Calla

from:
The Incomplete Work(s) of Jackson Del Toro--vol. 2

part 2

Most of the time, she doesn't know who she is. Oh, she thinks she knows. All the time. But she doesn't, really. She confuses herself with people she reads about, often thinking, without actually thinking about it, that she is the author of the material she's reading, a book perhaps, where...

Much of the time, though often she isn't so well aware of it, she's someone else. Usually she doesn't know this until after she gets used to being that person, and then she begins to wonder where that other person she thought she was before went to.

It used to be that this happened when she got sick, but sometimes it happens out of the blue, for no apparent reason at all. She had to cure herself, not so much from the illnesses as from being each other person, although she didn't realize at the time that that was what she was doing.

One day (she hopes) in the far distant future, a world will exist without her. Hey! Wake up!, she says aloud. I'm still here! You're all in for a big surprise. There's going to be a world without me. Then you'll all be sorry, and never even realize the reason, that you never paid any attention to me.

The mystery she is, revealed between the lines in her face all of that which she has been transformed into appearance transfigured through her history from the sickly child within step by step into the woman. Her childhood:

She thought she was a boy. She knew she was a boy because that's what they told her. But she thought she was a boy because that's the way she acted, because they taught her to act that way, before she could remember the lessons. But she felt she was...not unsure, but unconcerned.

A world exists beneath the world we know. She reads about this underworld and thinks she understands it; but she doesn't. Her counselor (she can't afford a psychiatrist) tells her she needs to get in touch with her inner self and forget about what she thinks others think about her.

It's not important to her, it was never important to her, whether she was a boy or not. But it did seem to be important to others, especially to her father. From this she can only conclude that it is important what other people think about her. She's going to stop listening to her counselor.

But he doesn't charge her for her visits, so it would be stupid of her to stop going, it would be like abandoning a friend. Besides, she doubts if she could ever get him out of her head. Because she can't ever get anyone out of her head, once she allows them in. Once in, it's already too late.

The underworld is like the desert. Nothing exists, if you forget about the sand and all the little creatures that crawl around in it. A desert on the other side of the world. And she is an oasis. In America, we don't have this kind of luxury, because everything is luxurious, even much of the poor areas. Even the desert. Las Vegas is in the desert.

Compared to other poor in the world, America's poor are well off. Poverty is relative. In her tiny bedroom, in her tiny house, she is yet comfortable. She eats a lot of crap. Junk food. She wants to be a vegetarian, but she can't afford it. Hollywood and Wall Street have driven prices up.

Anyway, sugar gets her high, makes her think, speeds up her already fast metabolism, gets her out of her head when her life seems to be too much to bear. Never mind it could shorten her life. Her life seems so short anyway. When she was young, she thought she was going to die young.

Each year that went by was another year she was still alive. Until ... Here she is. All of the diseases, disabilities, they thought she had, weren't real. They existed in her mind, because they put them there, because they existed in their minds, because, they have to justify their medical existence.

Either that or she cured herself with her incessant attention to the detail of her life, living as consciously as she was able, investigating everything, every little bit of information that seemed relevant to her condition(s), until professionals who tended her decided that she had her head in the clouds.

What's wrong with that? She didn't understand, They decided that people are supposed to live on the earth's surface. In the desert, when you look out over the emptiness from your little room high up on the hill in the middle of the arid, dusty town, the air shimmers yet with clarity of vision.

If there is an underworld, it is down there, on the sand, on the surface, where all the little animals and insects crawl and burrow. Up above it all, there is no reason, no purpose, to worry about whether you are a boy or a girl if the sex you're having is right or wrong when it feels so good.

Her life, down there, is like a play, or more like the script for a play, as if someone were reading it instead of acting it out. Actors play the parts of her life while she sits in the audience and watches. They are all inside her, she knows; but it's easier to pretend that they are up there on the stage:

Calla is a lost soul who lives in the basement efficiency apartment of her friend, Morph, with whom she has been carrying on a sexual relationship without love (which she readily admits). She has been living here since her release from the hospital after an operation.While she was in the hospital, she was evicted from her own apartment and all her belongings thrown out or confiscated for back rent.


M: (standing in the kitchenette): How are you feeling?

C: (lying on the bed) I'm sick.

M: Can I get you anything?

C: No.

M: Well, you let me know if you need anything

C: I'm fine.

M: I thought you said you were sick.

C: I am.

M: But you said you were fine.

C: Morph, please.

M: I'm just trying to cheer you up.

C: You're just trying.

M: I'm going out to the store. You want anything?

C: No.

M: What do you want for dinner?

C: Nothing.

M: You have to eat. The doctor said to make you eat.

C: I can't eat. I'm sick.

M: Maybe some soup.

C: Nothing.

M: Chicken soup.

C: (managing a weak smile): Maybe later.

M: Okay. I'll see you in a bit, then.


She doesn't respond. Morph exits. Calla remains still, as if listening. Then she closes her eyes and falls asleep.


The desert is dry. That goes without saying. But she says it anyway. Lawrence said he liked it because it's clean. But it isn't. It's dusty. But she knows what he meant. It's not dirty. But you do get grimy and there's no water beyond the oasis where you can wash, and it wouldn't matter if there were because you just get all grimy again as soon as you start to sweat, which you do, all the time, there's no relief from the heat, not even in the basement, except at night, it's nice to sleep in the night.

Calla awakens in the heat, feeling nauseous. She wants to throw up and she almost gets out of the bed to run to the bathroom, which isn't a room at all, but only a shower, a sink, and a toilet, all surrounded by a shower curtain. When you take a shower, the sink and toilet get wet, and the concrete barrier around the shower on the floor leaks in two places and lets water seep out into the room so that you have to wipe it up with a towel after you're done with your shower.

As soon as she moves, she feels the pain again, and she decides she'd rather feel sick in bed than suffer further for the relief of being sick in the toilet. As close as the toilet is, it's too far away. The doctor said the pain would last for about a week, getting less as the days went by. But the days were going by and it wasn't getting any better. In two days, she would have to get up to keep her appointment with the doctor, and then she would tell him what an asshole he is.

She closes her eyes and falls back into sleep. Sleep is the one thing she can do without effort. She's had a lot of practice at it. It's not a state of existence for her so much as it's a place she goes to where she can be who she really is without worrying about how people will think of her, although she does notice that people don't think any better of her there than they do when she's awake.

In all of her dreams, in all of the different places she goes, among all of the different people, known to her and unknown, that she meets, she feels the same way, like she belongs; whereas, when she's awake, she feels different, like she is not accepted, even if she actually is. But there are places, like the desert or the clouds, that are neither here nor there. The clouds are like the desert, except that they're clean. You don't get all sweaty and grimy in the clouds; and, despite their nature, it never rains there and you never feel wet.

But, really, she's never actually been to the desert, or in the clouds either for that matter, except in an airplane; but that doesn't count. She wishes that, when she was awake, the earth was like the clouds. She never wishes that it was like the desert, although in places it is.

The doctor's office: Calla and Morph are in the office alone. The doctor enters. He does not look happy.


C: What's the matter?

D: It's not good news.

C: Tell me.

D: The lab has determined that the alien we took out of you was a female.

C: So? What does that mean?

D: The eggs she laid are causing the pain you're feeling.

C: Oh my God.

(She does not say this in the typical way that postmodern females and some gay men will say it. It's more like a comment from an emotionless distance. Calla doesn't believe in God. She's an atheist. But, what the hell? She does, however, believe in aliens. Morph, who was holding her hand, leans over in his chair and awkwardly puts his arm around her shoulders.)

C: So, can you take the eggs out?

D: Eventually. We have to find them first.

C: So. Okay. So how do we do that? What? X-rays?

D: Well, yes. But not yet. They have to grow first.

C: How long? (Tears are beginning to run down her face.)

D: We're not sure. We've never seen this species before. Maybe a few weeks. We'll check you out every day.

C: Isn't there some medicine I can take to kill them?

