#437 Dee- Jerome Charyn

#437 Dee- Jerome Charyn

Dee grew up as a princess, the daughter of a west side mogul. But that wasn’t her world, she was drawn uncontrollably to the Hospital her father sponsored that housed all manner of odd and wonderful people.

“Sommerset had to pull her screaming out of the hospital’s halls. The sickly faces had frightened her, yet she dreamt of touching the wild patches of hair that belonged to these old men. There wasn’t one face as bewildering or as beautiful along Central Park West, where she lived in a monstrous cave of fourteen rooms at the Sam Remo.”

She eschewed her silver spoon life and became a freak herself. “She was the waif with cropped hair who lived in a pauper’s castle.” She spent her life photographing circus freaks and monstrosities like her good friend Eddie, an eight-foot man known as the Jewish Giant. After many years and many accolades she was stricken with guilt for exploiting her friends, but to Eddie, she was a muse. Without her, he could no longer write poetry.

Rating: 8-7-8-7 Total= 30

#415 Lusus Naturae- Margaret Atwood

#415 Lusus Naturae- Margaret Atwood

This is a much different story than the first few in the collection. The narrator is going through a change, a Kafka-esque metamorphosis, turning slowly into a werewolf. They call it a disease, but they also think of it as a curse. The town is steps away from pitch-forks and torches, so the family stages her death, for their own sake, especially to protect their other daughter.

Now she lives hidden, but with anonymity comes a little more freedom to roam about at night. A funny moment is when she comes stumbles across a couple having sex in the woods, she thinks they are of her kind because they have fits and scream like she does. But when she approaches to give them a friendly kiss, all she knows how to do it bite.

Like the Kafka tale this is a worthy homage to, it’s about alienation, and being isolated and ostracized because of ones differences; being made to feel like a burden and the cause of other’s feeling of resentment.

“However she tried to hide it, she resented me, of course. There’s only so long you can feel sorry for a person before you come to feel that their affliction is an act of malice committed by them against you.”

Lusus Naturae is Latin meaning: freak of nature.

Rating: 9-8-9-8 Total= 34