Read the opening

A note before you read on: Wellness Inc. is dark, sexually explicit literary fiction. The excerpt below is taken directly from the manuscript.

Cathy calls out for everybody to come sit, dinner is ready. The table is weighed down with an impressive spread, turkey, ham, mashed potatoes. She started cooking at 6:00am today. The family is chatty and jovial. The wine pours freely at the long row of collapsible tables that stretch from the kitchen into the living room.

Mae’s family is big and close. I’ve gotten used to it over the years, but it definitely doesn’t mirror my family. Uncle Saul breaks into loud, cartoon-villain laughter as he pulls Trinity into his lap and gives her a noogie. I watch on and wish I were just a little more outgoing. When I used to drink I was, now it takes a little work to muster up a noogie with the nieces or nephews.

All my life I have felt like I’m different from everybody else, like I’m weird, and disconnected. In a crowded room at a family gathering I feel lonely. Alone in the crowd and inside of my head. Everybody else converses and laughs so naturally while I feign the bullshit. Saul and Paul, Bernard… They’re all cool, they’ve always been nice to me, even when I was a drunk shithead. But I feel like I’m on the outside. At a dinner like this, when Mae’s family is joking and laughing and listening to each other, it really hits me. This is when I feel the most disconnected, when everybody around me makes it look so easy…. It tears me up that I can’t figure out how this type of machine works. The cogs and gears of a loving home were all bent and rusty where I come from.

We pass the food around. There’s lots of everything, too much. We’ll be eating turkey and ham all week. I’ve piled my plate full and though I want to start stuffing my face I wait for everyone to finish dishing up. Partly because I don’t want to come across like a gobble-guts, but mostly because I’m a little self-conscious about my eye. When I eat or chew gum or anything with my jaw, really, my right eye goes wonky. It’s not a secret, I just don’t want to weird everybody out while they eat. If they’re paying attention to their plates it hopefully won’t bother them.

I look over at Mae’s cousin. She has her hair up and is wearing a low cut shirt. She looks good. She’s a couple years older than us and something about her drives me wild. She’s not a supermodel, kind of plain, actually. She has a big, hooked nose, but for some reason I don’t really understand, I like it. She talks to Mae about one of the staff members at her kid’s playschool. Mae had been a stay-at-home mom; none of the kids went to playschool, but she had her fair share of frustrating meetings with shitty teachers while our kids were growing up. She tells Kendal to pay attention, sometimes when the kids seem like they’re out of control or misbehaved there’s more going on than just a rambunctious, crazy child. Not always, children can be shitheads for sure, just like adults. But sometimes they get a teacher that is just not a nice person. Listen to them. Pay attention. Mae says.

I think about what a wonderful mom Mae is. Growing up in a house where that kind of love is modeled makes all the difference. It really goes a long way towards keeping that equipment in tune throughout the generations.

I didn’t have much of that. My wires got crossed a long time ago; sex and connection were twisted together early for me. I can almost put my finger on the exact minute. So now I imagine fucking every lady I walk past. It keeps the old shame furnace fully stoked. I love people. I love the people in my life so goddamn hard, but deep inside me, at my core, I need visceral, undeniable connection. The kind of connection that comes from knowing that you would let me get inside of you.

What I need, what I want, is to see you as perverted as I am. I need you to show me that you feel as vulnerable as I always do. I want to see the bent springs and worn gear-teeth of your soul. I want to see if you let your heart get as run-down and dirty as I let mine get.

Even though I love Mae’s family, I really do love them all, and I think they like me; as I watch them connect and enjoy each other, I feel like I’m on the outside. They’ve invited me in, but there’s something about the mechanics of it that stops me from joining. That is to say, there’s something in my insides; in my shitty, fucked up machinery that doesn’t seem to tie into theirs. Or perhaps there isn’t any machinery in me. Maybe I’m empty, and maybe there’s no amount of attention or connection that could fill that emptiness.

Uncle Saul asks how work’s been going.

“Work’s been good. Kind of slow… Not bad though.”

He smiles warmly and tells me there’s always a job for me at his shop if I ever need. He wants to help me out. They all want to help me out. But I don’t think they can. I don’t think they even know how dusty and bent I am inside.

I am a broken fuck up.