NATHAN DIXON, FEATURED IN THE OCEAN STATE REVIEW
The Itch
I have thought of something that’s not a part of my speech and worried over whether I should do it. Can we doubt that only a divine providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe free . . . I’ll confess that I’ve been a little afraid to suggest what I’m going to suggest. I’m more afraid not to. Can we begin our crusade joined together in a moment of silent prayer? God bless America.
—President of the United States Ronald Reagan
The new political philosophy must be defined by us in moral terms, packaged in non-religious language, and propagated throughout the country by our new coalition. When political power is achieved, the moral majority will have the opportunity to re-create this great nation. The leadership, moral philosophy, and workable vehicle are at hand just waiting to be blended and activated. If the moral majority acts, results could well exceed our wildest dreams.
—Co-founder of The Heritage Foundation, FCF, and ALEC, Paul Weyrich
I’m sick and tired of hearing about all of the radicals, and the perverts, and the liberals, and the leftists, and the communists coming out of the closets. It’s time for God’s people to come out of the closets, out of the churches, and change America.
—Rev. James Robison
We can and, so help us God, we will make America great again.
—President of the United States Ronald Reagan
Well, if they don’t know, it’s going to be hard to explain. When you turn your heart and life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as a savior, it changes your heart and changes your life. And that’s what happened to me.
—President of the United States George W. Bush
I know it when I see it.
—United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart
The good reverend believed the itching was an act of God. Retribution for succumbing to sin. Perhaps, he thought—pitiful whatever it was—would perhaps succumb again. He shook his head at himself, weak-willed. That’s the type of thinking that brings it about, he thought. A result of the research he’d been doing in his office—research, what he called it—next door to the sanctuary, sprawling. He stared at the computer on his desk.
He had believed he was above it when it started. Proud man. If you think you’re standing firm, he had preached to great seas of congregants, you must be careful not to fall. Incredible what these women would do. Anything. Everything. He shook his head again. Hadn’t he known?
Outside it was raining cats and dogs, inside the office, dark. He could feel the little tickle begin again. On-and-off throughout the day. Like worms inside him. They would call it hypocritical if they knew—the media. He rubbed his itchy asshole on the seat of his chair, his face puckered at first, then going slack with relief. What he preached was right. The act was wrong. And so was everything that brought it about. He was not a hypocrite. The pornographic magazines and websites, that godforsaken book by this woman—they had gotten him into this.
He stared at the blank computer screen, listening to the rain. Water streamed silver down the stained-glass windows, and he remembered Jimmy Swaggart crying. Predecessor, some would say. And Swaggart begat Bakker and Bakker begat Crouch and Crouch begat Haggard and Haggard begat. No, he would not go that route, twisting in his chair to reach deeper. No one knew. Not yet. Another debate was already scheduled with that woman, and it was high time he practiced what he preached. The itching, though, the itching.
He turned on the computer. Then walked across the room, pretending he hadn’t. Masturbation promoter, her only claim to fame. Her book accepted by academics because she was an academic herself. Secular, scientific, a woman, no less. Bisexual by her own account. Calm, cool, collected during the debate—spic and span in her business suit, with her short-cropped gray hair and those special glasses that righted her wonk-eye. Knocked unconscious by her then-husband in graduate school, she said. Before she left him. She wore it like a badge.
On and on about the rampant abuse of the privileged white males of society. A scourge. Maybe we should wipe them out, the reverend had said on stage. A deft allusion, he thought, to what the radioman had been calling the rise of the feminazis.
Her book only popular because it promoted hedonism. Of course. For everyone, everywhere. Sex, sex, sex. He pictured her naked privates—cropped gray hairs—being passed hand to hand. Squeezed and prodded. Disgusting. Her book called for Sodom and Gomorrah. And on the college campus where the debate had taken place, the educated masses cheered her on—education, the word they used. Hell on earth, he told them, when evil is called good and good, evil.
The itching, though, was too much to take. Slimy heads from burrow hole. Itch, scratch, itch. He clenched his cheeks together, watched the rain slide down the colored glass. It reminded him of being a boy, the blurred world on the other side.
