CW: suicide attempt, institutionalization, vomiting

There’s a scene in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away where the little girl Sen has to bathe a stink spirit. Layers on layers of festering ooze, trails of bubbling mud and shit. Smells like death. It’s a big job, and nobody wants it. The bathhouse staff all hide when the spirit arrives. Sen does the best she can. She’s nothing if not a hard worker. Still, she scrubs and scrubs to no avail. The slime is too thick, its self-regenerating current unending. Finally the girl notices something stuck in the sludge, a piece of metal. It’s a handlebar from a bicycle. It won’t budge. The girl ties a rope around the end and starts to pull. Soon everybody’s pulling. The entire staff, the ancient witch who owns the joint. Even the spirit frog bathhouse manager. Finally the bike handle comes loose and a deluge of trash, filthy water and grime pours out. Coke cans, candy wrappers. All the toxic waste humans dump into nature. Turns out the stink spirit was actually a god, a guardian of rivers who absorbed so much filth he turned into a monster.

I tell them this story and they all sit there wide-eyed, a half-circle of interns and the stern Russian doctor teaching them about madness.

“A very interesting story,” says the doctor. “But the question I asked was, why did you tie the rope around your neck? That is why you are here in the hospital, my friend.”

“I just explained why,” I say. “I wanted to be the stink spirit. For a costume, I mean. I used the rope to tie the bedsheet, and the bedsheet to hold all the trash. I didn’t have any river garbage so I just used what we had lying around the squat. Empty bottles, makeup palettes, cigarette packs.”

“A dictionary,” says the doctor.

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the psychic dick. It can tell your future.” I turn to the interns. “If you brought it to me now, I could tell you guys yours.”

The interns smile but the doc’s not having it. “This still doesn’t answer my question. Why did you tie the rope around your neck?”

“We were supposed to go to Jackhammer,” I say. “They do a show every Monday. A drag competition. I was going to perform in the stink spirit costume. An audience member would pull on the rope, and all the trash would fall out. Just like in the movie.”

“But in this movie, does the little girl tie the rope around her neck?”

“God,” I say, “You’re so literal. But it doesn’t matter anyway because we never even made it to Jackhammer. They brought me here to the hospital instead.”

“And you understand why your friends brought you here?” says the doctor.

“Yeah, yeah.” I say. “I understand.”

“Good,” says the doctor, giving a sharp little nod. “Very good. So. There will be no more ropes around the neck?”

“Nope,” I repeat. “No more ropes around the neck.”

I’m discharged the next day, which is perfect because that very night I’m booked to perform at Ariel’s party at the Hideout.

“Girl, are you okay?” says Ariel over the phone. “Are you sure you want to perform? I heard you jumped out of a moving car.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “What time do you need me?”

For my performance, I decide to be No-Face. He’s from Spirited Away, too.

After the stink spirit becomes the river god, he just hovers there all wise and old. He smiles at Sen and presents her with a gift. It’s a dumpling that makes you puke when you eat it. Later, Sen feeds the dumpling to No-Face after he goes postal and eats everybody. He chases Sen up and down the corridors and stairways of the bathhouse, puking everything up. He pukes up the people, the coins and the spirit frog. He then pukes himself up, all the tangled, ropy darkness of his deepest sufferings geysering forth. From then on he becomes more docile. He follows Sen around quietly. Later on he learns to knit and sew.

I’ll feed a dumpling like that to the world, I say to myself as I walk to the club from the hospital.

I’ve been working on it ever since.