Story for performance #596
webcast from Sydney at 07:57PM, 06 Feb 07

I.

I am a keeper of many secrets, of many heavy stones.

They’re supposed to tell me everything. And if you learn enough about someone, you have to promise not to let it go. First do no harm, and then speak no evil. As soon as you touch someone, you engage in an exchange that cannot be shared. When a stranger shows you what she works so hard to cover up, everyday, when she asks you about the pain in her lower back or the tightness in her ribs, when you press the tips of three fingers against her chest or listen to a palpitating heart, you are taking part in a sacred relationship that has lasted over centuries. A promise that has lasted just as long. First, do no harm, then, speak no evil.

My patients trust me with their health and with their histories. Cortisone, Avonex, Betaseron, I inject them with drugs subcutaneously; trauma, incontinence, sexual disturbances, they inject me with their lives hesitantly. A nurse once asked me about a patient—he had noticed marks on her arms when he took her low blood pressure. I suggested he focus on the velcro arm band and the pressure gauge and leave the body to me.

II.

Then I come home. And I keep secrets from you, because we’re supposed to tell each other everything. We are trying so hard to be honest. That’s what we say. I am being careful, I am keeping things hidden, I am keeping things from you, because I think you will not want these things. I want to give them to you, but they look pathetically meager in this large empty body I carry them in.

I want to tell you that everyday it gets harder to be near you without holding you. To stand next to you in the kitchen staring at your back, you throw only half-smiling glances at me. That I feel, not just longing, but actual, physical pain—you are pulling out my blood vessels, through my pores. Slowly. Systematically, as if following a complicated list of instructions. First, pull Vein A through Pore 12, which is located just at the sternum, center of the chest, just below the breast. Remove the vein by pressing middle and index fingers of left hand down, hard, on the chest, and, pinching the tip of Vein A between thumb and index finger of right hand, draw it out by very gradually pulling back right elbow.

Then slide the middle and index fingers of your left hand down the torso, to Pore 3, located just below the belly button. Placing left hand, slightly cupped, firmly on lower abdomen, touch your lips to the abdomen by lowering the head to lower torso, just below the belly button, and, catching Vein B between tongue and upper teeth, slowly purse your round, open lips together, against the skin, just below the belly button, and pull head back.

Vein C can be removed through Pore 27, located at the left inner thigh. Trace Vein C with your lower lip, from the left ankle, up to left calve, over left inner knee, and up to the inner thigh, to Pore 27, where Vein C will be quivering, ready to be wound round a hooked right index finger.

But you’re not being honest either. You’ve been vocal, you repeat the party line, pulling in and pushing away. When I am silent, you fill the space with taunts meant to evoke any response. Maybe the longing, my physical suffering is actually caused by the low blows you keep throwing at me. Maybe the cruelty rips me apart.

But no. Your raw words fill me, your distance cuts me open.

If you would break for one minute, break open over me—I can’t do it, I can’t crack you, my hands are weak and small. But you continue to pull pieces of me out through my skin. Your hands were always larger than mine.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Ella Longpre.