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explained the grisly particulars of what had happened to my body, and what would continue to happen, that I came to understand.
    My body’s swelling had decreased and my head had shrunk to almost human proportions. My face felt vile under the fingertips of my unburned hand. My legs were raised and taped to supports, and I was swaddled in thick dressings that restricted movement so that I would not tear at my grafts. I looked at my wrecked right leg and saw an amazing set of pins stabbing into my flesh. Burn victims cannot have casts made of fiberglass—too irritating by far—so mechanical spiders were growing out of me.
    There were three primary nurses in the burn ward: Connie, Maddy, and Beth. They provided not only physical ministrations but also keep-your-chin-up speeches, telling me that they believed in me, so I had to believe in myself too. I’m sure that Connie believed the rubbish that was exiting her mouth, but I sensed that Maddy and Beth were closer to grocery clerks parroting “Have a nice day.” Each worked an eight-hour shift; altogether they made a day.
    Beth worked the afternoons and was responsible for my daily massage, pulling gently on my joints and rubbing my muscles. Even these modest manipulations brought intense pain, all the way through the morphine. “If we don’t do this, the skin will tighten and you won’t be able to move your joints at all. We’ve been doing this all through your coma.” Her explanation did not make it hurt any less. “Contracture is a huge problem. If you could see your remaining toes, you’d see the splints on them. Can you push against my hand?”
    I tried to push but couldn’t tell if I succeeded or not; the sensation—actually, the lack of it—was simply too confusing. I could no longer tell where my body ended.
    Dr. Nan Edwards, my main physician and the head of the burn ward, explained that she had been operating regularly during my coma, cutting off damaged skin and wrapping me in various replacements. In addition to homografts (the skin from human cadavers) I’d had autografts, skin from undamaged areas of my body, and porcine heterografts, skin from pigs. One cannot help but wonder whether Jews or Muslims would receive the same treatment.
    “It was really touch-and-go because your lungs were so badly injured. We had to keep raising the level of oxygen in your respirator, which is never a good sign,” Dr. Edwards said. “But you pulled through. You must have something pretty good ahead.”
    What an idiot. I hadn’t fought for my life, I hadn’t realized that I was in a coma, and I certainly hadn’t struggled to come out of it. Never once in my time in the blackness had it registered that I needed to return to the world.
    Dr. Edwards said, “If not for the advances in burn treatment made during the Vietnam War…” Her voice trailed off, as if it were better for me to fill in the blanks and realize what a lucky age I was living in.
    How I wished that my voice worked. I would have told her that I wished this had happened in the fourteenth century, when there would have been no hope for me.
     

     
    I began my career as a porno actor specializing in heterosexual sex with multiple female partners in a short period of time, without ever losing my erection. But please don’t think of me as one-dimensional; as an artist, I was always looking for a new challenge. With conscientious practice, I increased my portfolio to include cunnilingus, anilingus, threesomes, foursomes, moresomes. Homosexuality was not for me, although I always rather admired the men who could drill both ways. I wasn’t particularly interested in S&M, even though I did make some films with light bondage motifs. I was not disposed towards any film promoting pedophiliac leanings. Ghastly stuff, although I must admit that Humbert Humbert makes me giggle. Scatology was strictly out, as nowhere in my psyche do I harbor the desire to shit on someone and even less do I have the inclination