The Membranes

by Chi Ta-wei

Such were the nightmares of the denizens of the ocean floor in the summer of the year 2100.

obsessed. Momo believed the human body contained a kind of hormone-releasing gland or organ. This hormone could stimulate intimate connections between people, so that people with a high concentration enjoyed social intercourse, while people with a lower concentration were more reclusive. Momo, like the twentieth-century Indian patient, felt she’d been placed on the operating table and had her hormone-producing gland plucked out at some point without her knowing it. Probably well before puberty. The scar from this gland’s removal still felt sensitive to Momo, and troubled her in a way she found hard to face. It felt bitterly ironic to think that her functional, vital gland was now nothing but a faint mark. Momo’s most important organ had been taken from her when she was still so very little.

A child’s awareness of her own existence depends on the existence of this “other,” and this window between six and eighteen months is so significant it’s known as the “Mirror Stage.”

Maybe Momo didn’t detest physical intimacy after all. Maybe she just didn’t like the emotional entanglements that came along with physical relationships.