D: No. That is, we don't know of any. There are some researchers who're coming. They want to run tests. They might come up with something.

C: I don't know...I'm not sure if I should...

D: Yes. You should. They'll help with the costs. The truth is, you can't afford the operations, and there's going to be a lot of them. The hospital will give you a hard time. They won't want to absorb the costs.

C: The state pays them.

D: Not enough. They do everything they can to avoid treating patients without insurance. They say they don't, but they do. If they knew what they were up against when we did the operation, they probably wouldn't have allowed it. But, with the money from the research...

C: [She nods.] So I have to come here every day?

D: No. To the hospital. I'll arrange it.

M: [who has been looking as if he's been wanting to interrupt] She's still sick. You said the pain would decrease.

D: That's the eggs growing. I'll give you a stronger painkiller.


But that was all a long time ago. After all of the pain and all of the operations, Calla has been alien-free for eleven years. Some others were not so lucky. Many did not make it. But few have ever heard of them. Their "illness," successfully treated or not, was attributed to other causes, usually cancer, because that disease has become so commonplace and, when you have cancer, no one wants to talk about it. You can get away with a whole lot by claiming you have cancer.

Calla is not an advocate. She prefers that no one knows. If her experience, be it known, might help someone who is alien-ridden now, that's too bad. And it's not because no one helped her, though no one did. She understands that no one back then knew much about the problem. It's because she prefers that no one know that she ever had to go through all that pain. She doesn't want to be the kind of person who is known for being "brave," which she wasn't anyway.

It wasn't like all of her childhood illnesses, it wasn't the culmination of a long history of illness, the final straw that broke the ship of the desert's back. It was different. Alien invasion is unlike that of family and friends and other strangers you have known who say they want the best for you even as they set about to pollute you with the ideas that they think are so correct that end up making you sick. Aliens don't care, and that's what makes them so effective. You can fight off family and friends with a dedicated positive attitude, but aliens are immune to your mental manipulations and must be cut out, again and again, and the excised tissue incinerated in a quarantined government facility until there is not a single trace of them left.

(Rumor has it that they no longer provide medical treatment for people infected with the invasive species, but simply incinerate the whole person these days. She was lucky to have lived in more caring, or more ignorant, times. Or else, now, the aliens have succeeded in their attempt to invade us and they are incinerating, instead, those of us who are not affected. But conspiracy theories will persist, no matter how rational you try to remain; and, in another sense, paranoia just may be the proper rational mindset after all when you're living in an insane society, whether the insanity is an alien invasion or some other form of mental illness.)

Her eyes hurt. She closes them. She rubs them with her thumbs and forefingers. They are the eyes of a guy...of a boy; they are the eyes she used when she was a child, before she knew she was a girl; but now she sees with them, not like before, like a boy, but now like a grown man, fully matured and transitioned into something else.

She stops rubbing her eyes and opens them. Their pain fades slightly, after having intensified with the rubbing, to a level less than before. Coeds walk by her, ignoring her as she sits on the park bench alone. The campus is like a park with buildings. She used to go to school here, back when she was a boy, in the process of becoming a man, before she became a woman.

Some of the coeds she looks at look back at her. She likes that, but she doesn't know what to do about it. She likes the thrill she feels in her stomach and lower when they look at her; but she doesn't yet, back then, know what to do about it. If she were still a man, she would know what to do; but maybe not, still being so young, barely an adult.

And, anyway, some men, at any age, still don't know what to do. The men who have sex her, most of them, don't. They know what to do, that is, how to go about it, how to get it, how to stick it in; but they really don't know what they're doing. Sometimes, as they do it, when she tries hard enough, she can make it happen herself; but that has less to do with them than her.

But if they were women... This is what it's like to be dead: When you are raised as a boy and then discover you are actually a woman, there is nothing left of you to determine who you are.

And all the little "stories" above (and I'm sure, eventually, below) are his "case histories" of people he has helped merely by talking to them. He's become a writer by merely documenting his own and others ideas and difficulties.