The Body Is a Nuisance
by Julia Wilhelm ︎︎︎In that house, among strangers, after being told again and again that her presence is nothing but a nuisance, an inconvenience one must live with now that she is already there, she turns into a ghost. She empties herself of all content, to become a wandering shell, an empty vessel. She moves unnoticeably. Speaks silently. Has no wishes or concerns of her own. Still, she is present during breakfasts, in the hallways, during dinners, even on holidays. But despite the inevitable existence of her body in those spaces, the way it consumes oxygen and produces heat, the way its flesh and bones take up space so air currents must bend around it, she unbecomes as much as possible. Sometimes visitors wonder about her. They ask: ‘Who is that thing and what is she doing in your house?’ She explains herself politely, under the stern observation of her hosts: ‘Oh me? I’m the new vacuum cleaner.’
She becomes a vessel that knows how to work. A vessel that knows how to be useful, that will be the first to do the dishes, to swipe the floor, to make coffee. A vessel that keeps processes running smoothly. Because it is in this smoothness that she unbecomes, that she melts in with the interior of the house, that she could be confounded with the coffee-machine or the oven.
Once most of her is already gone, scraped away, if not from existence, at least from immediate consciousness, her body remains there, in space. Sometimes it is in the way when somebody wants to reach for the butter. It blocks the hallway when people are in a hurry. It stands in front of the dishwasher. It’s an obstacle. To reduce its obstacle-ness, it needs to anticipate people’s movements, unnoticeably inhabit the empty space surrounding them.
But the body is still a nuisance because the body needs to be fed. Just as the coffee-machine needs to be filled with coffee-beans, the stove needs gas, the tap needs water, and all these things cost money, which must be earned through hard work, the body needs food. The body eats the rests. There are not always rests, so the body also eats food that could be eaten by other people, under their scornful gazes. The body wastes their money, but they think it would be embarrassing not to sustain it. The body learns it owes them eternal thankfulness for their generosity. But it doesn’t do it quite convincingly. When it mumbles ‘thank you’, it doesn’t quite mean it. They can tell from the way it slightly roles its eyes when it lowers its head, from the pinch of irony in its voice that unmasks the body’s industrious obedience as cynical performance. They will never stop resenting this. The body is still a nuisance.