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Afterward, and after many drinks, people from the audience led her down winding side streets to a club with no name. The club was a crush, one body. A mirror at the back that she first thought was another room, until she saw her own face at the center of it. A sign on the wall that said OASIS. At first she could not dance at all, and then she could not stop. The songs they played were preposterous; were her personal American embarrassments; the ones that had marked her as backward, provincial, unsubtle as a major chord. They played “Rock and Roll All Nite.” They played “Seven Nation Army.” They thumped up and down like Ohioans to “Sweet Caroline.” Oh, she said to herself, I did not know. The songs all along had been beloved. The whole club pressed against her and she thought of Little Touch; her eyes traveled to all the places she was kissed, places all over the world. She wondered was it worth it to show up, hear a little music, and then leave? Someone at some point slid her phone out of her pocket and she lifted off her feet, lighter. Her whole self was on it, if anyone wanted. Someone would try to unlock it later, and see the picture of the baby opening her mouth, about to speak, about to say anything.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to my editor, Paul Slovak, who accompanied me on this journey despite not knowing what a binch is, and to my agent, Mollie Glick, who first found me in the portal. Thanks also to the team at Riverhead: Alexis Farabaugh, Helen Yentus, Jynne Dilling Martin, May-Zhee Lim. And in memory of Liz Hohenadel and her long crisp gingerish hair.
To everyone who read early drafts: Greg, Michelle, Jami, Maryann, Sheila. To Jason, who read a thousand incarnations of this, including one in which the husband character belonged to an underground anarchist collective called My Cummies.
To the people I have met around the world who showed up here as photographs, cartoons, and phantoms. I am writing this in quarantine; I miss you all. And to the other members of the communal mind.
My thanks to the London Review of Books and the British Museum, who allowed me to give an excerpt of this in 2019 as the least educational lecture ever delivered in those halls. And to my compatriots at the Spanish Bar.
To the doctors, especially Dr. Habli, Dr. Smith, and Dr. Vawter-Lee. To the NICU nurses, especially Janet, who showed us how to hold her. And to the StarShine workers, who brought boxes of toys.
More information about Proteus Syndrome can be found at https://www.proteus-syndrome.org. Donations to that organization go toward research and helping to network people living with Proteus Syndrome, most of them children and teenagers.
Donations can also be made to Pets for Patients （https://www.petsforpatients.org）， an organization that matches pets with the families of chronically and terminally ill children.
To my sister and my brother-in-law, who let me share in her life. And most of all to my little love Lena. You were not here to teach us, but we did learn.
About the Author
Patricia Lockwood was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana and raised in all the worst cities of the Midwest. She is the author of two poetry collections, Balloon Pop Outlaw Black and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a New York Times Notable Book, and the memoir Priestdaddy, which was named one of the ten best books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review. Lockwood's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor.