The Gargoyle

“No, you don’t,” I said. “You just have to leave her alone.”

It was not long after the meeting with Dr. Edwards that Co

Empty, that is, until Sayuri arrived to demonstrate an exercise that she wanted me to start doing daily. “Dr. Edwards tells me that you are excited about working harder,” she said as she laid a board lengthwise on my bed, tilted up and away from me. This board had a groove cut into it, into which she placed a two-pound silver ball. I was to push the ball up the board until it reached the top, and then gently support it as it rolled back down to the bottom. Repeat.

I used to haul hundreds of pounds of camera equipment around bedrooms on every movie shoot, and now I was relegated to pushing a ball up a wooden plank. Worse yet, even this simple task took all my concentration. I could see my bandaged face reflected in the curved silver, and the farther away I would push the ball, the farther away my reflection would move. Sayuri commended me for each success. “Perfect!” When we were finished, she effortlessly whisked away the ball as if it was-well, as if it was a two-pound ball. This tiny Japanese woman pissed me off by being stronger than I, and then pissed me off further by bowing slightly when she left my room.

When Dr. Edwards next came to my bedside, I asked about the private room. How, I quizzed, could I possibly rate such an extravagance? It was not as though I was being rewarded for good behavior, or for the hard work that I had just started and needed to continue.

Nan was ru

I assured her I would happily be her isolated little guinea pig for as long as she wanted, but added: “Are you sure there’s no more to the story?”

She considered, and decided to speak a further truth-one that I had already guessed: “It is all well and good that you’ll continue to accept visits from Ms. Engel, but I see no reason to subject the other patients to her as well.”

I said that I respected her concern for others, and she nodded. When it was clear that neither of us had anything more to say, she nodded a second time and promptly left the room.

Visits with Maria

Now that we had more privacy, my talks with Maria

I asked about her Three Masters, and teasingly inquired whether such protectors were common for medieval nuns. She seriously answered that they were not but that, in fact, Heinrich Seuse also had Three Masters whose consent he needed to gain (with the same Latin prayer that she used) when he wished to speak.

My response was the obvious one: “Are yours and his the same?”

“No.” Seuse’s first master was St. Dominic, founder of the Dominicans, who would grant permission to speak only if the time and place were proper. The second master, St. Arsenius, would allow a conversation only if it did not promote attachment to material things. The third, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, would allow Seuse to speak only if doing so would not cause him to become disturbed emotionally.

“And your masters?”

She answered that hers were Meister Eckhart, a prominent theologian who was active during the time of Sister Maria

When our conversation finally came around to my career in pornography, it hardly seemed like an exotic topic at all; it was just one more subject in a long conversation that seemed to include everything. Still, she was curious about the work and asked many questions that I answered as well as I could. When I finished, I asked whether it bothered her, what I had done for a career.

“Not at all,” she answered, and reminded me that even St. Augustine had lived a life of pleasure before famously imploring the Lord to “make me chaste-but not yet.”

The difference, I pointed out, was that I was not going to find religion as a result of my past. Maria

“I have been informed by the medical staff,” she answered, “that it was lost.”

So she knew, but what did she think? “And…?”

“And it is a pity.”

Yes, a pity, indeed. “I thought you didn’t like talking to doctors.”

“It was important enough to learn about your wounds that I couldn’t avoid it.”

That was the end of that day’s discussion about my missing penis; already more than I had intended to say.

Each time she visited, Maria

It was interesting: this was her first humorous comment regarding her own mental state. I thought it might be the opening I’d been waiting for, and I asked her-pointing out that she had already discussed my burns with my doctor-with what condition she had been diagnosed. She shut down the topic by stating that the doctors simply didn’t understand her particular brand of charm.