The gospel music his momma played after church on Sundays. Greasy smears of acne skin across the windowpane. God’s punishment for touching himself. He still remembered praying for forgiveness in his bedroom. Now the same all over again. He made promises to himself, to the Almighty. The power of free will, a fable.
He walked back to his desk and sat down. Research, what he called it. Garbage, filth. The world of that woman’s book. It promoted the un-promotable, said the radioman. Touching oneself had always been a sin.
And this research had again allowed that adolescent boy to rear his pimply face. From the old pin-up posters to moaning whores with gaping holes. Infinite on the computer screen. God doesn’t want us to stand up to sin, he told his congregation. We must flee at the sight of it, turn tail and run. Yet what had he done?
Less than half an hour, half an hour too much. And here he was again. Alone in his office. Seated at his desk with his hand on the mouse. Two weeks after the debate on campus, next week the radio show. The radioman to back him up. Two against one, he thought. He pictured the woman naked—hands and knees on the floor—and frowned.
Research. He leaned to one side on the leather chair as if to pass gas, his curled finger clawing at his rear. Right on the hole, how good it felt. Inside even. Like the slide of water on the windowpane, cool. The harder the better. Be careful, he told himself. His upper body going slack as he eased his buttocks backward onto his finger.
He wondered if that was how it felt for the gays. Easing themselves lax onto each other’s stiffness. There was no point to the deed for them, their life a bacchanalia. Penises probing assholes. They would die out if separated from the rest. Put ’em behind fences, said the radioman, drop in food as humanitarians do, and they’d be dead in a few years, no doubt. Good riddance. Sucking and fucking till their hair turned gray and their insides fell out. It was insensitive, of course, but it was true, wasn’t it? AIDS had been a sign from God that everyone ignored. He had said so on TV, but what had it mattered? Now there were new drugs for the faggots, covered by government healthcare plans.
She was a smart woman, the academic, the lesbian. Bisexual, anything goes. A shame about her eye, but who was she to question God’s ways? Believing herself more righteous than the Almighty. The downfall of all liberal academics: say the same thing twice, three times. Till death do us part. Then what? Their worldview empty, humanity at the tip-top. When pride comes, then comes disgrace. It was the same with people in his own line of work. The televangelists like dominos, all the same. Scandal and money, senate subcommittees, sex. Pride in the wet mouths of flesh. He scratched harder. It was never too late to ask forgiveness.
He sniffed his fingers—rot, death, decay—and typed the website into the search bar. Just to peek, he told himself. A little research. One click undoing all his talk. No. He jumped from his seat and walked to the bathroom down the hallway, gospel music tinkling from the speakers overhead. Private. His secretary away at lunch. Which he had known, he realized, before he turned on the computer. Warm water whispering over his hands. The bar of rose-scented soap brought back from the Holy City when he went to meet the pope last year. He tried to distract himself with memories.
How easy not to do what he knew that he would do.
Back down the hallway fast, as if someone might catch him—to get it over with—a wad of toilet paper peeking from his pocket. Carefully locking the door behind him. He didn’t have to do it, he thought, the silver world splattering the stained glass. But, then again, he would be more productive afterward. Then again, it would ease the infernal itch.
He pulled his pants off and folded them. He turned his underwear inside out and placed them on the seat of the chair—the same thing he had done as a boy. Pale thighs, hairless—fat and drooping with age. Headphones from the drawer, the lotion as well, the mouse clicking beneath his rose-scented fingers. Sweaty palms reaching toward his prick.
*
It was worse at night, the itching. Lying in bed beside his wife, the sheets sticky—even beneath the ceiling fan—while she snored beneath the comforter, cozy. Back arched, he rubbed first upon the mattress, like a dog across a carpet, front to back, not enough. His wife turning, muttering nothings from her drooping lips. Lips that used to be pouty. Full, soft, accepting. What if he had asked her to do the things those women did? Her eye mask hid bags from hard work. Accountant, partner, lover-no-more.
Then his finger—curled talon of relief. Barely touch at first. Then harder, through the underwear, push it in, leave it there. Two fingers, too much.
He worried he would wake her and escaped over the rug to the terra-cotta bathroom. Looking older each night. Perched upon the toilet bowl, panting, he pushed inside the witch hazel wipes for hemorrhoids. Then pulled them out slowly like a magician. He checked himself afterward in the multi-angled mirror, cheeks pulled apart, looking over his shoulder, absurd, listening for his wife. Clench, then relax, nothing amiss that he could tell. But what could he tell? Like a mouth, the dark abyss, opening, closing, kissing, winking. No protrusions, no blood, no engorged veins. Dirty hair hanging from stained flesh. Posed like those women on the computer screen—hungry—cheeks pulled apart. Wide open. Then plugged.
Bags under his own eyes these last few weeks. Becoming a problem, affecting his work. Touch the inside to be sure, nothing throbbing, how deep? He moved his finger in a circle inside. Felt his body relax and roll forward. He washed his hands afterward and snuck downstairs to the computer. It was just to help him sleep, he told himself. He wouldn’t be able sleep if he couldn’t relax.
Afterward—back in bed—the hum of the ceiling fan was like a woman’s breath. He imagined dark angels winging through the rafters above him, their legs, their mouths, all agape. He felt himself getting hard as the itch began to tickle his insides again.
Night by night, day by day, pitiful, using the witch hazel wipes to cool the itch. Talcum powder, hemorrhoid cream, moisturizer, Vaseline. None of it did any good. Rash invisible, reaching deeper, sex always on his mind. Like he had caught some virus—he cursed the academic—the constant pink tickle, turning red. Until he had to flee to the bathroom to plug himself up. Take a bit of toilet paper with him afterward, toward the computer to do the deed.
*
After church on Sunday—a live sermon taped for a thousand thousand—some of the younger congregants waited for him to finish shaking hands with the people. Among them, the national head of Students For Life, a sweetheart, and her friends. Quiet, patient, penitent, conservative. Grouped along the low-slung brick wall, with wan smiles under the April-gray sky, wearing modest skirts above pale legs, demure girls who were proud to be girls. They knew a woman’s place. Knew there was no shame in it. Tall boys beside them with bowties and loafers, the new look, the new South, the future. Spick and span, ironed creases for the Lord’s Day, hairless under there, he thought. All of them slippery. Computers in their pockets, always connected. Fresh and sweet, the land of milk and honey. Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for such is the kingdom of God.
Smart to pick a girl as president, he thought. Deflect a host of attacks. Hard worker, too, a golden girl. Sometimes she stopped by his office to talk about the future. Her own, the nation’s. A promise ring upon her finger, virgin till her wedding day, daddy’s little girl, and a Godly girl she was.
He excused himself from the long line of people, and met the youngsters halfway across the yard, shook their hands in the grass. Their smiling faces pointed toward their prophet, their preacher. Hello, reverend, they said. What a sermon.
Vigorous hands, strong clasps of young men. Young women as well, how the world had changed. Good morning to you, he answered. The young and the faithful, standing here before me, while your peers sleep their lives away. He winked, and they laughed.
Warm outside in the suit and tie. He pulled his jacket off, exposing dark circles of sweat beneath his arms. He’d worked himself up like a revivalist. It always started with a tickle. His face glistened as he smiled. He clenched his cheeks.
We were at the debate, one of the boys said. We thought you did a real good job. The others murmured their assent. You brought her back to the facts again and again, you know, about pornography and sex trading—kiddy porn—the addictive quality. All of it. The others nodded their agreement. She was all, No-No-No, the boy said, his voice high pitched and quick. It’s not about that, she said. But it is! You told her. That’s exactly what it’s about. Masturbation, a blight on men. The group nodded, very serious.
You’re right, the reverend said, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Exactly right. Clench, un-clench, clench. And I wish there were more young folks like y’all who could see through this woman. See what she’s actually promoting. He saw the hollow outline of videos loading on computer screens—orifices opening before his eyes. Tickle, tickle. The act itself is wrong, he said. Lust for the flesh, a sin. He imagined himself behind his desk watching. But everything surrounding it, he said, beginning to lose his train of thought. Surrounding the act, I mean—the business of selling sex—is the work of the devil himself. He squirmed in his suit, flesh dancing before his eyes. And remember, he said, shaking his finger, they can’t sell it if there’s no one buying it. The students nodded their heads.
There’s plenty doing that, the president answered. Blonde-headed, blue-eyed, shaking her curls in disapproval. Her own book says so, she said. Looking up at him, now, the sweet face of innocence. That’s why we wanted to talk to you, she said. He nodded in return, clench, un-clench, clench. We’re thinking of starting a protest. Maybe buying up her books from the student stores, or—
She trailed off, her forehead crinkling, concerned. Not burning them, she said. That would make us look like zealots. A vocabulary word for her. The good reverend’s feet curled. His eyes wandered down the buttons of her dress. Then back up, her eyes as clear as holy water. Unless you think it would be a good idea, she said. He imagined her on her knees, her mouth open. Suffer the little children to come unto me. Suffer me to come into them.
Christ, he thought, shaking his head, his stomach tingling from the itch. All eyes on him while he sweated in the sun. You’re right, he said. They would call you extremists. He wanted to put a hand on her shoulder, let it slip down the front of her dress. Couldn’t shake the thought. You need to come with the love of God in your heart, he said. The itch was becoming too much.
Then again, he countered, jerking upright. Maybe a demonstration would bring attention to this trash. His body twisted suddenly to the side. Why don’t you come by my office, he said. I’ve got to run just now. Already walking away, his whole body clenched. It was nice of y’all to stop by.
But reverend—
I’m sorry, I’ve got to go, he said. He threw his hand in the air, shouted over his shoulder. I’ll talk to y’all later. Come and see me.
He locked the bathroom door behind him. Dear God, he said to himself, pulling his pants down. Frantic, his hand at his asshole. Taking deep breaths, Dear God, he said, letting out a long whistle. Half laughing at how good his finger felt as he pushed it in. A long exhale, like water on a windowpane. He’d have to get it checked out by a doctor. That finger went in too easy, he thought. Quietly moaning atop the porcelain, ecstatic, his eyes a-droop. He laughed. What kind of sick joke was this? Two fingers in. He was a healer on the national—international—stage, a spiritual guide. But couldn’t do a thing for himself. Slap his forehead with his palm, like the old-time preachers. Fall down before the Lord, grace obtained.
This was no joke, though, he thought again. It was God’s punishment for touching himself. Of course. Falling into the trap of that wonk-eyed lesbian, unable now to quit. An adolescent again. He shook his head, his third finger rubbing at the entrance, almost unconsciously. It felt like something was pulling at him. An ache that needed appeasing. Disgusting, he thought, the addiction. The whole mess of it.
That’s precisely why that woman’s book was so dangerous. Masturbation, a plague. And the eye-candy causing it. Rotten. Pulled in—unable to escape. Flesh for flesh’s sake. It’ll keep you healthy, she had said on stage, and everyone had laughed. But she was serious. Third finger in, loose. Smooth. How hard to quit once you’ve started. Without the Lord’s help, impossible. Curiosity killed the cat and all fools alike, he had answered. Masturbation is a highway to hell. Something really pulling from the inside as he sang sacrifice atop the toilet. Wondering if he could use himself as an example. A martyr to show how to overcome. Or someone like himself, he would have to say. Something really pulling. His mind swept clear.
All of a sudden alarmed. Wait, wait. Like a vacuum. Stomach consuming. From the wrong end. He tried to pull his fingers out, but they were stuck. Dear God. He started playing tug of war with himself. Took deep breaths to calm himself down. It was that woman, he thought. She’d gotten him mad. He tried to concentrate on the gospel music tinkling from the bathroom speakers.
But when he closed his eyes all he saw was the girl with blonde curls. Innocent. Innocent, he thought, though something about her face suggested otherwise. A kind of half smile, her lips pouty, like his wife’s used to be. Her clear blue eyes looking up at him. Unafraid. Her blonde curls bobbing back and forth as she beckoned to him. He felt himself getting hard. Don’t do it, he thought. She was peeling off her clothes. And all her friends beside her, young men and women both. Under suits and spring dresses, bald skin, sun-kissed, the pale halos of tan lines glowing. Forbidden. Angels flapping their blonde legs, supple, carnivorous.
He felt the fourth finger at the rim and tried to pull it back. Get out of there, he said. Devil pulling at him. He strained as he pulled, wondering why he had used three fingers at all. The fourth one touching. Could he push it in to make room to pull the others out? Loosen up, he kept whispering to himself.
One way for sure, he thought. Always. To calm down. He took a deep breath and stood up. Thought about how absurd he must look. An old man stepping out of his pants with his fingers up his ass. Like a little boy. Gingerly up onto the toilet seat in his loafers, one, two. Balancing. Squatting there, better for the bowels, they say. Easier movement from the inside—out. Like an animal. He groaned as he squatted.
A pale gargoyle perched, his face twisted in gothic agony as he began jerking off. One hand at his ass, one gripped around his prick. Pressing prostate, pulling penis, what a job. Acrobatic old fool on a porcelain pedestal. He imagined the image gilded—golden—a figurine atop a trophy. Given away by that lesbian academic to the best masturbator of all.
Mask-wearers cheering in the crowd down below, the blonde girl and her friends, nude and supple. He closed his eyes, imagined himself hoisting the trophy aloft. Imagined the college kids swinging in each other’s arms as the music began playing, their smooth bodies swooning toward the floor. Touching themselves, touching each other, a spider web of soft caresses. Hands sliding down tight bellies to penises pointed toward the ceiling.
Rocking back and forth on the toilet seat, he imagined tongues twisting on breasts, mouths melting toward crevices, silk legs opening to let everything in. Honey on pink lips, sweet beads of sex. Drool, swallow, gulp, swallow, gag, swallow, swallow me down. Suck me into your skin, baptized in the flesh of the flesh. He saw himself—young again—crouched over the blonde girl, holding his dick in his hands, enormous. Cartoonish. Her legs slick. Go on, she said. The boys grouped in a circle all around them, stroking themselves and each other, telling him to do it. And the girls between them now, rubbing their crotches frantically with the palms of their hands. Fountains of honey. Seamen spurting all around.
When he pushed inside of her, she moaned and grasped at the ground to keep from falling through the world. He felt himself spilling over, overflowing, when—knock, knock—he heard someone knocking at the door. Before he could think—sweat-slicked, falling from his perch—he felt the gulp and knew his hand was gone.
Knock, knock. Sir? Toppling from the toilet seat.
You’ve been in there a long time, sir—I just wanted to check.
Garbled sounds. The reverend trying to find his voice. All curled up inside him now. His whole hand swallowed. Yes, he finally said, I’m fine.
You don’t sound fine, his secretary answered. He imagined her ear against the door.
I’m fine, he said again. Then caught himself, controlled his voice. I promise.
He took tender steps to the mirror, careful, not to wiggle his fingers. An awkward image staring back. Naked from the waist down, his arm twisted behind him, his knees out to the sides like a marionette as he stepped closer. His dick still hard below his flabby belly. Who holding the strings to this puppet? I’m fine, he said. His voice hollow as he stared at himself. He didn’t want to turn around to look. But he had to.
Bending over, spreading open. Fisting, what they called it, hands duckbilled into buttholes. Disgusting. How the hard-on surviving? he wondered. Feeling very sick to his stomach. Imagining the image posted. The press would have a field day.
Breaking news: the televangelist who led the charge to ban gay marriage in this state has been sighted in a compromising position. To say the least. He claims he had an itch that needed scratching.
Sir, his secretary said. I’m calling your wife. If you need—
Listen, he interrupted—staring at himself in the mirror. Don’t you call anyone. His voice was stern. I’ve had an epiphany in here, and I’m going to write a sermon about it.
Silence from the other side.
You go on home, he said. Come in tomorrow well-rested. Lots of work to do.
But it’s Sunday, sir, she said. You have appointments.
No, he answered, not today. Deep breaths to calm himself. I’ve had an epiphany, he said again. Cancel everything.
But sir—
Just clear the schedule, he said. I’ve heard a voice on high.
He looked toward the coffered ceiling, listening to her silence. Imagined her on the other side, her hand to her chest, wrestling with herself. Concerned, her face pinched tight beside the door. Would she suck him off if he asked? Jesus Christ, he thought.
OK, she finally said. If you say so. Then, as an afterthought, Are you sure you’re all right?
Go on, he said. Tell the kids I said hello. Hubby too, he thought, prim and proper. He imagined her grinding her crotch against his face.
I’ll see you tomorrow, she said, her voice trailing down the hallway.
He listened to her go, then picked up his pants and underwear from the floor. A one-armed creature, up on his tiptoes, hooves alighting lightly on the tile. Click-clack. Be careful. A tail peeling out of him, curled up to the shoulder bone.
He cracked the door and peeked out. She was gone. Gospel music from above. Praise be. He walked on his tiptoes like a crab down the hallway, naked from the waist down, erect, a child of God with his hand up his ass.
Teeter-tottering toward his office, he wondered how he would get it out. There was always the one way for sure. He looked at the computer on his desk, his forearm disappearing now. Or so it seemed, inching deeper. Slowly masticated, his wrist gone and more. He could feel his organs squirming inside. Like a child fingering trinkets in an antique store. You break it, you buy it.
He struggled to get the leather guest chair wedged below the doorhandle. The walls of Jericho, fortified. Who would blow the horns? Brass penises jammed down throats. No one knows yet, he assured himself, tiptoeing to his desk. He sat down gingerly on one cheek in front of the computer. Not yet. He pulled the headphones onto his head, squirted lotion into his good hand by pressing his forehead down on the nozzle. Ridiculous. He flicked the lubricant between his legs, rubbed it on the gobbling hole, awkwardly bent to one side, wheezing. It smelled like fish, he thought.
No better than that lesbian, bi-sexual bitch. Greasy smears on the keyboard. Acne skin, windowpane. Diddling himself from both ends, maniacal. He would have to get it out by himself, he thought, yank it out by the neck. His eyes ravenous, brightly lit. A hunched troglodyte in a dank room, sweating the evil out.
*
An hour later—two hours, three?—he lay curled on the floor, sobbing quietly. His hand still stuck, deeper even, his arm pulled painfully backward. Wrenched, shoulder down-turned, elbow jerked up at a sharp angle, as if he was being detained by police. Afraid that if he pulled it out now, he would tear something inside and bleed to death on the carpet. His own arm become the Lord’s sword of fire. Sodomite, Gomorrahn. Lusting after strange flesh. His erection still throbbing, never able to ejaculate. Convinced he was as bad as any faggot that had ever lived. His compassion for himself run out, his excuses, his promises. His anger rising hot in his stomach. As it had so many times in the pulpit. His mind a lash against himself. Imagining the church gone, the TV program, his wife and kids. Laughed off into early retirement. Roaming the hallways of his house alone with his hand up his ass, a crustacean on the ocean floor. Dark. Have to amputate, he thought, let it gobble all the way. Drool, swallow, gulp, swallow, gag, swallow, swallow me down. Plugged up and gasping from the pain.
He believed the knock at the door was his own imagination. Enraptured. How long had it been going on? A voice crying in the wilderness, angelic and sweet. Make straight the path of the Lord. He was ready for death. The voice clear. Blue-eyed, blonde-headed. Tap-tap-tapping again. Good reverend, it said, it’s me. You said to stop by. I saw the sign on the door, but you said—
He was turning inside out, diving arm-first into his asshole. What voice talking to carrion comfort? A flippty-doo, his innards spilling from his mouth. He imagined his organs lumped and leaking on the floor. His twisted skeleton blood be-soaked. Found in his office like an animal in the forest. How would he be remembered? Smote by the Almighty with a thunderbolt of love. Let ’em talk, he thought, as he repented on the rug. Let ’em talk, as he asked for God’s forgiveness. Promised to never touch himself again. For as long as he lived, the countdown begun. Dull death pains spreading through his abdomen. Shoulder socket slowly cracking, muscles wrenched free and floating, splitting his ribs apart—from Adam’s side, death and woman. Oh, merciful death, he said, come unto me.
Are you hurt? the voice asked. I can’t hear what you’re saying. I’m calling for help. OK?
*
He was in the hospital for a few weeks. The paramedics paid off by his wife, who was furious at her husband for putting her in such a position. I’m not sure what I saw, one of them said. I don’t know how much it would take. How embarrassing. She’d had the Students for Life President ushered away before she saw anything. Little do-gooder doing good. Now she wondered about that girl and her husband. Sometimes he talked in his sleep.
