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At the Clinic  We are admitted at once, of course. There is a long line, but we brush right past. We are serious, it seems, more so than others. I wink at you. You laugh. On the walls all the laughs are painted in a baroque fashion, which means as gilt dolphins. You and I despise gilt dolphins, of course. Of course we do. The man who is waiting for us has drawn up the papers. “You are prepared to do this?” “We are,” I say. “Most definitely, we are.” “At least I am,” you say. “I don’t know about this joker.” You laugh; and this time someone rings a bell to answer you. It is just the man laughing. His laugh sounds like a bell that is being rung elsewhere. “If we weren’t ready before we came,” I begin to say, but the man shakes his head sadly. He holds up a sign: NO MORE TALKING. And then it is time. He leads us to the beds, the skin of his fingers as soft as candles. It is in another room, quite far from where we were, but we don’t begrudge the distance. We are happy about the room. There are fine tall windows, which you point out, as if it matters. I lie on one pallet, you lie on the other. You take my hand and laugh again. You laugh, I laugh. We are laughing, and he injects us, and we are laughing more. It is so funny. Don’t you remember, in that place where we last were, that thing that … At some point, you become quiet, and I realize: you have died. I try to turn my head to look, but there isn’t any of that. No turning of the head. No turning of the head, no hand. The hands aren’t doing anything. They aren’t hands. The sound of the bell comes again, closer this time. Closer and closer. I was remembering something, about someone I knew. I was … —Jesse Ball in BOMB’s latest installment of Word Choice, art is Sophie Jodoin, Small Dramas & Little Nothings, 2008

At the Clinic 

We are admitted at once, of course. There is a long line, but we brush right past. We are serious, it seems, more so than others. I wink at you. You laugh. On the walls all the laughs are painted in a baroque fashion, which means as gilt dolphins. You and I despise gilt dolphins, of course. Of course we do. The man who is waiting for us has drawn up the papers. “You are prepared to do this?” “We are,” I say. “Most definitely, we are.” “At least I am,” you say. “I don’t know about this joker.” You laugh; and this time someone rings a bell to answer you. It is just the man laughing. His laugh sounds like a bell that is being rung elsewhere. “If we weren’t ready before we came,” I begin to say, but the man shakes his head sadly. He holds up a sign: NO MORE TALKING. And then it is time. He leads us to the beds, the skin of his fingers as soft as candles. It is in another room, quite far from where we were, but we don’t begrudge the distance. We are happy about the room. There are fine tall windows, which you point out, as if it matters. I lie on one pallet, you lie on the other. You take my hand and laugh again. You laugh, I laugh. We are laughing, and he injects us, and we are laughing more. It is so funny. Don’t you remember, in that place where we last were, that thing that … At some point, you become quiet, and I realize: you have died. I try to turn my head to look, but there isn’t any of that. No turning of the head. No turning of the head, no hand. The hands aren’t doing anything. They aren’t hands. The sound of the bell comes again, closer this time. Closer and closer. I was remembering something, about someone I knew. I was …

—Jesse Ball in BOMB’s latest installment of Word Choice, art is Sophie Jodoin, Small Dramas & Little Nothings, 2008

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