MALTA MAYKOP: PART THREE

This is an excerpt from an upcoming novel. For the first part, see Misery Tourism. For the second part, see D.F.L. Lit.

“Men waste time in therapy, in which onanistic freewheeling conversations are supposed to converge on some highly personal psychobabbled meta-meaning, some a-ha of childhood suffering or deficit in self-acceptance, when in reality it’s clear what men should talk about as the skeleton key to their meaning-making machine.

“Until Miriam, I never knew what I was packing between my legs. I’d grown up addicted to seed oils, trans fats, chlorinated water, Nestle Drumsticks, and Taco Bell Supreme Fries. I ate two packs of Skittles in the morning and two at night. Doctors agreed it was good for my depression.

“On the tail end of my second divorce, before Miriam, I came under the influence of a naturopathic MLM guru who tried to fix me through functional medicine, nootropics subscriptions, nocturnal mouth-taping, Wim Hof breathing, non-rubber soles, heavy metal detoxes, and intermittent starvation. I traded the inflammatory ecstasy of Skittles for ultraviolet mental clarity and this terrible blimp in my pants. At this point, with Miriam obsessed with my body but having a restraining order against me otherwise, and with glucose spikes no longer coiling around my brain like a cobra, I perceived with the highest levels of consciousness my objectification and enslavement. When I realized how Miriam would use my body and then reject me, I began an onslaught on the medical system not unlike a terrorist’s. Emergency rooms, walk-in clinics, plastic surgeons, sexual health clinics, urologists, wherever I could get an audience I’d whip out that massive slab of pepperoni and demand a reduction. At first I got a sympathetic hearing at the urgent care and a urology referral for 18 months later but when I kept showing up each week advocating for myself and my dreams of a normal manhood, I eventually saw the doctor from hell, who wore a doctor fedora and said very grandiloquently, ‘You have levels of anxiety teetering over a schizoaffective abyss’ and kept using the word ‘simply,’ saying, ‘You simply need a friend’ or ‘You simply need cognitive behavioral resuscitation’ and at one instance of ‘simply’ I said, ‘How eloquent, Shakespeare,’ and with that remark the floor fell out beneath me because whatever he wrote on my file sicced the hospital, the healthcare system, and basically the entire province on me. That doctor signed my death warrant. Doctors thenceforth refused to look at my penis. I went to the back of every line, nurses gossiped, and doctors waved memo-pads in my face that said ‘generalized anxiety disorder,’ ‘major depression,’ and ‘sideways adaptation to modernity.’ Not only was my original complaint about having a titanic, ever-ready penis that caused women to objectify and lust after me ignored, but in its stead grew this phantom monstrosity of an innuendo that psychosis was converging in my penile self-perception or that a dormant but germinated childhood trauma was blooming between my ears and legs—that I was chasing my own tail (or huge dick).

“The doors slamming in my face were a percussion section backing the medical system’s chorus that I needed psychiatric medication. The naturopath MLM guru gave me a regimen of St. John’s wort, SAMe, passionflower, and Phenibut that blissed me out, notwithstanding some crying fits and a tendency to get drunk after half a beer, but my dick still reached to the clouds, which relegated the bliss to an underworld of hell. After a month of nighttime strolls along the train tracks I returned to urgent care and received a script for olanzapine from the worst doctor in the world.

“When I put on weight and they halved my medication, my dick mushroomed again and I ended up in the suicide ward—although unless you have an alarmingly clever answer to ‘What’s your plan?’ you won’t get seen quickly, let alone put in a padded room. The emergency psychiatrist called in at 3 a.m. probed around for my moment of trauma, something that had shifted in my relationships, career, or medical status. She locked in on the fact of my divorce and kept pulsing me with psyops until I said, ‘I’m sorry but I don’t give a fuck about that. It’s my dick, stupid!’ I’m not proud of these words but consider them an act of resistance to members of the medical establishment cooking up stories to make me and my genitals fit in a square peg.”

Malta Maykop sighed and I thought she might let out a horrific bellow, but instead she said, “You have inculcated innumerable damages with such words.”

“Inculcated in who?”

“No, no, no. This is not therapy couch for your dick talk, nor semantic jungle gym. I try to teach mans to believe from their heart and for such reason I hear stories, I hear multitude of stories. But never have I heard a story as stupid as yours. In my country we don’t cry over boys with coke-bottle cocks. In my country we are normal.”

