surprised at the jolt in my voice.
“Your son…hm…oh!” She says distractedly as she pushes me into a door marked Number 7. “He wasn’t feeling too well, so they brought him down to the first floor. This isn’t the first Session that this has happened to him. He might be done. Do you have other children?”
I try to remember if I had other children, if I even have a son. Where is my wife? I can hear the television through the walls, the Leader professing an end to mediocrity through Transfusions of Excellence. I put on my gown mechanically, but this time I don’t admire my shape in the mirror. All I can see reflected is the face of my son, the face I gave him and he gave me back. A gesture of grandness just to remember what it feels like to be small. “Man will meet God on the road of greatness and will confuse himself for his reflection…” I hear someone turn the volume down, a murmur of dissent, the hymn of the Administration. The Doctor enters the room. I lay back on the chair and wait for the blood to flow through me, the blood of my offspring, the blood of the future, the blood of a real man, the blood on the hands of the Administration when I finally close my eyes in bliss and realize this was all a huge mistake.
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