There were a host of problems upon his admittance. Priapism—erect for too long. Six, seven hours, who knows? Had to poke a hole in his penis to drain it. Lucky he didn’t lose it, they said. Discovered torn walls in the lower colon after surgically removing his hand. Peritonitis. Bloated abdominal cavity, dull death pains spreading. Air pockets and blood. Shoved up and in. How? they wondered, asking her about his proclivities. Wanting lurid details that she swore did not exist. His shoulder dislocated, muscles and ligaments torn, he had several broken ribs to boot. How did he do it?
Induced to sleep, he had visions. Anesthesia dreams. Saw himself in holy tent revivals atop wooden stages, thumping black Bibles with golden lettering. He called out in tortured sleep. In a white suit, his face red and sweaty, twisted beneath the drooping canvas.
Come on, he said. You dog-gone, sorry excuses for His chill’un. You bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, hillbillies. Excess baggage is what you are.
Talking in his sleep. She tried to shush him.
You dick-jerking, cum-spurting, faggots, come on. You pederasts and ass-lickers and tit-fondlers, you pussy-fingering philistines. Led to sin by the devil in your pants, come on now into the light. Your wives and daughters spread open for the world while you’re off looking for a mouth to suck you down. Gobble, gobble. Sluts and painted prostitutes—lesbian Jezebels lapping at each other. Y’all know who you are. Look at you, holding wide the gateway to hell. Dirty path between your legs, your ass cheeks flapping open. Come on, now, into the light. You young boys masturbating in front of your computer screens, you young women touching yourselves on the other side. Pornographers, all of you, bi-sexual anything goes, into the arms of King Jesus at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
Orderlies came to the doorway to watch the show. Elbowed each other and laughed. His wife couldn’t have been more humiliated.
I’ve seen the light, the old man screamed, writhing beneath the bed sheets. Beating the Bible in his dreams. Seen the light and come to witness. So y’all can see it too. His arms outstretched to the tent-top, the sweat pouring down. Baptized in the spirit, he shouted. Stabbed by the sword of the heavenly host. I was lost in the land of Canaan worshiping false gods of the flesh.
But now? he thundered. Now? I’m found. I saw Elijah burning in the clouds. Heard the Lord’s voice saying the time is nigh when all the world will be judged with fire. The crowd shouting back at him. Speak it brother. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. Amen.
I come unto you as a prophet, his eyes ablaze. My insides all cut out, thrusting an imaginary sword into himself, dragging it ragged through his guts. Hell shown to me by fallen angels dancing naked through the night. He swept his arms over the swaying masses. I’m a sinner no more, he said. Slapping the Bible onto the podium, charged with the Holy Spirit.
His wife called out for nurses as he thrashed about in bed.
Behold, he said, pulling from beneath his shirt a colostomy bag, the foul liquid spilling onto the stage. Behold, brandishing the plastic pouch at the crowd, shaking it violently in his hands. This is the world in which we live, he said. The world of the flesh. Pitiful. Running back and forth on the stage. Come on, now, into the light. Come on, you wretched stains. Burst from sex parts, you. And you. He pointed into the crowd. Disgusting. From Adam down, all of us sinners. Come on, he said. Shaking the filth at them. All of you! Up into the light. Deny this temporary housing. For His soul is all consuming. We must repent! For the judgment is at hand. Cast out the demons, burn the body for the soul. He flung the bag up toward the tent-top. For thine is the kingdom, he screamed. And the power. And the glory forever. Amen.
Heavily medicated hallucinations, half dreaming glossolalia whispers, he writhed beneath the sheets until they had to strap him down. He woke up sweat-soaked and confused with nurses all around him.
Nineteen days, then released. Stepping into the bright summer air, leaning on his wife’s arm. The rain gone, the radio debate rescheduled with the lesbian academic. More firm than ever in his belief, a new fire burning in his belly. He would put that bitch in her place, he thought. A protest planned at the university, blonde-headed, blue-eyed, fierce. Burn ’em all, he told the student president when she visited the hospital. His mind clear, his eyes set. Burn ’em all.
Back toward his office with purpose, where his computer sat solitary on his desk. Waiting like a gaping hole. Fresh air breathed through the body—His vessel—his heart upraised to the Lord.