Malta Maykop flipped through dozens of pages she’d scribbled of my clinical history.

“Look at my father,” said Malta Maykop, standing up and pointing to something.

“Where?”

I followed her finger to the wall. I saw nothing but a heavily pixelated 36 x 42” portrait of a smoke puff or a dust ball glitching in a blue, sun-inflected sky.

“Say hello to my father” (faw-dur).

I resisted saying hello but nodded instead and, sensing Malta Maykop’s dissatisfaction with this variety of paying respect, clasped my hands high and lowered them in prayer in a Mortal Kombat gesture.

“My faw-dur perished in Gucci-Prada hyperwar. Neither Gucci nor Prada, he was irregardlessly molested by forces of history. His captors make Adolf Hitler fellow appear like soup kitchen savior. I paint a picture of his execution in dirty prison, if you like. The evil ones put him upside-down in titanium clasps until fluid—special brain spine jelly, if you like—drip drips from big wise bowling ball head. He no longer real self, more Xerox rendition. After 50 days, 50 nights he nonetheless keep his mouth-hole zipped. Therefore, the evil ones take laser gatling gun and save up big load and fire massive wad of hell death and he incinerate and disappear like Photoshop object removal function. He ceased to exist but, discontented with their victory, the evil ones employ premium hyperwar technology and reconstitute his body like golem, no soul. I was little girl in this timescale and the evil ones made me peep on such spectacle. I eat nothing but cherries during spectacle of torture. In big samsara cycle my faw-dur reconstitute from ashes to Xerox golem. I pop cherry and stare into stupid-eyed faw-dur, see lash scars like labor camp tiger stripes. He looks just like himself, and just like me, his glorious brood, but the golem recognizes nothing and no one and each moment he seem to remember the evil ones stick laser beam gun to faw-dur and delete him to dust.

“Until such time, if you like, the evil ones offer me two forks in path. In first fork they pledge to blast me with lasers and I shall enjoin my faw-dur in afterlife sky space station and we shall roam hills and canyons hand in hand. In fork two I carry faw-dur’s dust in urn to maintain his planetary memory, which haunts me like drip torture due to final moments, if you like, of samsara death rebirth Xerox cycle. I select fork two with ulterior motive. I thereupon carry faw-dur’s urn 50 days and 50 moons, no sleep, my brain pickled until I reach his birthplace, he was born not by the sea but on the sea, in tiny dingy, during time of double comet in sky. Anywho, I go back to approximate coordinates based on legends, Telegram group chats, intuition, however you like. Ancient mariner rows dinky dingy and I close loop on faw-dur, throwing urn dust in sky.

“This ‘say hello to my faw-dur’ origin story. You know why I tell you? Zachary Shmuel, you have heart of a rat, cock of a horse, brain cells of donkey ass. Ancient man set fire to cities in splendid act of valor. You, on my other hand, beg urologist to snip off bits of cock, like old grandma tailoring church garb. You are gay! You know not suffering. In my nation men with biggest cocks rule over others but in this topsy turvy like place big cocks, beauty, rocket-ship intelligences, these are sources of money and shame unmoored from art of living? Zachary Shmuel, won’t you understand I can’t fit under the sun? I cannot provide customer support for defective materials. You are the most vile beast who ever flopped out of his mother’s kangaroo cunt. I cannot save you.

“Irregardless of pathetic inferiority, you have nonetheless piqued interest with topic. I tell you itinerary. I cannot save you without small miracle. I cannot teach man with weak neuro–schlong connectivity to believe from heart. You have asked for craniosacral massage—very good! I shall root around in ugly nooks of supraorbital ridge, mayhaps perform deep-tissue pleasure and diagnose propensity for several varieties of criminal behavior according to skull typology, if you like it. Irregardless, deep-tissue Swedish pleasures and aha of phrenological revelation will not teach you capacity for inside belief. In connection of this, need assistant’s assistance. Choose face of girl from binder—choose visage, if you like, whomst warms heart, tantalizes, titillates, curls up toes with feminine divine, in this connection, if you like.”

Malta Maykop handed me a binder of women containing hundreds of headshots and, on the reverse, contact information in a mysterious language with Romanian letters and Baltic words.

by Alex Beaumais

Alex Beaumais is the author of the novel Dox (tragickal, 2021) as well as short fiction and poetry. The novella Malta Maykop will be out in 2026. His website is beaumais.neocities.org.