Wetlands by Charlotte Roche Page B

up. I can’t make out an asshole anywhere. No matter which way I turn the camera.
    I look at him. He looks at the photos and quickly away again. He’s disgusted by the results of his own surgical work. No wonder he didn’t want to tell me beforehand what he had in mind.
    “At least tell me which way I need to hold it to see what it looks like down there.”
    “I can’t tell. In my opinion the photo was taken too close up. I can’t tell which way it goes, either.”
    He sounds angry. Is he crazy? He’s the one who did this to me. I didn’t mess around with his ass. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the victim and he’s the culprit.
    He keeps glancing at the photo and then looking immediately away again. Hopefully he’s able to keep his eyeson wounds for a bit longer when he’s in the operating room. What a sissy. Or does he enter another world in the operating room? Looks at everything closely in there and just can’t stand to be confronted with it afterward?
    Like somebody who always goes to a brothel and does the wildest, most intimate, filthy things with the same hooker, but who, if he runs into her on the street, looks away and would never say hello.
    He didn’t greet my asshole very nicely.
    He doesn’t want to see it again.
    I see panic in his eyes: Help! My little operating room asshole can speak, ask questions. It’s even taken photos of itself.
    There’s no point. He just doesn’t know how to communicate with the people attached to the asses he operates on.
    “Thanks a lot, Mr. Notz.” That’s supposed to signal that he should leave. I dropped his professional title. That does the trick. He walks out.

After the operation and the explanation by the esteemed Dr. Notz, I should now be crapping merrily. One sentence in his long-winded talk caught my attention: I will be discharged from the hospital only after a successful bowel movement with no bleeding. That is the indicator that the operation’s been a success and that everything’s healing properly.
    From this point on, people who have never been introduced to me before come in every few minutes and ask whether I’ve had a bowel movement. Noooo, not yet! The fear of the pain is insurmountable. If I were to press a log of crap past that wound, my God, what would happen? It would rip me open.
    Since the operation I’ve had only granola and whole-grain bread. They tell me my granola shouldn’t sit in the milk too long before being consumed. It should make it into the stomach and intestines in a fairly dry state. That way it will absorb fluid in the body and swell, pushing against the intestinal walls from the inside and thus signaling that it wants out.
    The urge to crap should be greatly heightened that way. They’re chucking bombs in the top but down below I’m all cinched up with fear. I’m not going to crap for days. I’ll just do as my mother does—wait for everything to disintegrate inside.
    Can you eat pizza while you’re waiting to take a crap? I don’t ask anybody; I decide that it’s important for rectal healing to eat things you like. I call my favorite pizza delivery service, Marinara. I know the number by heart. It’s easy to remember, like those phone-sex lines. I’m really excited, but I don’t let it show. I try to sound as belligerent as possible: “One mushroom pizza. Two beers. Saint Mary’s Hospital, room 218. The name is Memel. And make it quick. It better not be cold when it gets here. Just go to the front desk and they’ll call me.”
    I hang up as quick as I can.
    There’s an urban legend that made the rounds a while ago; I think a lot about it. Two girls order a pizza. They wait and wait but the pizza never comes. They call the delivery service a few times and complain. Eventually the pizza shows up.
    It looks a little funny and tastes odd. By coincidence, one of the girls is the daughter of a food inspector, and instead of munching the rest they put it in a bag and take it to dad.
    They all think maybe the