Nathan Dixon on “The Itch“:
Almost a decade ago, when I was in the thick of writing the first drafts of “The Itch” and the other linked stories in Radical Red, I scored a gig teaching “Humor Writing” and “The Hero’s Journey” over the summer at the Duke Young Writer’s Camp. I was qualified to teach the latter because I had read some Joseph Campbell; the former because I had cracked a couple of jokes during my interview. My students in both courses were young teens, and I instructed them to ruthlessly destroy their characters. On the one hand, I explained, it could be “comedy,” on the other “heroism.” It was an affluent crowd, and my instructions were antithetical to those do-gooding values instilled in them by their “minor-reform-is-the-best-we-can-hope-for” parents and by their middle school teachers preaching the great American meritocracy out there in the ever-spreading suburbs.
Perhaps, I have thought more than once, the stories in Radical Red—stories that follow a cohort of tea party conservatives as their hyperbolic language shapes reality and leads to episodes of body horror—perhaps these stories are a form of masturbatory wishful thinking, more concerned with injustice and punishing those who deserve punishment (thereby re-inscribing a bogus punitive pipedream) than with the comitragic struggle of humanity itself, which is, of course (as countless artists have told us), the purview of art.
When asked about the distinction between “purely literary work” and work in “the tradition of social protest” Ralph Ellison responded, “I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest” and insisted that critics of “so-called protest novel[s]” should be less concerned with messages of protest than with “the lack of craftsmanship and the provincialism which is typical of such works.” Provincialism: as I completed those early drafts, I believed—foolishly (and optimistically) in hindsight—that the content, “the message(s),” of my stories might all-too-soon become irrelevant to contemporary readers. I said so, in so many words, in my unsolicited submission letters, and the stories were rejected out of hand, by hundreds of literary journals. Craftsmanship: As the country took long strides toward explicit autocracy, I continued tinkering with the stories, incanting the narratives in those echoing pre-dawn hours as the rest of the world slept. It was in re-reading/re-working them that I learned to become ruthless toward myself.
Perhaps it was through this process that my optimism faded. What if what Dr. King calls the “arc of the moral universe” correlates with the trajectory of bullets fired from assault rifles? What if the accumulation of “rights” is not steady, but a boom and bust cycle—inevitable under the auspices of capitalism? And what moral universe, I kept asking myself—I keep asking myself— have I tried to create by taking the Right’s words seriously, by bending the laws of so-called reality to accommodate their absurdity?
The hypocrisy that many of us on the left are inclined to point out among our brethren on the right is not a bug but a feature of the system(s) in which we live and the ideologies that we insist we live by (e.g. To justify the practice of owning human beings—and to paint himself as society’s savior in the process—the white slave owner had to believe, or had to profess to believe, that the people he owned were, on the one hand, docile sheep in need of moral instruction and, on the other, rapacious wolves hungry for civilization’s destruction). Of course, self-proclaimed liberals and yellow dog democrats are guilty as well. “I believe in public education,” says the “progressive” state senator, “I just think private school is a better fit for my children.” Yet, drawing moral equivalencies across ideological lines can mask the truth as well as reveal it. To be on the left, writes China Miéville, “is to say that we deserve better, and that betterness is not impossible,” while to be “on the right is, at base, to say at very minimum that nothing can change, nothing can be done, systematically, to alter that system—if not that such a system is desirable, and that it’s more important that some have the power to control the world, even if that means others in vast numbers suffering and being without power.”
The latter view is provincial. It lacks craftasmanship. I second Ellison in recognizing “no dichotomy between art and protest,” and insist, further, that they are synonyms. UNITE.
Nathan Dixon received his PhD in English literature and creative writing from the University of Georgia. His first book, Radical Red, won the BOA Editions short fiction prize and will be released spring 2025. His creative work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Fence, Tin House, Carolina Quarterly, Redivider, and elsewhere. His critical/academic work has appeared in MELUS Journal, 3:AM, Transmotion, and Renaissance Papers. His primary areas of academic interest lie in the 19th & 20th centuries, specifically in emerging and regional modernism(s), multi-ethnic literature, and discourses between the American and the Global South. He currently teaches at North Carolina Central University and lives with his family in Durham, NC.