Weise - The Book of Goodbyes

Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or can I continue reading this? Will it affect my psyche so that the next time Big Logos comes over I will not be there in the room? Instead I will be wandering a Chicago street in my dress with my parasol as a cane, on the verge of arrest, where arrest could mean stopping or to keep the mind fixed on a subject, where the subject is the diseased, maimed, mutilated self of 19th c. Chicago, the self in any way deformed so as to be unsightly and will I tell him to stop looking, tell him Im tired and Im about to be arrested for walking in public and I cant possibly climax when I am an improperperson who is not allowed in or on the streets,highways, thoroughfares or will he say were alone, no one is watching, there is your bedside table and there your mirror and who am I kidding? I wont tell him anything. There is no room in bed for this.

It does no good to bring things up from the 19th c. or from last week when the things have to do withhow do I say itwhat is the word I usually use? Last week I said it like this: Big Logos, a moth came out from hiding as soon as I had taken my leg off and the moth said, Ha little cripple. Now you cant get me with the broom. Then I laughed so he would know its okay to laugh. I do it like a joke. I do it like its nothing.

Why the cover-up? Why are the laws stacked with it and I never in high school heard of it? The maimed shall nottherein or thereon expose himself or herselfto public view under penalty of staring, pointing, whispers, aphorisms such as We are all disabled or What a pretty face you have or God gives and God takes away or one dollar for each offense. One dollar in 1881 is like $20 today. I wanted to compare it to something like dinner at Ruby Tuesday or a bra on sale at Victorias Secret, as if by comparing the amount to something I have bought, I would buy the penalty out. Then the penalty and all its horror would be gone instead of arrested, kept in mind, dwelled on when Big Logos comes over or forget him when I am in the supermarket or forget the supermarket when I am in front of twenty-four legs in a classroom or forget the classroom when I am on the couch watching TV: how will I not think of the woman in Chicago trying to hide her limp, her thoughts on her limp, trying not to bring it up, draw attention to it, or what will happen if she is caught by the constable? On the conviction of any person for a violationof this section, if it shall seem proper and just,the fine provided for may be suspended for 130 years until a person enters cripple in the search engine on Project Muse because a person has no cripple friends and has started to think cripples dont exist and never did and finds the law. Why have I posted the ordinance on the mirror and why have I traded the lube in the bedside table for a twenty dollar bill? Whats that supposed to do? Help the history slide in? Help me remember? Such a person will be detainedat the police station, where he shall be well in the company of criminals, concrete and moths and a small window to the forbidden street cared for,until he can be committed to the county poor house. I am not poor. I am not even unsightly.

What a pretty face I have Ive been told. Big Logos, will you attest to my sightliness? Is this all in the past? Why are you sleeping with me, anyway? Arent you afraid?