#Ryan murphy islide kings skin

Summer before college, I worked in the meat department of the grocery store. When that’s not enough, I drive over to East Superior Street, to the Northwestern University Prosthetics and Orthotics Center and do the same. Sometimes, for a closer look, I walk next to them and marvel at the technology. On the first and third Wednesdays of every month, I park on Harrison Street, outside the Prosthetic and Orthotic Clinic at Rush’s Professional Office Building, and watch patients enter and exit for rehabilitation.

#Ryan murphy islide kings skin

He invited me to touch the pigtail skin on the bulb.īecause of wars and epidemic diabetes, the prosthetics industry is booming. He was missing his left leg, just above the knee, and I couldn’t stop wondering how it happened. After three bedridden days, I stepped into the hall and saw a man in a wheelchair.

When I woke with a cast, my mother said the doctor wanted to amputate, just above the elbow, but the specialist reset the bones and said hope for the best. Eight years old, I slipped off the monkey bars and landed on only my twisted arm, crisscrossed my ulna and radius, shattered my elbow. My doctor calls it Body Integrity Identity Disorder, and you know if it takes four words to describe, it’s not good. It’s hard to share when your urge grows into obsession, then beyond, where thoughts of an amputated left leg equal the butterflies of budding sex. Nothing wrong with the leg, but I’m incomplete with four limbs.

Life would be livable if I could relieve this inner pull to amputate my left leg. Listen to a reading of this piece by the author:

Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement.

Developmental Editing Fellowship for Emerging Writers.

The Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers.