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GENESSA -- THE BUMP!
short fiction by Gail M Feldman
I wanted more than anything in the world to be an actor. Okay, a star, really. Believe it or not, the same person can be both, but it's by no means a given. I was destined to be neither. Wooden, my teachers said I was. Devoid of emotion. I might as well be a bump on a log.
What a fine thing to hear about oneself! Very well, one is not suited for this profession or that, but when you're not suited to act, your very ability to feel, not to mention to communicate your feelings, is in question. Might as well be a bump on a log, indeed. Does that mean I can never fall in love, raise a child, experience my own grief and joy? The problem can't be just in showing what I feel, because my teachers assured me one doesn't try to show a damned thing. One just is, and trusts the audience to understand. If I can't act, am I unable to be?
Of course I would prove them wrong. I could feel as intensely as the next person, and I'd show them. I mean, I wouldn't show them. I'd be, and trust them to know. I'd try to trust them to know....
So I went about trying to feel stuff.
In the supermarket, I picked up a cantaloupe and studied it. Whence had it come? Had it been untimely plucked from its... Um, did cantaloupes grow on trees? Vines? Did storks deliver them? I tried to fathom the experiences of the cantaloupe, separated from its family and friends, delivered in a truck, or an airplane, or on a ship, to be stacked with a hundred others, purchased and slaughtered for the pleasure of another species. To my chagrin, my attempt failed. No tears emerged from my eyes. My heart beat not a whit faster than usual. I didn't give a rat's posterior about the trauma of the dislocated cantaloupe. I squeezed it, sniffed it and dumped it into my cart.
I tried to feel something at the movies. Precociously prepubescent pixies screamed senselessly. Motor vehicles of myriad makes were abused and trashed. Women who wouldn't gain weight even if you surgically implanted a thousand Twinkies in them tried to seduce men who probably couldn't spell "Twinkie" much less sustain an erection long enough to point the way to the exit. I couldn't feel a damned thing.
I picked up my cat and looked him in the eye. "I love you," I said, tenderly. He looked me in the eye. "Open the can," he replied.
After a few weeks of this sort of experimentation, I tried slamming my hand in the car door. In this I had limited success; I briefly felt anger, because my hand turned purple and hurt like the devil, and even moreso because the medical center wanted payment on the spot; not making house calls is no longer enough for today's doctor; s/he also now refuses to bill. My teachers asked me to reproduce the anger by remembering the incident. My inability to do so was so frustrating, the effort brought tears to my eyes.
"She's got it," cried the fencing coach. "By George, she's got it!"
"Who's George?" asked the dance instructor.
"We can make you a star," exclaimed the scene director. "Just keep doing what you do, do, do!"
So now I'm a star. I perform in movies, on television and on the Great White Way. All I have to do is slam my hand in a
car door, and of course my contract calls for a lot of moolah but no health insurance. We wouldn't want to discourage my muse. She's discouraged -- and discouraging -- enough.
Not only that, but I'm married with eight kids.
I think I'm starting to feel something.
Credit: ana_c_golpe © Morguefile.com/ana_c_golpe
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