Distastefully Divine

Distatesfully Divine

By Dario Hernandez

The man on the operating table was teetering between life and death. It looks like a heart attack. The paramedics did everything they could to get him to the hospital.

The necessary scans were being done and the surgeons were preparing to place what they anticipated to be a necessary stent. When they wheeled him into the surgery room the head doctor and one of the nurses recognized him right away.

The man was a bit of a controversial figure. A famous painter known for incorporating the body parts of women into landscapes. Lips, hair, cheeks, breasts, ears, the vaginal canal, the thighs, the feet, the uterus, and the wrists---all woven into a grassy mountainside. Or a city skyline. Or a night's sky. Or a crowded plaza.

In some of his more challenging pieces, depictions of extreme violence that challenge our conceptions of right and wrong. Again, always revolving around the vulnerability of the female body. A painting depicting a three-headed women slaughtering a dog. A painting displaying a matriarch having sex with a young boy tied to the bed. A row of naked women on the firing line preparing to execute men wearing lingerie. A Catholic nun measuring a child’s prepubescent penis with a measuring tape.

The head surgeon and the nurse felt an immediate distaste for this man. They never had the energy to entertain different perspectives concerning his work. The very sight of his sexualized violence brought up the pain and memories of every instance or display of sexism they had ever encountered. They loathed him and were justified in doing so.

Needless to say, the two women were professionals and had sworn oaths. They had done this procedure more times than they could count. They would do it with precision, vigilance, and care; the way they had for every other patient that had laid on that bed.

Right when the procedure was about to begin, one of the nurses asked the lead surgeon to look at the east wall. Slowly a grey cloud began to emerge through the sheetrock painted blue. The cloud moved leisurely into the room until it absorbed the entire east side.

Each conscious person was having the same internal and external experience. When the events being depicted ended there was a consensus. The cameras confirmed the visual of the cloud entering the room, but the dialogue confirmed something different. Though everyone was undeniably seeing a grey cloud in the surgery room, nobody could shake this feeling that they were smelling a red rose.

Once the entire cloud was in the room, it parted revealing a glowing sun. Beneath the sun was a perfectly proportional brown female body. The breasts were round like orbs and her belly button was missing. Her vagina had a small bush of hair that was the same color as her skin.

When she stepped out from the cloud, her barefoot were met by the rock of a yellow moon. It seemingly emerged from the floor to meet her toes Around her waist orbited a belt of twelve stars the size of diamonds.

She rested her palm on the painter’s chest, then leaned over him. She gazed into his closed eyes, and kissed him. She then looked at everyone in the room; in this instance the red rose that everyone smelled decayed into nothing. The lead surgeon and nurse were filled with forgiveness and pity.

The woman with the sun for a head, the stars around her waist, orbs for breasts, and the moon beneath her barefeet turned around to reveal a firm rear. A spine like a valley between two large sand dunes. She reentered the clouds taking the yellow moon and her light with her.

The grey cloud came back together. It began to dissolve until it was mist. Eventually, the mist, like the rose of their mind’s eye, became nothing.

It was only when the nothing became so silent that it transcended into something, did the man’s eyes open. He removed whatever had been attached to him. Sprung to his feet with the life of a gazelle being chased by a predator. He began to run and jump around the room. If a nurse tried to restrain him, the painter would become aggressive. In a matter of minutes, the painter was naked and the room looked like it had been hit by a hurricane.

The painter was outnumbered. He was restrained by many latex hands into a corner. Latex hands belonging to people who relied on science to explain things. What happens when science comes in contact with the inexplicable?

Nobody knew what to do as the painter shouted repeatedly. It was mainly inaudible but what could be made out, was made out very clearly:

“Let me go! I need a canvas! I have finally seen her again!”