HANDOFF
by travis l. tate
My hand is made of metal, wires, different oils and liquids, gels and other highly expensive and scientific materials. Jeffie decided that it would be best to help me adjust before moving out of the apartment. It took only a short time for me to get used to the hand. Jeffie is very buff. He’s going to Spain in two days. He’ll say he won’t be texting me but I’m sure he’ll text me beautiful pictures with funny captions in Spanish. I got my hand chopped off in a revolving door in Midtown. The company felt really bad because I was there for an interview and they wanted to give me a job. Instead, they gave me a hand. A metal hand. Electric and
My first thought was to sue, though most people don’t sue companies anymore. In fact, it was illegal. But I screamed so loud and there was so I know that I sound nonchalant but I’m used to immense amounts of misfortune so it’s not that bad to me. I’m also on a very high dosage of the mental health pill, Betterix. As Jeffie is leaving, with boxes and muscles and bags under his arms, I think about killing myself— instead just eat some cereal with almond milk.
The apartment looked ransacked, one-third furniture, one-third food, and one-third myself. I opened the window. The spring air was like a cracked egg over our heads, suffocating. The heat of Spring became Summer’s heat. We knew this would happen but no one really thought it was going to happen. Or they thought that they wouldn’t have to see it. It is easier to forget disaster if it’s not in front of you. But the climax came before we were gone. And the climax wasn’t instant death. So I’m here. With one hand.
I would have liked for my hand to have been taken some other way. Like in a way in which I could tell the story with some valor and confidence. It happened the way that everything in my life: swiftly like a crazy person with a knife. Sudden. Blunt. Actually really easy but no one thinks that these easy, violent things would happen to them. Jeffie doesn’t text me for fourteen days after he leaves, 29 days after the accident.
It wasn’t like I was drunk. I often drink, quickly and frequently. I knew my drinking had become a problem. As someone who sees the future, in a metaphorical sense, in the sense that I subscribed to three different journalistic publications, when that was a thing. So I knew that we all would be dead soon. But we were dead. That was my mistake: underestimating the strength of humankind, humanity. But I wasn’t the only one who underestimated it. Everyone had to sell their bunkers.
I quit my job. I was receiving money from the government, my former-almost employer and from all the dead people in my life. They are here, their money. As well as other parts of them.
Yesterday, my therapist, who is a robot— keep up— she asked me if I wanted to kill myself. And I told her, yes, of course. She said that concerned her. She said that with a big accident, often, people want to kill themselves. I said I knew that. I said the thing about journalistic publications. I crossed my legs. I showed her my hand. I said that is so sad. I said I’m sad. I said I wish I could have a better life. But I actually don’t care about killing myself. Death is harder than life, there’s nothing to look forward to, I said. I’m sorry she said. And she kept saying it over and over again. There was a malfunction and they had to send me to a new therapist robot
Under the low light of the new bar on Franklin Avenue, I drank a glass of prosecco. I felt it tingle in my hand. It’s PHANTOM LIMB the doctor said loudly, so loud I had to cover my ears. The doctor was right though. Sometimes there is a fast quaking under my skin, as if the ground is trembling but really it’s just my hand. David and his boyfriend, Cali, come into the bar and everyone knows them. I’ve lived in New York for ten years and I only know my therapist. And Jeffie. Cali is tall, has dreads and talks like a philosopher. I find it offputting. I like philosophy but I rather just talk about TV. Instead David and Cali spend a good hour talking about my hand. If the phantom limb was manifesting itself with the multiple glasses of prosecco, Cali’s incessant conversation about it made me feel as if my real hand was sitting right there at the table, near our drinks, alive and well. David puts his hand on my metal hand as if to say that he doesn’t mind and that he’s so strong he can touch my damaged hand. I grab his hand back. To show him that I don’t care. That, in fact, I’m glad. I squeeze it a little too hard and he flicks his hand away. I knew that I gripped it too tightly but I’ve seen movies and I was pissed at his faux kindness. After the fourth drink, I ask Cali if he has any Molly. He doesn’t so I went home.
Three days later, Jeffie blocked me on all social media. The Arborist Team planted vines and bushes of different varieties on the side of my apartment in Astoria.When they’re done, I opened a bottle of wine and then one of the windows. I stuck my hand out of the window and felt the green fur that was implanted on the top of the brick of the building. I felt the warmth of the sun. The photosynthetic nature of the color green. I felt the sharp edges and the smooth palms of leaves. Bees sprung forth like diamonds under pressure under my hand. I was buzzing. I was buzzed. And when I died, my hand would cease to fucking exist. Or rather, cease to function. I will function somewhere else. I will not killed myself. And I will become something that the future bees, or the future kinds of bees will eat off of, will drink from like a fountain. I called David and he came over. We smoked cigarettes out the window, even though it was illegal to smoke cigarettes in Brooklyn. Jeffie didn’t ever call me.
travis l. tate (they/them) is a queer playwright, poet, and performer living in Brooklyn. Their poems have been published in Southern Humanities Review, The Boiler, among other publications. Their first collection of poetry, Maiden, was published in June 2020 by VA Press. Their first collection of short stories, UNTENABLE MYSTIC CHARM, will be published by Stanchion Book Press in early 2024. Their plays have been produced by Dorset Theatre Festival, Victory Gardens, Theatre East and Breaking The Binary Theatre Festival. They earned their MFA in playwriting and poetry from Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin.