Cadaver Envy

by Ted Mann

When my girlfriend applied to medical school I was cunningly supportive: revising her essays, drilling for MCATs, acting out mock interviews. She’ll be my sugar mama, I thought. It might come with baggage -- like $100,000 loans -- but the thought of having my own doctor made such problems seem minor. Just think of all the free drugs.

If only I'd known about the man waiting for her in anatomy class. I first learned about him while I was helping Julia study for an exam. We sat beside the Schuylkill River and I quizzed her from note cards about histology or embryology -- whatever it was, I didn't understand half the words. During a study break, Julia told me about the other man in her life.

"This guy in anatomy lab is so interesting," she said. "The body we dissect -- his name is Wesley."

"You know his name?"

"Oh sure. All the cadavers have names. What's interesting is -- well, his penis. It's enormous. I've never seen one so big."

As if this wasn't hurtful enough, she went on. She described the man's genitals in painful detail: length, width, weight. She even mentioned the texture -- sandpapery. Then, in an attempt to mitigate their value, she said that the man was missing one testicle. This didn't ease the blow.

For the next two months, she gave me regular updates on Wesley. She posted me on which limb was being dissected, how much lymph material had been removed, and which of his tattoos were her favorite. Over time I got fed up; I needed to see this Wesley fellow firsthand. The scheme to get inside the lab was simple: step one, accompany Julia to class the day after her next exam; step two, follow her to the lab to check her exam scores; step three, demand visitation rights with the corpse.

It took some coaxing, but Julia eventually agreed to sneak me in. She unlocked the body's metal container, peeled back a formaldehyde-soaked sheet, and there he was. Dissected from neck to toe, he barely resembled a human being. Without prompting, Julia picked up the man's penis. I stared in horror.

"It's sliced in two!" I said.

I peered closer and noticed that the only thing connecting Wesley's penis to Wesley was a stringy artery. I stepped back.

"Is that unusual?" I said. "Some kind of rigor-mortis-induced size?"

"Yeah, eight inches," said Julia, a bit too confidently.

"My God, did you measure it?"

She tucked the two halves back into Wesley's crotch. "No. It's just -- a guess."

As we drove home, Julia told me that I was perfect; perfect for her. It was a nice platitude, but still, it didn't change the fact that she could have requested a female corpse.

At the end of the school year, Julia and I attended Wesley's farewell party, a joint memorial service for all of the Philadelphia medical school cadavers. Some of the other husbands and boyfriends showed up, probably expecting the same kind of cathartic exorcism that I'd planned on. In the cozy confines of Penn's Irvine Auditorium, we'd rid our lives of these men, these over-endowed bodies that our women studied.

My girlfriend planned to meet her cadaver's family at the service. It was a strange plan, given that she didn't really know Wesley in the traditional sense, outside of his disemboweled, lymph-congested state. Yet we quickly found that there wasn't an Wesley family in attendance. No blood relatives sent an R.S.V.P., and, as a result, Wesley's name had been dropped from the memorial list. Even my girlfriend's lab partners were missing. Indeed, no one, other than us, came to pay their respects to Wesley.

The service was tri-denominational, with a Catholic priest, Jewish rabbi and Baptist minister. The final speaker, the Baptist, preached that, like the Sept. 11 victims, we all needed to "dial 911 to heaven." It was a paradoxical metaphor; many in attendance -- doctors in training -- actually planned to spend their careers responding to 911 calls, rather than making them. A more appropriate suggestion for the group would have been to dial 411 -- to somehow get information on the mysterious bodies that had altered our lives.

Wesley's life still remains a mystery to me. I tracked down his old address in North Philly, but the apartment had long since been rented to new tenants. Similarly, Julia's professors refused to dig into Wesley's hospital files. Medical schools try to discourage this kind of biographical research, as they need to prevent students from becoming attached to the cadavers. The ethics of such postmortem anonymity are questionable, yet I now understand that the practice has an unintended consequence: calming jealous boyfriends.

I made peace with Wesley and forgave the long hours he spent alone with my girlfriend. Yet, after his memorial service, I realized that my girlfriend would soon be spending plenty of time with live -- occasionally naked -- patients. Bodies that speak.

Though she's a long ways from picking a specialty, I'm already pushing towards ob-gyn.

Ted Mann works in the editorial department of Atlantic Monthly. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper executive editor, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net




	search citypaper.net